Development of Linux Operating System
On August 25, 1991, 21-year-old student Linus Torvalds announced the creation of the prototype of the new Linux operating system. This announcement was made during the television conference Compo.os.minix after five months of development. The first public issue of Linux was presented on September 17, with the core 0.0.1 having a compressed size of 62 KB and approximately 10 thousand lines of source code. Today, the modern Linux core contains about 41 million lines of code. To learn more about the history of Linux, visit this link.
The Linux core was inspired by the Minix operating system, but Linus was not satisfied with Minix’s limited license. Despite some accusations of code copying, detailed comparisons of the Minix code and the first public versions of Linux revealed only four minor coincidences. To see the results of the code comparison studies, click here.
Originally, Linus planned to name the core “Freax” but it ended up being called “Linux” thanks to Ari Lemmke. The brand “Linux” was registered by William Della Crow initially, but later transferred to Linus. The official Linux mascot, Tux the Penguin, was chosen through a competition in 1996. To check out the Linux logo competition, click here.
Here is the growth dynamics of the Linux code base over the years:
- 0.0.1 – September 1991, 10 thousand lines of code;
- 1.0.0 – March 1994, 176 thousand lines of code;
- 1.2.0 – March 1995, 311 thousand lines of code;
- 2.0.0 – June 1996, 778 thousand lines of code;
- 2.2.0 – January 1999, 1.8 million lines of code;