A brief history of Linux operating system development

In the 1970s, most of the source programs of the Unix system were arbitrarily circulated. The Internet's basic protocol, TCP/IP, was born in that era. At that time, people enjoyed the passion and sense of accomplishment that was unique to scientific exploration and innovation activities in the creation of their respective "program works." At that time, programmers, like writers, were anxious to "publish" their own work, not focusing on conservative "confidence" in exchange for money.

In 1979, AT&T announced the commercialization of Unix, followed by a variety of binary commercial Unix versions. Therefore, the "Copyright Industry" based on binary machine reading code has made the software industry a copyright-specific industry. The innovative activities around program development are limited to some key enterprises. In the small circle, the source code program is regarded as the core "trade secrets". This approach, on the one hand, has produced a large number of commercial software, which has greatly promoted the development of the software industry and created a group of software giants. On the other hand, due to the closed development model, it has also hindered the further deepening of the software industry. improve. As a result, people have paid a huge price for the commercial software "BUG".

In 1984, Richard Stallman faced the closed mode of program development and launched an international source code open so-called cow (GUN) plan, trying to return to the 70s based on source code to create a good time. . His library, which is open to protecting source code, is no longer commercially closed-ended and has a GPL clause called the Copyleft copyright model.

In June 1987, R..Stallman completed the 110,000 lines of open source "compiler" (GNU gcc), which made a major breakthrough and made a great contribution.

In November 1989, M. Tiemann started his business for $6,000 and created an open source program focused on operating open source "CygnusSupport". (Note that there are three letters of gnu in Cygnus). Cygnus is the world's first and finally successful commercial company specializing in source code. Cygnus's "compiler" is the best, and many of its customers are top-notch IT companies, including the world's largest microprocessor company.

In November 1991, Linus Torvalds wrote a small program called Linux, which was placed on the Internet. He expressed a desire to come up with an operating system's "kernel". This is entirely an accident. However, on the Internet, Linux just one " outcrop" was followed by the followers of the majority of the wildebeest plan, all in battle, and it became a full-featured The operating system is called CNULinux.

In January 1995, Bob Young founded RedHat (Little Red Riding Hood), with CNULinux as the core, integrated more than 400 open source program modules, and created a brand of Linux, namely RedHat. Linux, called Linux"Distribution", is sold on the market. This is a pioneering business model. Bob Young said: We never want to have our own "copyright proprietary" technology, we sell "convenience" (to provide users with support, services), rather than their own "proprietary technology". Source code open programs include the emergence of various brand distributions, which greatly promoted the popularity and application of Linux.

In February 1998, a group of young "old wildebeest backbones led by Eric Raymond finally realized the essence of the industrialization path of the CNULinux system, not a liberal philosophy, but a market. The drive of competition, the creation of the "Open Source Intiative" (Open Source Initiative) "Revival" banner, launched a historic Linux industrialization movement in the Internet world. Under the impetus of a large number of international heavy IT companies led by IBM and Interl, investing in Linux products and their business models and providing global technical support, it has spawned an emerging Linux industry based on open source mode. For the open source (OpenSource) phenomenon.

In January 2001, Linux 2.4 was released, which further enhanced the scalability of the SMP system, and it also integrated many features for supporting desktop systems: USB, PC Card (PCMCIA) Support, built-in plug and play, and more.

In December 2003, the Linux 2.6 kernel was released, and the support for the system was greatly changed compared to the 2.4 kernel. These changes include: 1. Better support for large multiprocessor servers, especially those designed with NUMA; Better support for embedded devices, such as mobile phones, network routers or video recorders; 3. More rapid response to user behavior such as mouse and keyboard commands; 4. Block device drivers have been completely updated, such as communicating with hard drives and CD drives Software module.

This is not a new technological revolution (programs or programs), this is a revolutionary "revolutionary science" that returns to the right path.

The development of Linux in the international arena goes beyond the borders via the Internet. Usually, according to certain rules, a Linux development version is released every week for developers around the world to refer to. The second digit of the serial number of the Linux development version is an odd number, and the second digit of the serial number is an even number. Each release of Linux can only be associated with a certain serial number. A release without a serial number can only be entered into a separate book. All the development activities of Linux today are distributed in various countries. On the Internet, nearly 100 experts are working day and night. The overall coordinator is LinusTorvalds. The Linux distribution right with the serial number is in his hands. Legally, the copyright of the Linux registered trademark that refers to this set of code sets is owned by Linus himself.

The Linux distribution is integrated by a specific serial number of Linux (kernel) and functional support modules that are open to the CNU system source code and some commercial software running on Linux. The overall integration copyright of the distribution is owned by the respective publisher. Publishers of Linux distributions (called Linux publishers) generally do not own the copyrights of the software modules in their distribution. Publishers should only pay attention to the brand value of the distribution, to include the quality and relevance of the integrated version. Featured services for market competition. Strictly speaking, Linux publishers don't have to be independent software developers. It is essentially an emerging IT industry. It's worth noting that any distribution must have a good working version of Linux that is labeled with a specific serial number. Here, the serial number granting rights belong to Linus himself, representing the crystallization of the creative wisdom of the international development team led by Linux. Any Linux publisher must be mindful of this hard-working development team behind the Linux kernel. Without them, there would be no Linux. Linus is always connected to the Linux development team. The frequent release of Linux distributions is the responsibility of Linux distributors all over the world. The Linux publisher's business activities are one of the main ways for Linux to spread around the world.

An important milestone in Linux development

In 1990, Linus Torvalds first contacted MINIX
In 1991, Linus Torvalds began writing operating system kernel components such as various drivers on MINIX
In 1991, Linus Torvalds unveiled the Linux kernel. In 1993, Linux 1.0 was released, and Linux turned to the GPL copyright agreement. In 1994, the first commercial release of Linux, Slackware, came out.
1996 The National Institute of Standards and Technology's Computer Systems Laboratory confirmed that Linux version 1.2.13 (packaged by Open Linux) is POSIX compliant. In 1999, the Simplified Chinese distribution of Linux was released.
2001, Linux 2.4 Version kernel release
2003, Linux2.6 version of the kernel released