🥇The Complete History of Linux. Part I: How It All Started

This year marks 27 years since the kernel of Linux was released. The operating system based on it use many corporations, government agencies, research institutions, and data centers around the world.

Over the more than a quarter of a century, many articles (including those on Habr) have been published, detailing various periods in the history of Linux. In this series of materials, we decided to highlight the most significant and interesting facts related to this operating system.

Let's start with the developments that preceded Linux and the story of the first version of the kernel.

/ Flickr / Toshiyuki IMAI / CC BY-SA

The Era of the 'Free Market'

The Emergence of Linux is considered to be is one of the most important events in the history of open source software. The birth of this operating system owes much to the ideas and tools that had been developing and maturing for decades among developers. Therefore, let’s take a look at the origins of the open-source movement.

In the early 1950s, most software in the USA was created by university staff and laboratories and distributed without any restrictions. This was done to facilitate the exchange of knowledge within the scientific community. The first open-source solution from that time is considered to be was the A-2 system, written for the UNIVAC Remington Rand computer in 1953.

In those same years, the first group of open source developers was formed — SHARE. They worked under a 'peer production model'. The work of this group resulted in the OS of the same name closer to the end of the 1950s. is called This system (and other SHARE products)

In 1959, Applied Data Research (ADR) received an order from RCA to develop a program for auto-filling flowcharts. The developers completed the work but could not agree on a price with RCA. To avoid 'throwing away' a finished product, ADR adapted the solution for the IBM 1401 platform and began selling it independently. However, sales were not very good, as many users were waiting for a free alternative to the ADR solution, which IBM was planning.

В 1959 году компания Applied Data Research (ADR) получила заказ от организации RCA — to write программу для автозаполнения блок-схем. Разработчики выполнили работу, но не сошлись с RCA в цене. Чтобы не «выбрасывать» готовый продукт, в ADR переделали решение для платформы IBM 1401 и начали самостоятельно его реализовывать. Однако продажи шли не очень хорошо, так как многие пользователи ждали бесплатную альтернативу решению ADR, которую планировали в IBM.

ADR could not allow the release of a free product with similar functionality. Therefore, developer Martin Goetz from ADR filed a patent for the program, making history in the United States in 1968. support for the parameter From this moment we mark the beginning of the commercialization era in the development industry—software transitioned from a 'bonus' with hardware to an independent product.

Around the same time, a small team of programmers from Bell Labs started work on an operating system for the mini-computer PDP-7—Unix. Unix was developed as an alternative to another OS—Multics.

The latter was too complex and only ran on GE-600 and Honeywell 6000 platforms. Rewritten in C, Unix was intended to be portable and simpler to use (largely thanks to its hierarchical file system with a single root directory).

In the 50s, the AT&T holding company, which then included Bell Labs, signed an agreement with the U.S. government, prohibiting the corporation from selling software. For this reason, the first Unix users—scientific organizations— received the OS source code for free.

AT&T moved away from the concept of free software distribution in the early 80s. As a result of the forced splitting of the corporation into several companies, the prohibition on software sales ceased to apply, and the holding stopped the free distribution of Unix. Developers faced lawsuits for unauthorized sharing of the source code. These threats were not baseless—as of 1980, computer programs became subject to copyright in the U.S.

Not all developers were satisfied with the conditions imposed by AT&T. A group of enthusiasts from the University of California, Berkeley sought alternative solutions. In the 70s, the institution obtained a license from AT&T, and the enthusiasts began developing a new distribution based on it, which later became the Unix Berkeley Software Distribution, or BSD.

The open Unix-like system gained success, immediately catching the attention of AT&T. The company filed In court, the authors of BSD had to remove and replace all the source code involved in Unix. This slightly slowed the spread of the Berkeley Software Distribution at that time. The last version of the system was released in 1994, but the very fact of the appearance of a free and open OS became an important milestone in the history of open-source projects.

The entire history of Linux. Part I: how it all began
/ Flickr / Christopher Michel / CC BY / Фото обрезано

Back to the roots of free software

In the late 1970s, staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote a driver for a printer installed in one of the auditoriums. When paper jams occurred and a queue of print jobs was created, users received notifications asking them to resolve the issue. Later, a new printer was introduced in the department, for which the staff wanted to add such a function. But for this, they needed the source code of the first driver. The in-house programmer Richard M. Stallman requested it from his colleagues, but was denied — it turned out to be confidential information.

This minor episode may have become one of the pivotal moments in the history of free software. Stallman was outraged by the current state of affairs. He was dissatisfied with the restrictions placed on sharing source code in the IT environment. Therefore, Stallman decided to create an open operating system and allow enthusiasts to freely modify it.

In September 1983, he announced the creation of the GNU project — GNU’s Not UNIX. Its foundation was a manifesto that also served as the basis for the free software license — the GNU General Public License (GPL). This step marked the beginning of an active movement for open software.

Several years later, Professor Andrew S. Tanenbaum from the Free University of Amsterdam developed a Unix-like system called Minix as a teaching aid. He wanted to make it as accessible as possible for students. The publisher of his book, which came with the OS, insisted on at least a nominal fee for using the system. Andrew and the publisher reached a compromise on the licensing price of $69. By the early 1990s, Minix gained popularity among developers. And it was destined to become the foundation for the development of Linux.

The entire history of Linux. Part I: how it all began
/ Flickr / Christopher Michel / CC BY

The birth of Linux and the first distributions

In 1991, a young programmer from the University of Helsinki, Linus Torvalds, was exploring Minix. His experiments with the OS grew into in the work on a completely new kernel. On August 25, Linus conducted an open survey among Minix users regarding their dissatisfaction with the OS and announced the development of a new operating system. In the August letter, there are several important points about the future OS:

the system will be free;
the system will be similar to Minix, but the source code will be entirely different;
the system will not be 'large and professional like GNU.'

August 25 is considered the birthday of Linux. Linus himself counts from another date — September 17. It was on this day that he uploaded the first release of Linux (0.01) to the FTP server and sent an email to those who expressed interest in his announcement and survey. The original release's source code retained the word 'Freaks.' This was how Torvalds planned to name his kernel (a combination of 'free,' 'freak,' and 'Unix'). The FTP server administrator did not like the name and renamed the project to Linux. This was followed by a series of updates. In October of the same year, version 0.02 of the kernel was released, and in December, version 0.11. Initially, Linux was distributed without a GPL license. This meant developers could use the kernel, modify it, but were not allowed to sell the results of their work. Starting in February 1992, all commercial restrictions were lifted — with the release of version 0.12, Torvalds changed the license to GNU GPL v2. Linus later called this step one of the defining factors of Linux's success.

Linux's popularity among Minix developers was growing. For some time, discussions were held in the comp.os.minix feed on Usenet. In early 1992, Minix creator Andrew Tanenbaum started a

debate about the architecture of kernels, stating that 'Linux is outdated.' The reason, according to him, lay in the monolithic kernel of the OS, which, in several respects, lags behind the microkernel of Minix. Another criticism from Tanenbaum concerned the 'attachment' of Linux to the x86 processor line, which, according to the professor's predictions, was about to become obsolete. Linus himself and users of both OSes entered the debate. As a result of the dispute, the community split into two camps, and Linux supporters established their own feed — comp.os.linux. The community focused on expanding the functionality of the base version — the first drivers and file system were being developed. The earliest versions of Linux

fit умещались were on two floppy disks, consisting of a boot disk with the kernel and a root disk that installed the file system and several basic programs from the GNU toolkit.

Gradually, the community began to develop the first distributions based on Linux. Most early versions were created by enthusiasts rather than companies.

The first distribution, MCC Interim Linux, was created based on version 0.12 in February 1992. Its author was a programmer from the Computer Center at the University of Manchester. called It was conceived as an 'experiment' to address some shortcomings in the kernel installation process and to add a range of features.

Shortly thereafter, the number of user distributions increased significantly. Many of them remained local projects that 'lived' for no more than five years, such as Softlanding Linux System (SLS). However, there were also distributions that not only managed to 'establish' themselves in the market but also significantly influenced the further development of open-source projects. In 1993, two distributions—Slackware and Debian—were released, which initiated serious changes in the free software industry.createdIan Murdock with the support of the Free Software Foundation led by Stallman. It was envisioned as an 'elegant' alternative to SLS. Debian is still supported today and is

Debian one of the most popular developments based on Linux. Several other important distributions in the kernel’s history were created on its basis, such as Ubuntu. As for Slackware, it is another early and successful project based on Linux. Its first version was released in 1993. According to some estimates

, two years later, Slackware accounted for about 80% of Linux installations. And decades later, the distribution remainedpopular among developers. In 1992, the company SUSE (an abbreviation for Software- und System-Entwicklung, meaning software and system development) was founded in Germany. It was the first to start releasing

products based on Linux for business clients. The first distribution that SUSE worked with was Slackware, tailored for German-speaking users. This moment marks the beginning of the commercialization era in the history of Linux, which we will discuss in the next article. Posts from the corporate blog 1cloud.ru:

This year marks the 27th anniversary of the Linux kernel.