Linux Timeline By LWN and LJ

A reader wrote to us with the link that Linux Journal has put together a Linux Timeline. Kinda nice to walk down memory lane - and think about what was on peoples' mind at each major point. Of course, if I see the original letter Linus wrote at the beginning one more time...*grin*

Comments

Wishful Thinking (Your wish is not granted)

[djaquay]

``In fact it's probably easier to write a virus for Linux because it's open source and the code is available. So we will be seeing more Linux viruses as the OS becomes more common and popular.''--Wishful thinking from McAfee

Yeah, very much wishful thinking. The truth seems to be that the more closed the source is, the more careless the coders get, and the more security holes and virus hooks appear. Sorry, McAfee, Linux geeks aim to make you irrelevant.

Re:Wars

[Arandir]

Linux didn't start out as an alternative to Windows. It started out as an alternative to Minix and proprietary unices. Linus wanted a unix on his computer. GNU was grossly incomplete. BSD was being mugged by AT&T. Everything else was proprietary. So he started his own.

It wasn't until the age of Slashdot when a significant minority of Linux users (not coders) decided that Linux had to be an alternative or replacement for Windows.

Starting 1991?

[mpawlo]

I am sorry, but how can you start a Linux timeline in 1991? I would have started much earlier on MIT's lab for artificial intelligence. Does anyone really believe that Linux would have been such a success story without its license?

Regards

Mikael

Re:Starting 1991?

[dizco]

Because its a timeline of the history of Linux not the GPL.

Does anyone really beleive that Linux would have been a success story without humans? No, probably not, but the history of humanity isn't covered because its not the point.

--sean

Re:Starting 1991?

[extrasolar]

Actually, he's right.

While it seems they had to pick what they considered the top 100 important events, surely the writing of the GNU GPL has to be more important to the development of Linux than many of the other things they choose to put in. Someone else responded that ESR publishing CatB was also not on there. CatB is really what made the term "Open Source" stick (people were calling it free software before then).

In all, the timeline seems to favor a lot of the publicity the operating system has had rather than many of the things that actually attracted developer interest.

Maybe Corel releasing a short-lived distribution and porting Word Perfect gained a lot of interest in the press, but it had no effect on my use of the OS.

Also, the GNU project seems to be strangely ignored (other than quotes from RMS saying how GNU has been ignored). There is still an incomplete GNU system out there, most components are still being developed, and these components are what make the system viable at all. Its just that both GNU and Linux are free so they have become rather indistinguishable in that they complement each other (people haven't found a need yet to write a serious competitor to the Gimp, or gcc, because they are free software).

So RMS does have a point when calling the system GNU/Linux, even if his advocacy is lacking somewhat in the finesse department :)

Of course, there are other projects like X Windows and TeX that GNU "adopted" as well as large contributions by Red Hat (which still makes its contributions free even with competitors that make some of their distributions binary-only). But somehow I doubt that these developments, while important, would make it into the top 100.

Personally, I love the LWN yearly timelines. They go into quite a bit more detail and thus lack these kinds of biases.

In my opinion, I would rank these things as important to the operating system in this order:

1. ESR publishes CatB
2. Mozilla becomes free software
3. RMS writes the GNU GPL
4. Linus releases Linux
5. Linux 1.0 is released
6. The launching of the GNOME and KDE Projects

more or less :)

Re:Wars

[no reason to be here]

perhaps more proper to say, GNU started out as an alternative to proprietary code. Linux then came along and took some GNU stuff to make it completely usable, and was an alternative to proprietary software. not so much Unix of M$, just un-free software.

Re:Wars

[jedie]

That's not entirely true imo:

1. linux is not an alternative for windows, it's just an OS for computer enthusiasts.. the "Linux vs Windows" thing is just a by-product and is only kept alive by people who suffer from the "Stallman Syndrome"
2. There is no "distro war". There is however a distro-user war. (i.e. DistX users and DistY users flaming till the wee hours of morning.)
3. "a Linux Management System" wouldn't be a good idea. The cool thing about linux distros is that they are versatile and modular, tailored to ones needs. You can always pick a distro that meets your requirements just because of this diversity in distros.

ofcourse, this is just my EUR .02

crappy timeline

[dutky]

How can anyone claim to have a meaningful Linux timeline that doesn't even include the dates of the major kernel releases or the publication of CatB (or the Halloween documents)? Are we really supposed to believe that nothing important happened to the Linux community for over a year and a half between April 1995 and January 1997?

What a load of self-serving garbage.

Awfully sunshiney...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not trying to be a Troll here... but I think it would be only fair to have some of the not-so-great events in there. Like I read the quote from Raymond about making money with Linux... but none of the following timeline entries mention all the Linux companies falling over.

Let's put the bad in with the good... it's been a great ride, but it has had some bumps along the way...

Re:Wars

[El_Smack]

I would argue that Linux became mature enough to inspire a vision of replacing Windows and THAT spawned Slashdot. Had Linux never reached that point, Slashdot and the whole "Linux Community" would not exist.
That said, I still don't think Linux is a "Desktop for the Masses", but it will get there. RedHat and Mandrake are making great headway in those areas.

RMS gave up all claim on linux ...

[hayden]

When he rejected it in favour of the Hurd. If it wasn't for Linux there still wouldn't be a usable GNU OS (seeing as the Hurd still isn't a full kernel) and MS would rule the world.

He passed on the chance to make it GNU/Linux and now it's Linux with a bunch of GNU apps. Arrogance and short sightedness is a bitch like that.