| The story of Linux really started with an operating system called Multics.
This operating system was designed for mainframe computers and
had multi-user operation or time sharing as it was called back in the 1960s.
Multics was an acronym which came from MULTI Information and Computing Service,
which was designed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, General Electrical and ATT Bell Labs.
Despite its very advanced features for its time Multics never really took off in a big
way.
UNIX One of the developers of Multics, Ken Thompson teamed up with an other work mate Dennis Ritchie from ATT`s Bell Labs, started to work on a new operating system called UNIX. Despite the love of acronyms at this time, UNIX doesn't stand for anything, but it is was meant to be a weak pun on "Multics" and is still spelt in upper case. In 1971 Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan invented "C", this new programming language had compilers for it in every major computer platform, and since UNIX was written in C the operating system was instantly portable and available to all platforms. Some time later in a court case, ATT were forced to give UNIX away for free, this was taken up by the University of Berkeley in California which made a version which is known today as "Free BSD" - Free Berkeley Distribution. The two main UNIX operating systems at the time were Solaris (Sunsoft-later Sun Microsystems) which was a successful commercial version, and BSD UNIX which was successful in universities etc. This meant that most computer degrees were done in UNIX and in C, however most students were unable to run this on their own personal computers because they were not powerful enough. To help get around this problem a few UNIX "wanabe" operating systems appeared but simply weren't upto the job. This got a Finn student called Linus Tovalds thinking, to try remedy the situation. 
Free your computer:-In 1971 Richard Stallman, a programmer who worked for M.I.T. used a computer running I.T.S. (Incomparable Timeshare System). This operating system had been written by M.I.T., it was fully open to everyone who used or needed it for bug fixes and upgrading and the like. The open and sharing environment was perfect for everyone as it made it easier to do their job, however ten years later when Richard Stallman had to use the operating system that replaced I.T.S. he got frustrated by its closed nature. This made his job very much harder as bugs in the system could not be fixed by him, but by the author of the operating system at a later date if at all. The frustration felt by Richard Stallman convinced him that open source was the only way to go, so when Richard left M.I.T. he joined the GNU project (GNU is yet another acronym for GNU`s Not Unix). This projects goal was to make a UNIX based operating system from 100% open source code that would be free to everyone. 
The source code is protected by the G.P.L. (General Public Licence) which keeps it free and stops
it from being stolen by anyone else no matter how much its updgraded etc.Some of Stallman`s early work included GNU EMACS and then the GNU C compiler gcc. In 1985 Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation which gathered together like minded people. Later the shell called bash (Bourne again shell) as a spin on the name bourne shell from UNIX. Other parts like Gnome (GNU`s Network Object model Environment) a graphical front end founded by a Mexican called Miguel de lcaza who actually once worked for Micro$oft, came about because of a dispute about KDE (Kool Desktop Environment) not being open enough for some, although it is now. The kernel or Hurd ? By 1990 the GNU project had done most of the work required to make a complete open and free operating system apart from the kernel. However this was already in work (GNU Hurd) but before it really started Linus Tovalds had already finished his alternative UNIX kernel called Linux. Linus Tovalds had made his kernel using GNU tools and released it under the same GPL as GNU was already, allowing Richard Stallman`s dream of a completely open and free UNIX style operating sytem to become a reality, this is why its really called "GNU Linux" and not just Linux...... The rest as they say is history......... |
