1991: Linus Torvalds
announced Linux
Linux Torvalds, a student of
Helsinki University, Finland, introduced linux in 1991. He worked on the Linux
project and write the source code for the Linux kernel. He made Linux available
on the Internet. Many programmers added to the code, changed it and built in
support for all kinds of hardware. Linux 0.02 was introduced in 1991.
On 25 August 1991 sent a
mail to a newsgroup on Usenet. He talked about developing a free operating
system.
1992: Linux became Open
Source
Linux was not always Open
Source. The first few licenses of Linux forbid commercial redistribution. It
was with version 0.12 in February’92 that Linux Kernel was released under GPL.
1993: Slackware Linux
released
The oldest currently (as of
2018) existing Linux distribution, Slackware version 1.0 was released
for the first time on 17th July 1993. Later in the same year, the Debian
project is established. Today it is the largest community distribution.
1994: Someone registered
Linux trademark and it was not Linus Torvalds
Torvalds and hundreds of
developers from across the world worked on it and in March 1994, version 1.0 of
Linux kernel was released.
Linux trademark was
registered in 1994 by a William R. Della Croce, Jr.
1995: First Linux Expo
First Linux specific
tradeshow and conference series was launched by people at North Carolina State
University. This became one of the most attended annual Linux show for next
several years.
Linux is also ported to the
DEC Alpha and to the Sun SPARC.
1996: Tux gets to be the
symbol of Linux
Linus Torvalds recommended a
penguin as the mascot of Linux. Tux was created by Larry Ewing in 1996. Tux has
been unchanged for last 19 years.
Version 2.0 of the Linux
kernel is released. The kernel can now serve several processors at the same
time using symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), and thereby becomes a serious
alternative for many companies.
1997: GNOME Project is born
GNOME is one of the most
successful open source projects. It has been crucial to the spread of desktop
Linux. It has given us a number of programs that we use today on desktop Linux.
1998: KDE 1.0 released. Many major companies such as IBM, Compaq and Oracle announce
their support for Linux.
2000:
Dell announces that it is now the No. 2 provider of Linux-based systems
worldwide and the first major manufacturer to offer Linux across its full
product line.
2002: Red Hat Enterprise
Linux released
The first commercial Linux
for Business IT was released in the year 2002. RHEL is one of the few Linux
distributions that changed Linux forever.
2003: Attempt to install
backdoor in Linux kernel
An attempt was made to
insert a backdoor in the Linux kernel source. Disguised as an innocuous error
checking routine, the backdoor was designed to obtain root privileges under
specific conditions. Linux Kernel maintainers caught it before it could made to
mainline Linux kernel.
2004: Ubuntu 4.10 released
On 20th October 2004, Ubuntu
4.10 was released. This new Linux distribution marketed itself as Linux for
human being.
2005: Linus Torvalds created
Git
In 2005, BitKeeper decided
to not provide the free version to the community anymore. This forced Linus
Torvalds to work on his own version control system and thus Git was born.
2006:
Oracle releases its own distribution of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Novell and
Microsoft announce cooperation for a better interoperability and mutual patent
protection.
2007: Linux powered netbook
arrived
In a time when Windows came
pre-installed on majority of personal computers, Asus launched Eee PC, a lower
end, lightweight netbook series. It came preinstalled with a custom version of
Linux called Xandros. Dell also started distributing laptops with Ubuntu
pre-installed on them.
2008: Android version 1.0
released
With the release of Android,
a mobile operating system based on Linux Kernel, Linux took the first step in
the world of mobile OS. While desktop Linux might not have been that big a
sucess, with Android, Linux is dominating the world of mobile OS.
2009: Google announced
Chrome OS
Google announces its
own desktop operating system Chrome OS,
based on Linux kernel. Later on, Google also started releasing Chromebooks,
dedicated devices to run Chrome OS. Chromebooks have grown in popularity in
recent years and last year it outsold MacBooks in the US.
Red Hat's market
capitalization equals Sun's, interpreted as a symbolic moment for the
"Linux-based economy".
2010: Red Hat became first
billion dollar open source company
Red Hat Linux became the
first billion dollar open source company in 2010. The success of Red Hat breaks
the myth that open source companies cannot make money.
2011: Version 3.0 of the
Linux kernel is released.
2012: The aggregate Linux server
market revenue exceeds that of the rest of the Unix market.[60]
2013: Ubuntu Phone announced
2014: Ubuntu claims 22,000,000
users.
Microsoft’s new CEO Satya
Nadella shocked the tech world with his “Microsoft loves Linux” remark. As we
see later that this was just the beginning of Microsoft’s grand design to rule
cloud world. However, this actually brought a shift in Microsoft policies and
for the first time Microsoft started open sourcing its products and bringing it
to Linux.
2015: Version 4.0 of the Linux
kernel is released
Microsoft has its own
version of Linux. A of software meant for network switches that required Linux.
2019: Version 5.0 of the
Linux kernel is released.
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