Linus Torvalds wanted to create an operating system that would greatly enhance the
limited capabilities of the Intel 80386 microprocessor. He started with MINIX (a
miniature UNIX system developed primarily by Andrew Tanenbaum) and rewrote certain
parts to add more functionality. When he had a working operating system, he
announced his achievement on an Internet usegroup with this message:
Hello everybody out there using minix. I’m doing a (free)
operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional
like gnu) for 386(486)AT clones.
It was August 1991, and Torvalds was a 21-year-old student at University of Helsinki,
Finland. (The name Linux is a contraction of Linus and UNIX and, when pronounced,
it rhymes with “mimics.”) This new operating system, originally created to run a small
microcomputer, was built with substantial flexibility, and it features many of the same
functions found on expensive commercial operating systems. In effect, Linux brought
much of the speed, efficiency, and flexibility of UNIX to small desktop computers.
500Chapter 16 |
Linux Operating System
✔
Linux is
case sensitive.
Throughout this
text, we have
followed the
convention of
expressing all
filenames and
commands in
lowercase.
The first Linux operating systems required typed and sometimes cryptic commands.
Now users can enter commands using either a command-driven interface (terminal
mode) or a menu-driven interface or graphical user interface (GUI), greatly expanding
the usability of the operating system. GUIs are discussed later in this chapter.
The first primary corporate supporter of Linux was Red Hat Linux, the world’s leading
Linux distributor until 2003. In September of that year, the company split its
efforts in two directions, the Fedora Project to encourage continuation of open-source
development of the Linux kernel, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to meet the
growing needs of organizations willing to pay for an enterprise-wide operating system
and dedicated technical support.
As shown in Table 16.1, the Fedora Project issues updates free to the public about
every six months. There are many other popular distributions of Linux, including
Mandriva, Debian, and SUSE.