In 1983, Richard Stallman founded the GNU Project, with the goal
of developing a complete Unix-like operating system composed entirely
of free software. By the beginning of the 1990s, GNU had produced
or collected most of the necessary components of this system —
libraries, compilers, text editors, a Unix shell — except
for the core component, the kernel. The GNU project began developing
a kernel, the GNU Hurd, in 1990, based on the Mach microkernel,
but the development of this Mach-based design proved difficult and
proceeded slowly. Meanwhile, in 1991, another kernel was begun as
a hobby by Finnish university student Linus Torvalds while attending
the University of Helsinki.[3] Torvalds originally used Minix on
his own computer, a simplified Unix-like system written by Andrew
Tanenbaum for teaching operating system design. However, Tanenbaum
did not permit others to extend his operating system, leading Torvalds
to create a replacement for Minix. Originally, Torvalds called his
kernel "Freax" for "free" and "freak"
and with the often-used X in the names of Unix-like systems. The
name "Linux" was coined by Ari Lemmke, who administered
an FTP server belonging to the Finnish University Network; he invented
the name Linux for the directory from which Torvalds' project was
first available for download.
At first a computer running Minix
was necessary in order to configure and install Linux. Initial versions
of Linux also required another operating system to be present in
order to boot from a hard disk, but soon there were independent
boot loaders such as LILO. The Linux system quickly surpassed Minix
in functionality; Torvalds and other early Linux kernel developers
adapted their work for the GNU components and user-space programs
to create a complete, fully functional, and free (as in freedom)
operating system.
Today, Torvalds continues to direct the development of the kernel,
while other subsystems such as the GNU components continue to be
developed separately. Other groups and companies combine and distribute
these components with additional application software in the form
of Linux distributions. We have listed quality resources of Linux
below : |