Today Linux turns 15 years old!

It all started with Linus Torvalds becoming upset that he could not access his universities Unix server they way that he wanted to.  He decided to write his own little bit of code that then became the basis for all that we know as Linux.

The whole project ended up getting a large amount of support from developers and eventually end users.  This has spawned unlimited variants and distributions by multiple creators due to the freedom and customization that it allows.

Quick history of the Linux Kernel:

  • 1983: Richard Stallman creates the GNU project with the goal of creating a free operating system.
  • 1989: Richard Stallman writes the first version of the GNU General Public License.
  • 1991: The Linux kernel is publicly announced on 25 August by the 21 year old Finnish student Linus Benedict Torvalds.
  • 1992: The Linux kernel is relicensed under the GNU GPL. The first so called “Linux distributions” are created.
  • 1993: Over 100 developers work on the Linux kernel. With their assistance the kernel is adapted to the GNU environment, which creates a large spectrum of application types for Linux. The oldest currently existing Linux distribution, Slackware, is released for the first time. Later in the same year, the Debian project is established. Today it is the largest community distribution.
  • 1994: In March Torvalds judges all components of the kernel to be fully matured: he releases version 1.0 of Linux. The XFree86 project contributes a graphic user interface (GUI). In this year the companies Red Hat and SUSE publish version 1.0 of their Linux distributions.
  • 1995: Linux is ported to the DEC Alpha and to the Sun SPARC. Over the following years it is ported to an ever greater number of platforms.
  • 1996: Version 2.0 of the Linux kernel is released. The kernel can now serve several processors at the same time, and thereby becomes a serious alternative for many companies.

Check It Out> Tux Radar (original Linux 1.0 announcement), Gizmodo, Wikipedia