February 24, 2019 at 21:35The whole history of Linux. Part I: how it all began
This year, the Linux kernel turns 27 years old. OS based on it is used by many corporations, government, research institutions and data centers around the world.
For more than a quarter of a century, many articles have been published (including on Habré), telling about different segments of 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 development that preceded Linux and the history of the first version of the kernel. / Flickr / Toshiyuki IMAI / CC BY-SA
The advent of Linux is considered one of the most important events in the history of open source software. The birth of this operating system is largely due to the ideas and tools that have been formed and matured for decades among developers. Therefore, for starters, let us turn to the origins of the “open source movement”.
At the dawn of the 50s, most of the software in the United States was created by employees of universities and laboratories and distributed without any restrictions. This was done in order to facilitate the exchange of knowledge in the scientific community. The first open source solution of that period is considered the A-2 system, written for the UNIVAC Remington Rand computer in 1953.
In the same years, the first group of free software developers, SHARE, was formed. They worked on the model "joint peer-to-peer production . ” The result of the work of this group towards the end of the 50s was the OS of the same name.
This system (and other SHARE products) was popular with computer hardware manufacturers. Thanks to the openness policy, they could offer customers not only hardware but also software at no additional cost.
In 1959, Applied Data Research (ADR) received an order from RCA to write a program to autocomplete flowcharts. The developers did the work, but did not agree with the RCA in price. In order not to “throw away” the finished product, ADR redesigned the solution for the IBM 1401 platform and began to independently implement it. However, sales did not go very well, as many users were waiting for a free alternative to the ADR solution that was planned at IBM.
ADR could not allow the release of a free product with similar functionality. Therefore, developer Martin Goetz of ADR filed a patent for the program and in 1968 was the first in US history to receive it. From this moment it is customary to count the era of commercialization in the development industry - from a "bonus" to software equipment has turned into an independent product.
The latter was too complex and worked only on the GE-600 and Honeywell 6000 platforms. Unix rewritten in SI was supposed to be portable and easier to use (thanks in large part to a hierarchical file system with a single root directory).
In the 1950s, AT&T Holding, which at that time included Bell Labs, signed an agreement with the US government prohibiting corporations 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 compelleddividing the corporation into several companies, the ban on the sale of software ceased to apply, and the holding stopped the free distribution of Unix. Developers were threatened with lawsuits for unauthorized exchange of source code. The threats were not groundless - since 1980, computer programs have become the subject of copyright in the United States.
Not all developers were satisfied with the conditions dictated by AT&T. The search for an alternative solution took up a group of enthusiasts from the University of California at Berkeley. In the 70s, the school received a license from AT&T, and enthusiasts began to create a new distribution based on it, which later became Unix Berkeley Software Distribution, or BSD.
The open Unix-like system was a success, which AT&T immediately noticed. Company filedto court, and the BSD authors had to remove and replace all the involved Unix source code. This slowed down the distribution of Berkeley Software Distribution in those years. The latest version of the system was released in 1994, but the very appearance of a free and open OS was an important milestone in the history of open source projects.
/ Flickr / Christopher Michel / CC BY / Photo cropped
In the late 70s, employees of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote a driver for a printer installed in one of the classrooms. When paper jams and queues from print jobs were created, users received a notification asking them to fix the problem. Later, a new printer appeared in the department, for which employees wanted to add such a function. But for this, the source code of the first driver was needed. The staff programmer, Richard Matthew Stallman, requested it from his colleagues, but was refused - it turned out that this was confidential information.
This minor episode may have become one of the crucial events in the history of free software. Stallman was indignant over the current state of things. He was not happy with the restrictions imposed on the exchange of source code in the IT environment. Therefore, Stallman decided to create an open operating system and allow enthusiasts to freely make changes to it.
In September 1983, he announced the creation of the GNU project - GNU's Not UNIX (GNU Not Unix). It was based on the manifesto, which served as the basis for the free software license - the GNU General Public License (GPL). This step was the beginning of an active movement for open source software.
A few years later, Andrew S. Tanenbaum, a professor at Amsterdam Free University, developed the Unix-like Minix system as a teaching tool. He wanted to make it as accessible as possible to students. The publisher of his book, to which the OS was attached, insisted on at least a nominal fee for working with the system. Andrew and the publisher compromise on a $ 69 license. In the early 90s, Minix gained popularity among developers. And she was destined to become the basis for Linux development.
/ Flickr / Christopher Michel / CC BY
In 1991, Linus Torvalds, a young programmer at the University of Helsinki, mastered Minix. His experiments with the OS grew into work on a completely new core. On August 25, Linus arranged an open survey of a group of Minix users that they were not happy with this OS, and announced the development of a new operating system. In the August letter there are several important points about the future OS:
August 25th is considered Linux birthday. Linus himself counts from another date - September 17th. It was on this day that he uploaded the first Linux release (0.01) to an FTP server and sent an email to people who showed interest in his announcement and survey. In the source code of the first release, the word "Freaks" is preserved. So Torvalds planned to name his kernel (a combination of the words “free”, “freak” and Unix). The FTP server administrator did not like the name, and he renamed the project to Linux.
This was followed by a series of updates. In October of the same year, the kernel version 0.02 was released, and in December - 0.11. Linux was originally distributed without a GPL. This meant that developers could use the kernel, modify it, but had no right to resell the results of their work. Since February 1992, all commercial restrictions have been removed - with the release of version 0.12, Torvalds has changed the license for the GNU GPL v2. Linus later called this step one of the determining factors for the success of Linux.
The popularity of Linux among the Minix developers has grown. For some time, discussions were conducted in the comp.os.minix feed on the Usenet network. At the beginning of 92nd, the creator of Minix, Andrew Tanenbaum, launched a dispute in the communitykernel architecture, stating that "Linux is deprecated." The reason, in his opinion, was the monolithic kernel of the OS, which is inferior to the Minix microkernel in a number of parameters. Another complaint of Tanenbaum concerned the “binding” of Linux to the x86 processor line, which, according to the professor’s forecasts, was supposed to disappear into oblivion in the near future. Linus himself and users of both OSs entered into a controversy. As a result of the dispute, the community was divided into two camps, and Linux adherents got their own feed - comp.os.linux.
The community was expanding the functionality of the basic version - the first drivers, the file system, were being developed. The earliest Linux versions fit on two floppy disks and consisted of a boot disk with a kernel and a root disk that installed the file system and several basic programs from GNU tools.
The first distribution, MCC Interim Linux, was created based on version 0.12 in February 1992. Its author, a programmer at the Computer Center at the University of Manchester, called the development an “experiment” in order to eliminate some of the shortcomings in the kernel installation procedure and add a number of functions.
Soon after, the number of user distributions increased significantly. Many of them remained local projects that had " lived " for no more than five years, for example, Softlanding Linux System (SLS). However, there were distributions that managed not only to “gain a foothold” in the market, but also in many respects influenced the further development of open source projects. In 1993, two distributions, Slackware and Debian, were released, which launched major changes in the free software industry.
Debian was created by Ian Murdock with the support of the Stallman Free Software Foundation. It was conceived as an “elegant” alternative to SLS. Debian is still supported today and is one of the most popular Linux-based products. On its basis, in turn, a number of other distributions important for the history of the kernel were created - for example, Ubuntu.
As for Slackware, this is another early and successful Linux project. Its first version was released in 1993. By some estimates , after two years, Slackware already accounted for about 80% of Linux installations. And decades later, the distribution remained popular among developers.
In 1992, SUSE was founded in Germany (the abbreviation for Software- und System-Entwicklung is software and systems development). She was the first to launch Linux-based products for business customers. The first distribution that SUSE began to work with was Slackware, adapted for German-speaking users.
It is from this moment that the era of commercialization in the history of Linux begins, which we will discuss in the next article.
For more than a quarter of a century, many articles have been published (including on Habré), telling about different segments of 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 development that preceded Linux and the history of the first version of the kernel. / Flickr / Toshiyuki IMAI / CC BY-SA
The era of the "free market"
The advent of Linux is considered one of the most important events in the history of open source software. The birth of this operating system is largely due to the ideas and tools that have been formed and matured for decades among developers. Therefore, for starters, let us turn to the origins of the “open source movement”.
At the dawn of the 50s, most of the software in the United States was created by employees of universities and laboratories and distributed without any restrictions. This was done in order to facilitate the exchange of knowledge in the scientific community. The first open source solution of that period is considered the A-2 system, written for the UNIVAC Remington Rand computer in 1953.
In the same years, the first group of free software developers, SHARE, was formed. They worked on the model "joint peer-to-peer production . ” The result of the work of this group towards the end of the 50s was the OS of the same name.
This system (and other SHARE products) was popular with computer hardware manufacturers. Thanks to the openness policy, they could offer customers not only hardware but also software at no additional cost.
Coming and birth of Unix
In 1959, Applied Data Research (ADR) received an order from RCA to write a program to autocomplete flowcharts. The developers did the work, but did not agree with the RCA in price. In order not to “throw away” the finished product, ADR redesigned the solution for the IBM 1401 platform and began to independently implement it. However, sales did not go very well, as many users were waiting for a free alternative to the ADR solution that was planned at IBM.
ADR could not allow the release of a free product with similar functionality. Therefore, developer Martin Goetz of ADR filed a patent for the program and in 1968 was the first in US history to receive it. From this moment it is customary to count the era of commercialization in the development industry - from a "bonus" to software equipment has turned into an independent product.
Around the same time, a small team of programmers from Bell Labs began work on the operating system for the PDP-7 mini-computer, Unix. Unix was created as an alternative to another OS - Multics.
The latter was too complex and worked only on the GE-600 and Honeywell 6000 platforms. Unix rewritten in SI was supposed to be portable and easier to use (thanks in large part to a hierarchical file system with a single root directory).
In the 1950s, AT&T Holding, which at that time included Bell Labs, signed an agreement with the US government prohibiting corporations 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 compelleddividing the corporation into several companies, the ban on the sale of software ceased to apply, and the holding stopped the free distribution of Unix. Developers were threatened with lawsuits for unauthorized exchange of source code. The threats were not groundless - since 1980, computer programs have become the subject of copyright in the United States.
Not all developers were satisfied with the conditions dictated by AT&T. The search for an alternative solution took up a group of enthusiasts from the University of California at Berkeley. In the 70s, the school received a license from AT&T, and enthusiasts began to create a new distribution based on it, which later became Unix Berkeley Software Distribution, or BSD.
The open Unix-like system was a success, which AT&T immediately noticed. Company filedto court, and the BSD authors had to remove and replace all the involved Unix source code. This slowed down the distribution of Berkeley Software Distribution in those years. The latest version of the system was released in 1994, but the very appearance of a free and open OS was an important milestone in the history of open source projects.
/ Flickr / Christopher Michel / CC BY / Photo cropped
Back to the roots of free software
In the late 70s, employees of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote a driver for a printer installed in one of the classrooms. When paper jams and queues from print jobs were created, users received a notification asking them to fix the problem. Later, a new printer appeared in the department, for which employees wanted to add such a function. But for this, the source code of the first driver was needed. The staff programmer, Richard Matthew Stallman, requested it from his colleagues, but was refused - it turned out that this was confidential information.
This minor episode may have become one of the crucial events in the history of free software. Stallman was indignant over the current state of things. He was not happy with the restrictions imposed on the exchange of source code in the IT environment. Therefore, Stallman decided to create an open operating system and allow enthusiasts to freely make changes to it.
In September 1983, he announced the creation of the GNU project - GNU's Not UNIX (GNU Not Unix). It was based on the manifesto, which served as the basis for the free software license - the GNU General Public License (GPL). This step was the beginning of an active movement for open source software.
A few years later, Andrew S. Tanenbaum, a professor at Amsterdam Free University, developed the Unix-like Minix system as a teaching tool. He wanted to make it as accessible as possible to students. The publisher of his book, to which the OS was attached, insisted on at least a nominal fee for working with the system. Andrew and the publisher compromise on a $ 69 license. In the early 90s, Minix gained popularity among developers. And she was destined to become the basis for Linux development.
/ Flickr / Christopher Michel / CC BY
The birth of Linux and the first distributions
In 1991, Linus Torvalds, a young programmer at the University of Helsinki, mastered Minix. His experiments with the OS grew into work on a completely new core. On August 25, Linus arranged an open survey of a group of Minix users that they were not happy with this 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 completely different;
- the system will not be "big and professional like GNU."
August 25th is considered Linux birthday. Linus himself counts from another date - September 17th. It was on this day that he uploaded the first Linux release (0.01) to an FTP server and sent an email to people who showed interest in his announcement and survey. In the source code of the first release, the word "Freaks" is preserved. So Torvalds planned to name his kernel (a combination of the words “free”, “freak” and Unix). The FTP server administrator did not like the name, and he renamed the project to Linux.
This was followed by a series of updates. In October of the same year, the kernel version 0.02 was released, and in December - 0.11. Linux was originally distributed without a GPL. This meant that developers could use the kernel, modify it, but had no right to resell the results of their work. Since February 1992, all commercial restrictions have been removed - with the release of version 0.12, Torvalds has changed the license for the GNU GPL v2. Linus later called this step one of the determining factors for the success of Linux.
The popularity of Linux among the Minix developers has grown. For some time, discussions were conducted in the comp.os.minix feed on the Usenet network. At the beginning of 92nd, the creator of Minix, Andrew Tanenbaum, launched a dispute in the communitykernel architecture, stating that "Linux is deprecated." The reason, in his opinion, was the monolithic kernel of the OS, which is inferior to the Minix microkernel in a number of parameters. Another complaint of Tanenbaum concerned the “binding” of Linux to the x86 processor line, which, according to the professor’s forecasts, was supposed to disappear into oblivion in the near future. Linus himself and users of both OSs entered into a controversy. As a result of the dispute, the community was divided into two camps, and Linux adherents got their own feed - comp.os.linux.
The community was expanding the functionality of the basic version - the first drivers, the file system, were being developed. The earliest Linux versions fit on two floppy disks and consisted of a boot disk with a kernel and a root disk that installed the file system and several basic programs from GNU tools.
Gradually, the community began to develop the first Linux-based distributions. Most of the earlier versions were created by enthusiasts, not companies.
The first distribution, MCC Interim Linux, was created based on version 0.12 in February 1992. Its author, a programmer at the Computer Center at the University of Manchester, called the development an “experiment” in order to eliminate some of the shortcomings in the kernel installation procedure and add a number of functions.
Soon after, the number of user distributions increased significantly. Many of them remained local projects that had " lived " for no more than five years, for example, Softlanding Linux System (SLS). However, there were distributions that managed not only to “gain a foothold” in the market, but also in many respects influenced the further development of open source projects. In 1993, two distributions, Slackware and Debian, were released, which launched major changes in the free software industry.
Debian was created by Ian Murdock with the support of the Stallman Free Software Foundation. It was conceived as an “elegant” alternative to SLS. Debian is still supported today and is one of the most popular Linux-based products. On its basis, in turn, a number of other distributions important for the history of the kernel were created - for example, Ubuntu.
As for Slackware, this is another early and successful Linux project. Its first version was released in 1993. By some estimates , after two years, Slackware already accounted for about 80% of Linux installations. And decades later, the distribution remained popular among developers.
In 1992, SUSE was founded in Germany (the abbreviation for Software- und System-Entwicklung is software and systems development). She was the first to launch Linux-based products for business customers. The first distribution that SUSE began to work with was Slackware, adapted for German-speaking users.
It is from this moment that the era of commercialization in the history of Linux begins, which we will discuss in the next article.