HISTORY OF LINUX

HISTORY OF LINUX




HISTORY

In 1964, the Massachusetts Institute of
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Technology, AT&T Bell Labs, and General
Electric started worked on an experimental
operating system called Multics (Multiplexed
Information and Computing Service), which was
designed to run on the GE-645 mainframe
computer. www.multicians.org
Bell Labs dropped out in 1969.

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One of the developers on the Bell Labs team,

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Ken Thompson, continued to develop for the
GE-645 mainframe, and wrote a game for that
computer called Space Travel. However, he
found that the game was too slow on the GE
machine.
Thompson thus re-wrote the game in assembly

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language for Digital Equipment Corporation's
PDP-7 with help from Dennis Ritchie. This
experience, combined with his work on the
Multics project, led Thompson to start a new
operating system for the PDP-7.
GE-600 series mainframeKen Thompson (left) with Dennis Ritchie
DEC PDP-7
In 1970 the project was named Unix

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www.unix.org
In 1973, the decision was made to re-write Unix

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in the C programming language. The change
meant that it was easier to modify Unix to work
on other machines, and other developers could
create variations. The code was now more
compact, leading to accelerated development
of Unix. AT&T made Unix available to
universities and commercial firms, as well as to
the United States government under licenses.
The licenses included all source code including
the machine-dependent parts of the kernel.
1974 Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD,

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sometimes called Berkeley Unix) is the Unix
descended distribution by the University of
California, Berkeley. www.freebsd.org
AT&T licensed UNIX System, for commercial

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use, the first version launching in 1982, and
continued to issue licenses for older Unix
versions. Since the newer commercial UNIX
licensing terms were not as favorable for
academic use as the older versions of Unix, the
Berkeley researchers continued to develop
BSD Unix as an alternative to UNIX System.
In 1983, Richard Stallman started the GNU

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project with the goal of creating a free UNIX-
like, operating system. Two years later he
created the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
and developed the GNU general Public License
(GPL), in order to spread software freely. In this
way the GNU software was developed very
quickly by many people. Within a short time a
large number of programs were developed, so
that by the early 1990s there was almost
enough available to create a full operating
system. However, a kernel was still missing.
www.gnu.org www.fsf.org
MINIX, a Unix-like system intended for

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academic use, was released by Andrew S.
Tanenbaum in 1987 Vrije University,
Amsterdam in the Netherlands. While source
code for the system was available, modification
and redistribution were restricted.
www.minix3.org
AT&T filed a lawsuit in the early 1990s against

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the University of Berkeley, which strongly
limited the development of BSD and greatly
slowed development. Thus the early 1990s
produced no complete, free system. The future
of BSD was uncertain. The GNU project was
gradually developing but, it lacked a well-
behaved UNIX Kernel.
Richard Stallman Andrew S. Tanenbaum In 1991, Linus Torvalds began to work on a

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non-commercial replacement for MINIX while
he was attending the University of Helsinki.
This eventually became the Linux kernel.
Linux was dependent on the Minix and GNU

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first.
In order to make the Linux kernel compatible

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with the components from the GNU Project,
Torvalds initiated a switch from his original
license (which prohibited commercial
redistribution) to the GNU GPL. Linux and GNU
developers worked to integrate GNU
components with Linux to make a fully
functional and free operating system.
Linus Benedict Torvalds What is LINUX ?

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It's a kernel
www.kernel.org
What is a kernel ?

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In computer science, the kernel is the central
component of most computer operating systems.
It's responsibilities include managing the system's
resources (the communication between hardware
and software components).
A Linux distribution, often simply distribution or

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distro, is a member of the Linux family of Unix-
like operating systems comprising the Linux
kernel, the non-kernel parts of the GNU
operating system, and assorted other software.
Most (if not all) of the kernel and software
packages are free and open source.
GNU OS
LINUX KERNEL
LINUX DISTRIBUTIONS
LINUX
MCC Interim Linux is an obsolete Linux

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distribution, released by Manchester Computing
Center
TAMU, created by individuals at Texas A&M

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University
Softlanding Linux System (SLS) was an early

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Linux distribution, founded by Peter MacDonald
in mid-1992. SLS was the first release to offer a
comprehensive Linux distribution containing
more than the Linux kernel and basic utilities,
including TCP/IP and the X Window System.
Slackware was originally descended from the

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Softlanding Linux System, The first Slackware
release, 1.00, was on 16 July 1993.
Debian was first announced on 1993-08-16

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November 3, 1994, Red Hat Linux

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 27 March 2000

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Fedora November 6, 2003

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Ubuntu 20 October 2004

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