*Edit from May 2023:* The second episode in this series just launched! The Making of GNU: The World's First Open-Source Software - th-cam.com/video/sQDvkd2wtxU/w-d-xo.html The Making of BSD is next... *Original Message from February 2023:* Looks like I'm going to have to make a video on The Making of BSD. In this Linux video, "The Making of Linux, The World's First Open-Source Operating System" there have been a lot of comments saying BSD was actually first and that I forgot about it. I didn't forget about BSD. BSD wasn't a complete FOSS OS when released in 1978. 386BSD was the first complete BSD FOSS OS, and released after Linux in 1992. We can also talk about Net/1, but that wasn't a full OS. Net/2 wasn't complete either, but that could be considered the first depending on your definition of "complete OS", but everyone who commented was talking about BSD's 1978 release, not Net/2. I love doing research about this stuff, but not all resources are accurate so I do research among a wide array of articles, books, and other historical writeups. So if I'm wrong, I'd love to learn how so I can correct it, but I don't want opinions or what you _want_ to be true. I want source-based facts. Although do note, links are blocked to prevent scammers and spammers, so don't post an actual link lol but somehow direct us (me and the others reading & watching) to a reputable, unbiased source backing your statement so we can learn more. Thanks for all who watched! If you liked the video, I hope you subscribed because there's many more like this to come!
That would be great. It may also be worth mentioning MINIX, as a souce-available OS that predated Linux by 5 years, but not fully Open Source until later. Particularly for the famous debate between Tanenbaum and Torvalds re. Microkernel vs Monolothic kernel.
Interested in seeing the BSD video too. The BSD's are my favorite Unix derived OS's. I use FreeBSD and OpenBSD at work. DragonFly BSD is fun to tinker with and for some odd reason, I just could never get into NetBSD. Been using FreeBSD since 1997. When it comes to Unix "work-a-likes", then Linux seems to be the go-to.
@ForrestKnight Hi there! the current OS type referred to colloquially as Linux (which is a combination of the GNU coreutils and GNU libc onto the linux kernel) postdates the GNU's own projects using the open-source Mach kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University, such as a basic drop-in of coreutils onto a filled out mach setup, or GNU Hurd (which currently uses GNU Mach, but originally used CMU Mach). These two items are the earliest examples of complete modern-style operating systems matching the GNU style of "free, open-source software", which you seem to be using as the only definition of "open-source" in this video, and date into the mid 80s and 1990 on-the-dot respectively. I'd like to point, though, to the existence of non-free open-source software. This is software you had to pay to receive, but received the full source code of which you were then allowed to modify and republish. Nearly all operating systems prior to the very early 80s were of this type, and only because it was absurdly difficult to deliver source code on its own without a compiled version at the time and compilers cost money, often were even literal separate machines in the 60s and 70s.
While it might be more correct ("less wrong") to say Linux defined "OSS" in the modern context, it didn't, and wasn't the first. You said so yourself: Linux is the KERNEL; GNU is what made it an OS. 386BSD, GNU-HURD, and Minix ALL predated Linux - they're what inspired Linus to make his own. Also, how can you talk about the origins of Linux (OS) and not mention the distros SLS or Slackware?!? Sure, Redhat is one of the oldest recognizable names, but it was not the first. (and it wasn't meant to design a commercial OS. ewt and djb wanted a better packaging and installer system. rPath was their ill fated, failed attempt at a commercial OS) CentOS *is not* a community development; it's RHEL rebuilt as-is with the Redhat branding removed. (NOTHING goes into CentOS that is not in the "upstream". I.e. they will not patch anything Redhat doesn't, they will not include software (or versions) Redhat doesn't.) Fedora was a stupid ploy from the bean counters to get "the community" to develop their commercial product [RHEL] for them.
Can we all appreciate how reasonable Linus's expectations for linux where? Almost all software projects end up not getting attention, and Linus knew that. He kept his expectations low!
I feel like that's almost a requirement to being successful. You don't just start out expecting to build a multibillion dollar industry, because you are gonna get disappointed and feel like shit most of the time seeing your project not take off. Which ends up in prematurely leaving the project over stress dealt by overcommitting, which in turn if you had kept expectations low, you would've gone at your own pace, and wouldn't be let down much, but rather you would focus on long term.
his success had many facets: he was talented no-bs engineer, he avoided pit-falls of his time to create the perfect os kernel (microkernels were the rage in his time) and wanted something functional and practical without some esoteric philosophy on top of it - he was using it too as daily driver and he allowed others to help him, he did not gate keep (well he did but he allowed the competent to help....meritocracy at its finest) and the last thing was... he used the copyleft license which prevents thing like sony taking freebsd to run playstations and contribute nothing back
@@qwertykeyboard5901 nothing is perfect... linux is though closest to it by far of any other os out there... we are talking linux as a kernel of os, no other is so rock solid, versatile and ubiquitous, there is a reason why linux is dominating cloud, internet and everything in between.... it can run on router board, phone and it supercomputer... actually all supercomputers are powered by linux.... all the tech rage (kubernetes, containers, telco) is utilizing linux, docker on macos is running in virtualized linux vm... you might have beef with linux because you encounter some problem and somehow felt NEED to tell us that linux is not perfect... yeah, great, nothing is perfect.... I am forced to use win10 as company laptop and I suffer each time I had to touch that thing - it is horrible desktop experience.... especially when I actually need to login via ssh to the server and do my work.... so simple things like selecting and copying text is incredible torture, my linux desktop works and I just suspend it and my uptime is 90+ days on average no problem... try that with win...
@@qwertykeyboard5901 btw. you obviously misunderstood my text anyway - I wrote that HE DID NOT TRY TO CREATE PERFECT KERNEL.... like GNU guy with his HURD..... that was my point, Linus' approach was pragmatical, simple and proven monolithic paradigm
Linus didn't care about making free and open source software (partly because that concept didn't exist), he wasn't fed up with proprietary software, he just wanted feedback on his project so he shared the source code with others. Linus has never felt strongly about the Free Software or Open Source movements, that's Richard Stallman's thing who is known for created the GNU project and the core utils on top of Linux making it a mostly complete OS.
Open source software has existed since software started. Open source OSs existed before Linux too. A lot comes down to the luck if being in the right place at the right time.
what are you talking about, Stallman created the GNU project in 1983, so the Free Software movement had existed for almost a decade before Linus released his kernel
9:36 a bit of clarification: the first commit in the Linux repo is from April 16, 2005 as Linus decided not to import the older commits. This means that the actual number of commits is significantly higher.
@@hixo6780 up until 2002 there was no version control just patches mailed to LKML, anyone can go digging through the archives if they want. between 2002 and 2005 he used bitkeeper which could probably be converted to git commits but kinda pointless now
I remember in 1996 as a computer science student, getting a CD with the Red Hat Linux source codes, taking almost 8 hours to compile them on an 80386DX with 4 Mb of ram. Of course it was not only the kernel but also all the tools included in that distribution.
386 CPUs were way before my time, but I did try doing stuff with my 486 in 386 mode, damn that stuff is slow. 8 hours is quite reasonable all things considered.
My friend and I bought Redhat 5.1, before that I had Slackware 2.0 from a Linux book I bought in 1997 it was a text based install and the desktop sucked, but my favorite was Caldera 1.2 in 1998 with the KDE desktop and the Lizard GUI installer.I bought a Pentium 120 megahertz with 8 MB of ram in 1996.
I have never used Linux, but have watched it grow over the years. I wrote my first professional programs on a VAX using FORTRAN back in 1984. I purchased Unix computers for my company back in 1992 because the software we used (3D CAD) required Unix, but only HP Unix, and Sun Unix. Computers sure have changed a lot in my lifetime.
Hi Rick, I sympathize with that. Quick story, I was sitting at a workstation in the Perot Systems data center. The desk phone rang. I picked it up and said hello. It was an HP engineer requesting permission to install a server update on our HPUX server. That company used to be absolutely amazing.
Of course you've used Linux, or at least its descendants. Do you not have a mobile phone? Never looked at this post (youtube's servers are all Linux-descendant based)? Never used cloud storage? I wrote Fortran on punchcards for an IBM360 back in 1971. At least VAX/VMS was friendlier than that.
@@kenoliver8913 Hi Ken, what I have noticed over the years is a cultural difference. I learned programming on an Apple II+, my first developer job was on IBM 370. The notion that I am against Linux is preposterous. Please calm down.
@@kenoliver8913 Just because TH-cam has servers with Linux or cloud storage are hosted on Linux servers does not mean we're using Linux. People like yourself actually scare people away from the Linux community with these ridiculous statements.
the story is so beautiful. Linux is tremendously elegant. I love having my PC feel like a work of art and self-reflection, instead of feeding me ads and rebooting without my permission. Control!!
that's the thing: Windows has been made to suck (even more) there's no reason why it should suck as much as it does now if it wasn't because of MS' greed (I only run Linux myself for the record).
Hey Forrest! Nice summary of Linux and its history. Not a criticism, but I would've added git in this history too as it wouldn't have been developed at all without the McVoy/BitKeeper issue experienced by Linus and other kernel developers. No matter this was great and we can certainly agree that Torvalds does rank as one of the top Computer Scientists of all time.
I love those new CS-history videos. Have you ever thought about some more technical CS-history videos? For example the development/discovery of some very useful algorithms?
Such an awesome video! Keep making these SC-history pieces :D I'm currently studying CS in the same school Torvalds did, and he is just such a highly appreciated and adored character here. Hope to get even a smidge of that skill and vision that he had while I'm here.. :o
Glad you like them! They're a lot of fun to make. Many more to come! I'm working on some videos in more of my traditional style, too. Love making this content!
This was a very interesting and well made video. However, I think that the most important feature of Debian is not that it is completely free or that it has been forked into other distributions, but that it is incredibly stable. The developers of debian are focused on making an incredibly stable distribution, so much so that Debian runs on the ISS.
Long time Linuxer here. Been using since 1999, became proficient in 2001. Pulled my hair out installing drivers using unetbootin back in 2004. Modified and maintained driver for Lucent 64kbps modem around the same time.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Slackware in your list of distributions. While it wasn't long lasting it was instrumental in making Linux installation approachable for the average user. Prior to Slackware, installing Linux and getting it up and running was a very complex operation. Slackware was the bridge between manual installation and the slick installers we have today.
I was wondering how far I'd have to scroll to find this mention. Still my favorite, I've used it since v4, and recommend people give it a try. Not always for the faint of heart.
> While it wasn't long lasting What? It still exists and it is still getting updated and new versions to this day. It was even the initial distro to do something akin to the rolling release model if you used the continuously updating development repository.
You mean the average nerd user :) I was a professional programmer, and it took me a week to fully install Slackware in 1994. Kernel 1.2.13, if I’m not mistaken.
Fantastic video, you do a great job at walking through the history of linux, and giving important background on the development and influences of linux. I hope to see more of these CS history videos from you in the future! I use gentoo btw ;)
Loving these CS journal-isque style kinda reminds me of Diana cowern(strongly recommended if you love physics). suggestion for "How one man can make a difference": Edsger Dijkstra and his contribution to simple yet ground breaking CS fundamentals such as semaphores, interprocess communication/synchronization and many more + it would be fun because he was quite a character. And If you need to make longer videos (because I know its hard to cram in very thing in 10 minutes) we won't mind.
EWD could be a bit of a troll sometimes, as in his comments on programming languages. For example, on BASIC, he said “It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.”
Thanks. This makes things a little clearer for me, and it's a great at-a-glance reference. I will need to watch it again (next time not listening while working). And now... to your kindly linked: The Making of GNU: The World's First Open-Source Software
I just saw this was released yesterday! What a great video! I loved it and left a sub instantly! Being a computer science student struggling to somehow make it through this is pure motivation :D thanks man 👍
in the mid 90s my computer programming teacher in highschool(we were learning to code in BASIC) loved linux and always talked about it in class ill never forget.. been tinkering with it ever since
I also started with Slackware 2.0 in 1996, it was the Linux CD that came with my Linux Users book at Computer Literacy, it was all text based install, and I didn't care for the desktop, however when Caldera 1.2 came out with the KDE desktop and the Lizard Gui installer, I was sold.
Wow, I remember buying in ca. 2001 some Linux magazine in Poland with some distro on CD, if it really was just 10 years with Linux being on the market, then it's an amazing success.
Just been reading 'Just for Fun: The story of an accidental revolutionary', and Linus says that the penguin was his wife's idea. Linus was looking for a symbol for Linux, and because he wanted to see penguins wherever he could, his wife (Tove) suggested that it should be a penguin. So Larry Ewing may have designed it, but it was his wife's idea. Also Linus sent a message to the comp.os.minix usenet group before he announced he was doing an Operating System, asking for the POSIX standards.
A Nobel For Linus Torvalds, Greatest Step And Contribution To The Information Era and Internet Since The Creation Of Integrated Circuits! C Programming Language Too!
Great video. we were really excited when he was working on Linux. Back then we were stuck with Digital Unix , VAX / VMS.... It was really exciting during those times.
8:00 - hold on your horses, kid. Before RedHat in 1994, was SLS in 1992, which inspired Patrick Volkerding to created Slackware Linux first released in July 17, 1993! Just to clarify things here! Thanks for the video.
I can't be the only one petrified as to what will happen with Linux once Linus retires, he has apparently slowed down a bit in recent years with some rumors he might be planning a transition because he is getting up there in age and he really dislikes attention. As Linux gets more popular he is less and less comfortable in the driver's seat. But dang, we need him. How he handles issues with the kernel and conflicts, how he has the final say, his authority, his principles. If he is replaced by the wrong person, well, Linux could well go in a bad direction! I also love how modest he is as a programmer about his accomplishments. He always mentions "git" like it's some small side project, haha.
Yes very cool. In fact Minix is the most widely used OS because it runs on the Intel iAMT Engine. Thorvalds himself considered Minix superior to Linux. If only its licence was compatible with free software...
Absolutely Fantastic and Inspirational. Great to know that what started as a hobby project back in 90s is presently being used in almost all industries in the world!
Great video! Definitely something I'd recommend beginners to Linux/Unix watch. I can only imagine how things would look like if the frivolous lawsuit against the BSDs(more of a real Unix) hadn't happened, we'd probably be using that today instead of Linux!
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 It was apparently the most popular open source OS before Linux, and when the lawsuit happened, large companies like AT&T abandoned it and switched to Linux out of fear. By the time the lawsuit was thrown out, the switch was already done, and they didn't want to spend more money and time switching back. So BSD probably could have been the predominant open source OS today, and I think that would have been better.
@@D0J0P Sure it was, but remember open-source OSes were not heavily used back then. So it’s not that people “abandoned” BSD, it simply didn’t grow as fast as Linux. I don’t think AT&T were ever fans of BSD. That’s why you had the AT&T-versus-BSD divide among flavours of proprietary Unix.
Technically Linus Torvalds made his own Unix like operating system because the existing ones were expensive. Too expensive for a student. And then he decided that he should share it with the world so that other people, other students, didn't have to pay to have a Unix like operating system.
I'd love to! I'll see what I can do. Let's make a community-driven distro and call it Knightux, but I'll need you to name it that behind my back as Ari Lemmke did for Linux, so I don't seem too egotistical lol
I remember when the Raspberry π first came out, there was no good OS for it. You could run a version of Debian for ARM, but that was not optimized for the particular combination of an older version of the ARM instruction set, combined with hardware floating-point, that was implemented on the Broadcom processor used in the π. So a couple of guys set out to rebuild the whole of Debian just for that hardware. As I recall, it took them about six weeks. And remember, all this building had to be done on the Raspberry π itself--the original single-processor model. The result was called “Raspbian”, but these days I believe the Raspberry π Foundation have taken it over and officially dubbed it the “Raspberry π OS”. So that’s an example of the kind of work it takes to create your own distro.
9:08 every arch user has a urge to say "i use arch btw", btw well jokes aside, great video! i never seen someone explaining this topic on a so easy and fast way, really liked it :) tbh i really hate what companies are doing to technology in general. i know everyone wants money, i also want too, but exploiting user privacy is a pretty disonest way to do it, and even more when you use open-source software to do it (take android as an example!). well, anyways, to make a community we need common contribution i think, and open-source is one of these examples of contribution. long life to linux!
As a long time user of Linux (Xandros box purchase was I think my first dalliance) I have grown to love and prefer Linux over Windows. I've never had the money to check MacOS and Windows was almost 100% my business use OS because ... um ... It's not perfect but it's free and I love that people put their time and energy into developing both it and the thousands of apps I can use at whim to achieve my goals. Certainly a leg up from the thousands of software apps I can PAY FOR that then fail and leave me struggling to find a way to fix the broken thing I may be relying on. Proud to support FOSS through being a strong advocate for it. Bless you Linus and all who contributed to Linux growth through the years!!
@2:25 read this with "trn" on a VT220 terminal, logged into a Sun 3/80 sitting at my desk a Telecom Paris (13e) when I was supposed to be writing my workterm report. Within a year I was installing 0.95a on a spare 386 box with 8M of RAM - required some 20 floppy disks.
Linux is probably the biggest revolution ever made. I hope that open source will remain strong for many years to come. PS: In my opinion, all children should learn the basics of Linux in school.
I still can't get over the fact that you didn't mention Slackware in the section about distributions. This is THE unpardonable sin of Linux distributions. Slackware is the only one of the early distributions to survive until now. Actually a remake of SLS (Softlanding Linux System) which was a bit buggy at the time, it is still a high-powered workhorse now after Patrick Volkerding picked up the orphan and cleared up the bugs. In December 1995, I bought a 3-inch thick book about Linux Administration with a CD in a pocket on the back page after being introduced to Linux by a friend. It was Slackware on the CD and I installed it on my 486 and immediately loved it. Eventually, upgraded to Slackware 12, then 14.1. Looking forward to upgrading it to Slackware 15 in the next few weeks.
Pretty much this. Not to mentions that Arch Linux and Gentoo had used Slackware as a base distribution. Back then Slackware lack of a package manager system created two distributions, a compiled oriented package manager(Gentoo) and a pre-compiled oriented package manager(Arch Linux). Slackware is a mother of many Distributions as Debian is.
Isn't Debian from 1993 actually? He couldn't mention every and all historically relevant Linux distributions. As he mentions, there's another video about distributions only.
Yes, the first few Linux installations I did were all Slackware. Later I went on to use Red Hat, Mandriva (originally "Mandrake"), and Debian, before pretty much settling with Ubuntu for the last 14 years.
Slackware! That was my first distro (1994) and seemed to be by far the most popular at the time. Red Hat Mother's Day edition was their first popular distro and it was released 1995. I encountered it installing Caldera, which was based on Red Hat (Mother's Day edition IIRC).
someone likely beat me to it, but Debian was released on September 15, 1993 for the 0.1 version. The first stable version was in 1996. But when referencing the origin of the kernel itself during its Alpha build phase in this video, I think its important to do so for Debian as well.
Many thanks for a wonderful video! I'm a computer geek since the 80:s, but started to run Linux 1995, with an early Red Hat. Now, 27 years later, I still love Linux and it is the very base of my career as an embedded C++ developer. I am very thankful to all the work of Linus as well as all the many thousands of developers that have built the beautiful systems that I see and use every day!
You should do a video on micro vs monolithic kernels. Many (mostly new) Linux users aren't even aware of the difference and have never even been introduced to these fundamentally different approaches to OS design.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 That's just simply not true. While you don't necessarily need a microkernel for standard desktop operating systems, although I personally much prefer them (for example the L4), the standard consensus among operating system engineers is that microkernels are far superior to monolithic kernels for security and fault tolerance. So while you won't see a Debian Mint or Arch Linux distribution with a microkernel, they are commonly used in critical systems infrastructure such as hospital operating rooms, commercial aircraft and power grids. And btw, GNU Hurd is and always has been developed by only a few volunteers in their spare time.
@@liquidmobius Nobody has got one working properly to production quality. Nobody. FreeBSD I think has the vestiges of a microkernel at its heart, but that had to be bastardized somewhat in the name of performance.
1:10 Multics had some features that would still be considered advanced today. For example, something still lacking in present-day Linux is the ability to share ownership controls over a set of files/directories between more than one user. Linux has ACLs, but there is no ACL entry conveying ownership privileges, like there was on Multics.
More features doesn't mean it's better or more advanced. Especially things like universal file level ACL is all about compromises. More features at ACL come at cost. I think Linux ACL hits sweet spot where it is just good enough for majority of use cases where Linux is used whilst maintaining simplicity and performance. And if you need to do more you can always rely on extensions and additional software.
Great vid. Took me back a ways. I remember fiddling with Linux very early on, so I was surprised to see no mention of three distros that defined Linux before Red Hat: - first, Slackware. Patrick Volkerding deserves as many accolades as Linus, IMO. Without Slackware, there would have been no SuSE and many others. I still recall downloading it over FTP from a long-distance 2,400bps modem! Thank goodness for Walnut Creek CDROM, which came along very quickly after that, and you could buy it on CD from them. -second, Mandrake Linux. It was the Red Hat for new users. It had a totally different UI and was easier to get started than with RH. -and finally, Gentoo. The most maddening yet powerful of those early days of Linux distributions. As a source-based distribution, you were free to download the sources and compile binaries to your particular hardware and only install those tools you really wanted. It was the most customized version of Linux possible, at the time. Thanks for the trip back in time! I ran Linux on the desktop since 1999…never became the Year Of The Linux Desktop we all thought would come…so I moved to the best BSD-based alternate in macOS in 2006 ;)
God, I remember trying to set Mandrake up in 2002 and having to wrestle with getting my sound and networking configured, ugly fonts... amazing how far we've come that my Thinkpad running Ubuntu just works now.
Hello. I am sure you have a lot of the information correct, and it's difficult to track down all the correct information, however, there is a TH-cam video of Linus himself explaining why he invented it and released it. Linus Trovalds himself explained he developed it because he wanted a cheaper computer OS and didn't want to pay for an OS.
Thank you for pointing out the GNU/Linux thing. Yes GNU was integral to modern Linux operating systems, but at the end of the day, its still linux at the kernel and core of the PC
This is a great video! But you missed OpenSuse, that is very important to the Linux history and the commercial success of it. Also they make the most coolest songs about tech. I think you should somehow mentioned them.
The screen at 6:15 seems to show a library database entry for the Seven Brothers, the first novel ever published in Finnish in 1870. In the 2004 tv show Great Finns (similar to the BBCs Great Britons), viewers voted author Aleksi Kivi to be the 9th greatest Finn ever, while Linus Torvalds was voted to be the 16th. However, before Linus the list included Lalli (should be disqualified for being probably mythological), Väinö Myllyrinne (a pun entry, tallest Finn ever), Ville Valo (HIM was a really big at that point) and Matti Nykänen (one of the best ski jumpers ever but also bit of problematic character, I mean Linus was never sentenced to prison for stabbing people for petty reasons), so I think honestly Linus is quite close to the actual top ten.
love this. Linus really did do something crazy without even realizing the impact it would have on the world. I work for the Gov and I use RHEL every single day. What a cool college story
1:17 There were other groundbreaking OSes from around this time--you have already mentioned Multics, let me add also TENEX and ITS. Why is it most people only remember Unix nowadays, and none of the others? It is because Unix was the only one to make the leap to becoming a _portable_ OS. The others were developed on particular hardware architectures; when those died, they died with them. While the original PDP-11 architecture that Unix started on is a museum piece nowadays, the OS architecture itself was sufficiently adaptable to make the jump to 32-bit, and then 64-bit, hardware. And Linux has carried that portability tradition to the next level, being ported to an average of one new major architecture for just about every year of its existence.
Great video Forrest! I'm suscribing to your channel! I share the ideas of other comments, such as it would be great to mention git since it was created mostly by the same community that develop Linux. Also I think that Alan Turing is up today one of most influential people in computer science and technology, but many of the contributions made by him are the product of many people, of teams, in the same way that happens with Linux and many other important FOSS projects.
Linus goes and writes a complete kernel from scratch. Even if we leave aside the fact that he was actually able to pull it off, it still remains that he did it in just 21 weeks! 10_239 sloc in 21 weeks means 487 sloc every week. This is an amazing feat, especially for a 21 year old student with no real-world experience.
A friend of mine, did the same in 1995. He even did a full filesystem, only using Norton Disk Editor and wrote the filesystem in HEX. For the OS/Kernal it self, he used pure x86 assembler. It was a proof of concept. Yup. The mid 90's were the most bizarre times in computing. I am happy to have seen and experienced a tiny bit of it my self.
@@NoSpeechForTheDumb It's just simpler and short to refer to it as "Linux". By referring to it as "Linux" it doesn't imply that Linus Torvalds created by his own the entire operating system and even if one wishes to refer to the operating system's kernel it's just simple to say "Linux kernel". That's why you won't see everybody saying "GNU/Linux". It's industry standarts, culture...
@@noodlechan_ of course it is shorter. But please just imagine: You develop some gigantic software system for years. It is 90% finished but that final 10% are especially difficult for you out of some reasons. Then you realize that someone else has done that part already and you can easily adopt it and finally release your product. Would you be happy if people named your software after the author of that final 10% only and completely ignore your efforts?
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux,” and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use.
That's awesome. Thanks for the very informative history about Linux, which I really like, have several distributions newest versions on hand but still don't use on a daily basis. I wonder why. (Rethorical remark) Maybe it's, because one still needs certain commands to make "things run", like sudo, get apt, etc.
First contact with Linux was on my Atari computer with Linux68k. Switched to PC later. Startet my own business with open source only. Lots of people who told me at the time that I couldn't do it without windows. Proved them wrong. :)
As far as I can tell, Linux wasnʼt the first open-source OS. It might have been the first i386 one, which is what was relevant to its history here, and most of the counterexamples I thought of only opened up later, but OS/360 and the SHARE operating system apparently were both open source much earlier.
@@jeroenvanjaarsveld1897 Depends on how you count; it, along with its code, was available for purchase for educational purposes; it could be redistributed to students but for no cost but general redistribution was not allowed.
@@danielrhouck Initially IBM made its software available to customers free of charge. But this was seen as unfair to independent developers who wanted to create a software industry. So as a result of the 1956 “Consent Decree”, I think it was, IBM were forced to “unbundle” -- charge extra for the OS etc.
Great video, very inspiring. I caught one error though: Debian was released in 1993, not 1996. It's also kinda weird that you didn't mention any of the actual original Linux distributions or Slackware but did mention Ubuntu lol. But whatever, still an interesting video. Cheers
I just realised that Linux kernel was realeased in my birthday, september 17, what a coincindence. I am a linux noob, being using Knoppix for a long time, but only recently instaled Linux (Mint) in one of my computers.
@alfie gordon Even though I don't say gnuLinux, I know that gnu was a major contribution to the linux operating system with many programs and utilities to interact with the kernel.
The world cried over the passing of Steve Jobs, but I genuinely believe it will be on another scale for someone like Linus Torvald. Every single person interacts with Linux every day without even realizing it, as said in this video almost all of the companies in the world professionally develop using git version control (which he created) and also deploy their infrastructure on Linux. His passing will be a sad day for computing, but what this man has done is nothing short of remarkable. He changed open-source software forever.
The world won't cry over the passing of Torvald. They didn't when Dennis Ritchie kicked the bucket either. Jobs was a marketing pioneer. He convinced a generation of people, somehow, that he was comparable to Leonardo da Vinci, or insert polymath here. The average person doesn't even know what Linux is, let alone Linus, but they probably know who Jobs was.
No… you’re right, but the big difference here is how many developers, do you’ll have the big corporations dedicate like a memorial on their websites to him, that’s what I think anyway.
@@switchp8286 Yeah, I was a bummed out that when Dennis Ritchie passed that it barely made the news. Everyone uses tech these days, and Dennis Ritchie was the guy that created the language that was used to build much of the tech they use, yet no respect.
I loved this video, I am pretty sure that everything in it is mostly right. I am a software developer starting 1989. I watched Linux and the open source movement grow realtime. My friends in the open source community always crack up on client requirements. Let me speak slowly for you...are you ready?... Guess what... clients don't give a bleeding fig about this. Of course Linux is on the Mars probe but you know what? The accountants over at Texas Instruments, the biggest big iron engineering firm on the planet, run their back office with Windows.
And Texas Instruments has their own idiocy to blame for allowing surveillance capitalism steal their data, corporate ecomic status and what ever patents they're currently working on. Windows analyzes all data the user runs through it. Azure Office is a means to steal economic data. MS is feeding all this to it's AI and analyzing it. Well, if you want to end up as Billy Boys squads next hostile take over. Go ahead. There's a reason MS keeps growing by constantly buying companies now. Something it didn't do before. Guess who clearly does care about this? Well, Jeff Bezos of course. He has his AWS for the same grabbaging. And, Elon Musk whose Tesla and SpaceX don't touch MS bullshit, a 3rd party cloud or software they haven't audited with a fucking orbital lift cables lenght of a pole. For the record Low-Earth Orbit starts at 100 000 kilometers. Also, for the record LibreOffice is IEEE754 standards compliant, meaning you can do shit that Excel does in several hours in mere seconds with GPU accelerations and the best thing is it's not some proprietary unfinished IEEE-754-1985 by Microsoft bullshit with rounding errors to fuck your data and economic projections up, in addition to, sending them to home to Redmond for analysis. And won't cost half million dollars to run a TOP500 company with... Guess what? As a responsible proprietor of your customers, you should make them care. Because they're idiots that are endagering themselves, and others, you included by not caring.
I think this video should start with Richard Stallman, he is the founder and father of the free software movement. for some reason, people mention more Linus than Richard even when Richard was more responsible for what we call Linux OS. I recommend the book "Free Software Free Society". I like many points of the video, especially when it teaches about GNU/ - . a good informative video :)
I've read that Linus would drink 14 litres of coffee a day and had terrible ingrown toenails during the early years of Linux. That was his main inspiration for creating an operating system - that one day, he could cure his coffee addiction and finally get his toenails sorted out. I'm not sure how true that factoid is, but another little known fact is that Linus was actually christened at birth as "Linux Gnu Torvalds", as his parents were both soothsayers and could see into the future. They told him, when he was just 5, "Linux, son, Linux will never be the most popular desktop OS". Amazing history here.
This video got you a new subscriber. I've been using Linux since 0.99pl10. I downloaded a now long defunct distro called Soft Landing System. Shortly after that Windoz was reduced to a boot loader for games and nothing more. Now, due to Micro$oft making it all but impossible to dual boot I don't even run Windoz games any more so my home is a Windoz free zone. Linux forever!
huh? I learn my (not very smart) school kids how to make a machine dual boot windows 10 and Linux, even they can do it. (although for them it;s just a trick they learn, to pass the lesson, they don't know the technical details behind it. But they can do it in 10 minutes
@@Blackadder75 First, let me say a teacher should NEVER insult the intelligence of their students on social media. "They can do it in 10 minutes". On what hardware? It works on some computers but not on others. Ask Ubuntu has dozens of posts from people who had the same difficulty I had. It does not work on my HP or my Lenovo and I am NOT going to buy another computer just to run stupid Windows because, why bother. I've been dual booting since the beginning because there were a few games I liked to play, but the last Windows version I was able to dual boot on my computers was Windows 7. Before you ask, yes I know how to enable legacy boot in the BIOS. Also, I refuse to bother with booting from a USB stick when I want to run Linux. Granted, Windows 8 was the last version I bothered with. Every time I installed Windows 8 it stepped on Grub and Linux would no longer boot. Reinstalling Grub did not fix it. There may be a way to work around secure boot, UEFI and Windows on my hardware with newer systems, but it's just not worth the time or money to do it. Windows is just not worth the disk space or the trouble. If something comes up where I am forced to use Windows I'll just boot my old Windows 7 in Virtual Box, then delete it when I'm done.
@@redpillcommando I am not insulting my students, I just said they are not the brightest, which is not an insult. They are not Leonard / Sheldon type of students, more like Penny. (If you know that tv show) I am not teaching at university, but at what americans would call community college I think. I am proud of my students for achievements within their capacities (which for them is not the academic field) As for the dual boot situation, you know more about it than me, I can just tell you our experiences in class. We have all HP machines, laptops and desktops, all from 2011-2017. Probooks, Elitebooks, Prodesks, several generations. (the teachers and students have newer machines for personal use) but these are just school devices we use for the lessons. What they learn is to install W10 (or W11) on a SSD, then make unallocated space on that drive, then install a linux distribution (We use Suse, Ubuntu and Mint , but I assume any other would also work) Most of those linux installers ask if they should override windows or install alongside... and when it;s done, they restart the machine and they get a choice. Sometimes it doesn't work immediately and they have to troubleshoot something, usually a BIOS setting. (In fact that is a reason for this lesson, to learn more about those settings)
Calling Linux 'the first open source operating system' is most likely wrong. If I remember correctly, there where 'free' and 'open' Unix BSD's before Linux, and the definition of what is 'open source' is very much dependent on the license. I recall reading somewhere that Linus commented that had he known that a free Unix OS existed, he wouldn't have developed Linux.
*Edit from May 2023:* The second episode in this series just launched! The Making of GNU: The World's First Open-Source Software - th-cam.com/video/sQDvkd2wtxU/w-d-xo.html
The Making of BSD is next...
*Original Message from February 2023:* Looks like I'm going to have to make a video on The Making of BSD. In this Linux video, "The Making of Linux, The World's First Open-Source Operating System" there have been a lot of comments saying BSD was actually first and that I forgot about it. I didn't forget about BSD. BSD wasn't a complete FOSS OS when released in 1978. 386BSD was the first complete BSD FOSS OS, and released after Linux in 1992. We can also talk about Net/1, but that wasn't a full OS. Net/2 wasn't complete either, but that could be considered the first depending on your definition of "complete OS", but everyone who commented was talking about BSD's 1978 release, not Net/2.
I love doing research about this stuff, but not all resources are accurate so I do research among a wide array of articles, books, and other historical writeups. So if I'm wrong, I'd love to learn how so I can correct it, but I don't want opinions or what you _want_ to be true. I want source-based facts.
Although do note, links are blocked to prevent scammers and spammers, so don't post an actual link lol but somehow direct us (me and the others reading & watching) to a reputable, unbiased source backing your statement so we can learn more. Thanks for all who watched! If you liked the video, I hope you subscribed because there's many more like this to come!
That would be great. It may also be worth mentioning MINIX, as a souce-available OS that predated Linux by 5 years, but not fully Open Source until later. Particularly for the famous debate between Tanenbaum and Torvalds re. Microkernel vs Monolothic kernel.
Interested in seeing the BSD video too. The BSD's are my favorite Unix derived OS's. I use FreeBSD and OpenBSD at work. DragonFly BSD is fun to tinker with and for some odd reason, I just could never get into NetBSD. Been using FreeBSD since 1997. When it comes to Unix "work-a-likes", then Linux seems to be the go-to.
@ForrestKnight Hi there! the current OS type referred to colloquially as Linux (which is a combination of the GNU coreutils and GNU libc onto the linux kernel) postdates the GNU's own projects using the open-source Mach kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University, such as a basic drop-in of coreutils onto a filled out mach setup, or GNU Hurd (which currently uses GNU Mach, but originally used CMU Mach). These two items are the earliest examples of complete modern-style operating systems matching the GNU style of "free, open-source software", which you seem to be using as the only definition of "open-source" in this video, and date into the mid 80s and 1990 on-the-dot respectively.
I'd like to point, though, to the existence of non-free open-source software. This is software you had to pay to receive, but received the full source code of which you were then allowed to modify and republish. Nearly all operating systems prior to the very early 80s were of this type, and only because it was absurdly difficult to deliver source code on its own without a compiled version at the time and compilers cost money, often were even literal separate machines in the 60s and 70s.
While it might be more correct ("less wrong") to say Linux defined "OSS" in the modern context, it didn't, and wasn't the first. You said so yourself: Linux is the KERNEL; GNU is what made it an OS. 386BSD, GNU-HURD, and Minix ALL predated Linux - they're what inspired Linus to make his own. Also, how can you talk about the origins of Linux (OS) and not mention the distros SLS or Slackware?!? Sure, Redhat is one of the oldest recognizable names, but it was not the first. (and it wasn't meant to design a commercial OS. ewt and djb wanted a better packaging and installer system. rPath was their ill fated, failed attempt at a commercial OS) CentOS *is not* a community development; it's RHEL rebuilt as-is with the Redhat branding removed. (NOTHING goes into CentOS that is not in the "upstream". I.e. they will not patch anything Redhat doesn't, they will not include software (or versions) Redhat doesn't.) Fedora was a stupid ploy from the bean counters to get "the community" to develop their commercial product [RHEL] for them.
Anyone got HURD by this video ? :-D
Can we all appreciate how reasonable Linus's expectations for linux where?
Almost all software projects end up not getting attention, and Linus knew that. He kept his expectations low!
I feel like that's almost a requirement to being successful. You don't just start out expecting to build a multibillion dollar industry, because you are gonna get disappointed and feel like shit most of the time seeing your project not take off. Which ends up in prematurely leaving the project over stress dealt by overcommitting, which in turn if you had kept expectations low, you would've gone at your own pace, and wouldn't be let down much, but rather you would focus on long term.
his success had many facets: he was talented no-bs engineer, he avoided pit-falls of his time to create the perfect os kernel (microkernels were the rage in his time) and wanted something functional and practical without some esoteric philosophy on top of it - he was using it too as daily driver and he allowed others to help him, he did not gate keep (well he did but he allowed the competent to help....meritocracy at its finest) and the last thing was... he used the copyleft license which prevents thing like sony taking freebsd to run playstations and contribute nothing back
@@sleepete12 Why is my comment gaining traction? Whatever.
I do have one thing to say: Linux very much AIN'T perfect. Lets not glorify it.
@@qwertykeyboard5901 nothing is perfect... linux is though closest to it by far of any other os out there... we are talking linux as a kernel of os, no other is so rock solid, versatile and ubiquitous, there is a reason why linux is dominating cloud, internet and everything in between.... it can run on router board, phone and it supercomputer... actually all supercomputers are powered by linux.... all the tech rage (kubernetes, containers, telco) is utilizing linux, docker on macos is running in virtualized linux vm... you might have beef with linux because you encounter some problem and somehow felt NEED to tell us that linux is not perfect... yeah, great, nothing is perfect.... I am forced to use win10 as company laptop and I suffer each time I had to touch that thing - it is horrible desktop experience.... especially when I actually need to login via ssh to the server and do my work.... so simple things like selecting and copying text is incredible torture, my linux desktop works and I just suspend it and my uptime is 90+ days on average no problem... try that with win...
@@qwertykeyboard5901 btw. you obviously misunderstood my text anyway - I wrote that HE DID NOT TRY TO CREATE PERFECT KERNEL.... like GNU guy with his HURD..... that was my point, Linus' approach was pragmatical, simple and proven monolithic paradigm
Linus didn't care about making free and open source software (partly because that concept didn't exist), he wasn't fed up with proprietary software, he just wanted feedback on his project so he shared the source code with others. Linus has never felt strongly about the Free Software or Open Source movements, that's Richard Stallman's thing who is known for created the GNU project and the core utils on top of Linux making it a mostly complete OS.
scrolled way too much to find someone mentioning this.
Wrong, he got told about Open Source and convinced by one of his friends to make it free through the GPL license
Open source software has existed since software started.
Open source OSs existed before Linux too.
A lot comes down to the luck if being in the right place at the right time.
This is a great comment
what are you talking about, Stallman created the GNU project in 1983, so the Free Software movement had existed for almost a decade before Linus released his kernel
9:36 a bit of clarification: the first commit in the Linux repo is from April 16, 2005 as Linus decided not to import the older commits. This means that the actual number of commits is significantly higher.
this and also the fact that Linux is the reason git even exists today
And the number of contributors also
Squash & merge?
Where can you find the full commit history? Is it lost/seperated from the modern repository?
@@hixo6780 up until 2002 there was no version control just patches mailed to LKML, anyone can go digging through the archives if they want. between 2002 and 2005 he used bitkeeper which could probably be converted to git commits but kinda pointless now
I remember in 1996 as a computer science student, getting a CD with the Red Hat Linux source codes, taking almost 8 hours to compile them on an 80386DX with 4 Mb of ram.
Of course it was not only the kernel but also all the tools included in that distribution.
That was relatively fast.
386 CPUs were way before my time, but I did try doing stuff with my 486 in 386 mode, damn that stuff is slow. 8 hours is quite reasonable all things considered.
My friend and I bought Redhat 5.1, before that I had Slackware 2.0 from a Linux book I bought in 1997 it was a text based install and the desktop sucked, but my favorite was Caldera 1.2 in 1998 with the KDE desktop and the Lizard GUI installer.I bought a Pentium 120 megahertz with 8 MB of ram in 1996.
I remember 3 month months ago flashing a usb with gentoo and taking 10 hours to compile and install i to my laptop
I have never used Linux, but have watched it grow over the years. I wrote my first professional programs on a VAX using FORTRAN back in 1984. I purchased Unix computers for my company back in 1992 because the software we used (3D CAD) required Unix, but only HP Unix, and Sun Unix.
Computers sure have changed a lot in my lifetime.
Hi Rick, I sympathize with that. Quick story, I was sitting at a workstation in the Perot Systems data center. The desk phone rang. I picked it up and said hello. It was an HP engineer requesting permission to install a server update on our HPUX server. That company used to be absolutely amazing.
Of course you've used Linux, or at least its descendants. Do you not have a mobile phone? Never looked at this post (youtube's servers are all Linux-descendant based)? Never used cloud storage?
I wrote Fortran on punchcards for an IBM360 back in 1971. At least VAX/VMS was friendlier than that.
@@kenoliver8913 Hi Ken, what I have noticed over the years is a cultural difference. I learned programming on an Apple II+, my first developer job was on IBM 370. The notion that I am against Linux is preposterous. Please calm down.
@@kenoliver8913 Just because TH-cam has servers with Linux or cloud storage are hosted on Linux servers does not mean we're using Linux. People like yourself actually scare people away from the Linux community with these ridiculous statements.
Why haven't you tried out Linux? It's free, you know!
the story is so beautiful. Linux is tremendously elegant. I love having my PC feel like a work of art and self-reflection, instead of feeding me ads and rebooting without my permission. Control!!
Windows > Linux
@@xSuperFryx You're a year late bud.
@@MarcABrown-tt1fp A year late and incorrect
FreeBSD > max(Linux, Windows)
that's the thing: Windows has been made to suck (even more) there's no reason why it should suck as much as it does now if it wasn't because of MS' greed (I only run Linux myself for the record).
Hey Forrest! Nice summary of Linux and its history. Not a criticism, but I would've added git in this history too as it wouldn't have been developed at all without the McVoy/BitKeeper issue experienced by Linus and other kernel developers. No matter this was great and we can certainly agree that Torvalds does rank as one of the top Computer Scientists of all time.
In that case, maybe I'll have to make a video about Git
@@fknight That would be cool. I really don't know much about the history of Git.
It's very interesting, I'm subbing so hopefully you make a video on Git: The History!
I can't see how the hell is that relevant for this video. It's not a video titled:
Linus Trovalds projects or something
Git was developed by Linus
I love those new CS-history videos. Have you ever thought about some more technical CS-history videos? For example the development/discovery of some very useful algorithms?
I can do that. Adding it to the list!
@@fknight Thanks, keep it up! I just passed my first semester of CS and I would say that you are one of the reasons why😁
@@rxphi5382 that’s great to hear, congrats! Glad I could help
Such an awesome video! Keep making these SC-history pieces :D I'm currently studying CS in the same school Torvalds did, and he is just such a highly appreciated and adored character here. Hope to get even a smidge of that skill and vision that he had while I'm here.. :o
You will create new karnel Tanelix.... you can do it 😌
I'm loving these video essays you've been doing. :)
Glad you like them! They're a lot of fun to make. Many more to come! I'm working on some videos in more of my traditional style, too. Love making this content!
This was a very interesting and well made video. However, I think that the most important feature of Debian is not that it is completely free or that it has been forked into other distributions, but that it is incredibly stable. The developers of debian are focused on making an incredibly stable distribution, so much so that Debian runs on the ISS.
Thanks, watching this on Debian, been using it since potato was stable.
@@cinskybuhsrandy5099 Are you writing this from a keyboard plugged into a potato? 😅
@@leogama3422 I'm writing this from a keyboard plugged into a bookworm, I'm not stuck in the past.
True. Stability is the most desirable quality for any user .
Extra stability is good but not for the normal desktop user. I prefer Gentoo to get the latest versions of kernel and software easily.
Long time Linuxer here.
Been using since 1999, became proficient in 2001.
Pulled my hair out installing drivers using unetbootin back in 2004.
Modified and maintained driver for Lucent 64kbps modem around the same time.
Nice compilation of Linux history 👏🏻 it'll definitely help new users understand the importance of Linux in the IT world.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Slackware in your list of distributions. While it wasn't long lasting it was instrumental in making Linux installation approachable for the average user. Prior to Slackware, installing Linux and getting it up and running was a very complex operation. Slackware was the bridge between manual installation and the slick installers we have today.
Yeah I was surprised too...
Me too since Slackware came out in 1993.
I was wondering how far I'd have to scroll to find this mention. Still my favorite, I've used it since v4, and recommend people give it a try. Not always for the faint of heart.
> While it wasn't long lasting
What? It still exists and it is still getting updated and new versions to this day. It was even the initial distro to do something akin to the rolling release model if you used the continuously updating development repository.
You mean the average nerd user :) I was a professional programmer, and it took me a week to fully install Slackware in 1994. Kernel 1.2.13, if I’m not mistaken.
good review of the Linux kernel and clarified the difference between a kernel and userspace, well done. Subbed
Beautiful! I can't appraciate enough the easy flow of this video. Great work...
Fantastic video, you do a great job at walking through the history of linux, and giving important background on the development and influences of linux. I hope to see more of these CS history videos from you in the future! I use gentoo btw ;)
Loving these CS journal-isque style kinda reminds me of Diana cowern(strongly recommended if you love physics).
suggestion for "How one man can make a difference": Edsger Dijkstra and his contribution to simple yet ground breaking CS fundamentals such as semaphores, interprocess communication/synchronization and many more + it would be fun because he was quite a character.
And If you need to make longer videos (because I know its hard to cram in very thing in 10 minutes) we won't mind.
Very cool! I'll add Edsger to the list! Thank you for sharing. I'll see what I can do about those longer videos 😉
EWD could be a bit of a troll sometimes, as in his comments on programming languages. For example, on BASIC, he said “It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.”
Thanks.
This makes things a little clearer for me, and it's a great at-a-glance reference.
I will need to watch it again (next time not listening while working).
And now... to your kindly linked: The Making of GNU: The World's First Open-Source Software
I just saw this was released yesterday! What a great video! I loved it and left a sub instantly!
Being a computer science student struggling to somehow make it through this is pure motivation :D thanks man 👍
in the mid 90s my computer programming teacher in highschool(we were learning to code in BASIC) loved linux and always talked about it in class ill never forget.. been tinkering with it ever since
Started with Slackware 4.0 as my first distro many years ago. Still feels like yesterday.
I started with Slackware as well. I downloaded it overnight on a 1200-baud modem and it took three nights before I got a successful download.
I also started with Slackware 2.0 in 1996, it was the Linux CD that came with my Linux Users book at Computer Literacy, it was all text based install, and I didn't care for the desktop, however when Caldera 1.2 came out with the KDE desktop and the Lizard Gui installer, I was sold.
Wow, I remember buying in ca. 2001 some Linux magazine in Poland with some distro on CD, if it really was just 10 years with Linux being on the market, then it's an amazing success.
Just been reading 'Just for Fun: The story of an accidental revolutionary', and Linus says that the penguin was his wife's idea.
Linus was looking for a symbol for Linux, and because he wanted to see penguins wherever he could, his wife (Tove) suggested that it should be a penguin. So Larry Ewing may have designed it, but it was his wife's idea.
Also Linus sent a message to the comp.os.minix usenet group before he announced he was doing an Operating System, asking for the POSIX standards.
A Nobel
For Linus Torvalds,
Greatest Step And Contribution
To The Information Era and Internet Since
The Creation Of Integrated Circuits!
C Programming Language Too!
I actually teared up during this video out of sheer awe. Nice vid.
Great video. we were really excited when he was working on Linux. Back then we were stuck with Digital Unix , VAX / VMS.... It was really exciting during those times.
8:00 - hold on your horses, kid. Before RedHat in 1994, was SLS in 1992, which inspired Patrick Volkerding to created Slackware Linux first released in July 17, 1993!
Just to clarify things here! Thanks for the video.
I can't be the only one petrified as to what will happen with Linux once Linus retires, he has apparently slowed down a bit in recent years with some rumors he might be planning a transition because he is getting up there in age and he really dislikes attention. As Linux gets more popular he is less and less comfortable in the driver's seat. But dang, we need him. How he handles issues with the kernel and conflicts, how he has the final say, his authority, his principles. If he is replaced by the wrong person, well, Linux could well go in a bad direction! I also love how modest he is as a programmer about his accomplishments. He always mentions "git" like it's some small side project, haha.
This is one of the best summaries I have ever seen. And it also included Stallman and the GNU project. Thank you very much
its cool to see you brought up minix, normally it gets skipped over in discussions ive had
Yes very cool. In fact Minix is the most widely used OS because it runs on the Intel iAMT Engine. Thorvalds himself considered Minix superior to Linux. If only its licence was compatible with free software...
Absolutely Fantastic and Inspirational. Great to know that what started as a hobby project back in 90s is presently being used in almost all industries in the world!
Great video! Definitely something I'd recommend beginners to Linux/Unix watch. I can only imagine how things would look like if the frivolous lawsuit against the BSDs(more of a real Unix) hadn't happened, we'd probably be using that today instead of Linux!
BSD development has a whole different culture around it -- more centralized, less adaptable. I doubt it could have filled the gap.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 It was apparently the most popular open source OS before Linux, and when the lawsuit happened, large companies like AT&T abandoned it and switched to Linux out of fear. By the time the lawsuit was thrown out, the switch was already done, and they didn't want to spend more money and time switching back. So BSD probably could have been the predominant open source OS today, and I think that would have been better.
@@D0J0P Sure it was, but remember open-source OSes were not heavily used back then. So it’s not that people “abandoned” BSD, it simply didn’t grow as fast as Linux.
I don’t think AT&T were ever fans of BSD. That’s why you had the AT&T-versus-BSD divide among flavours of proprietary Unix.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 But it could have tampered with the development of an alternative to the point of it being unpractical...
@@leogama3422 Not a chance. Open-source is about enhancing competition, not killing it.
Technically Linus Torvalds made his own Unix like operating system because the existing ones were expensive. Too expensive for a student. And then he decided that he should share it with the world so that other people, other students, didn't have to pay to have a Unix like operating system.
Please I will like you to speak more abt the linux architecture. How it all works together and how to build your own distro
I'd love to! I'll see what I can do. Let's make a community-driven distro and call it Knightux, but I'll need you to name it that behind my back as Ari Lemmke did for Linux, so I don't seem too egotistical lol
Linux is a gold mine, always fascinating
You don't build your own distro. It's doable but requires lots of work.
@@n.m4497 Linux From Scratch lesgooo!!!
I remember when the Raspberry π first came out, there was no good OS for it. You could run a version of Debian for ARM, but that was not optimized for the particular combination of an older version of the ARM instruction set, combined with hardware floating-point, that was implemented on the Broadcom processor used in the π.
So a couple of guys set out to rebuild the whole of Debian just for that hardware. As I recall, it took them about six weeks. And remember, all this building had to be done on the Raspberry π itself--the original single-processor model. The result was called “Raspbian”, but these days I believe the Raspberry π Foundation have taken it over and officially dubbed it the “Raspberry π OS”.
So that’s an example of the kind of work it takes to create your own distro.
9:08 every arch user has a urge to say "i use arch btw", btw
well jokes aside, great video! i never seen someone explaining this topic on a so easy and fast way, really liked it :)
tbh i really hate what companies are doing to technology in general. i know everyone wants money, i also want too, but exploiting user privacy is a pretty disonest way to do it, and even more when you use open-source software to do it (take android as an example!).
well, anyways, to make a community we need common contribution i think, and open-source is one of these examples of contribution.
long life to linux!
As a long time user of Linux (Xandros box purchase was I think my first dalliance) I have grown to love and prefer Linux over Windows. I've never had the money to check MacOS and Windows was almost 100% my business use OS because ... um ... It's not perfect but it's free and I love that people put their time and energy into developing both it and the thousands of apps I can use at whim to achieve my goals. Certainly a leg up from the thousands of software apps I can PAY FOR that then fail and leave me struggling to find a way to fix the broken thing I may be relying on. Proud to support FOSS through being a strong advocate for it. Bless you Linus and all who contributed to Linux growth through the years!!
@2:25 read this with "trn" on a VT220 terminal, logged into a Sun 3/80 sitting at my desk a Telecom Paris (13e) when I was supposed to be writing my workterm report. Within a year I was installing 0.95a on a spare 386 box with 8M of RAM - required some 20 floppy disks.
Linux is probably the biggest revolution ever made. I hope that open source will remain strong for many years to come. PS: In my opinion, all children should learn the basics of Linux in school.
I still can't get over the fact that you didn't mention Slackware in the section about distributions. This is THE unpardonable sin of Linux distributions. Slackware is the only one of the early distributions to survive until now. Actually a remake of SLS (Softlanding Linux System) which was a bit buggy at the time, it is still a high-powered workhorse now after Patrick Volkerding picked up the orphan and cleared up the bugs.
In December 1995, I bought a 3-inch thick book about Linux Administration with a CD in a pocket on the back page after being introduced to Linux by a friend. It was Slackware on the CD and I installed it on my 486 and immediately loved it. Eventually, upgraded to Slackware 12, then 14.1. Looking forward to upgrading it to Slackware 15 in the next few weeks.
Pretty much this. Not to mentions that Arch Linux and Gentoo had used Slackware as a base distribution. Back then Slackware lack of a package manager system created two distributions, a compiled oriented package manager(Gentoo) and a pre-compiled oriented package manager(Arch Linux). Slackware is a mother of many Distributions as Debian is.
Isn't Debian from 1993 actually? He couldn't mention every and all historically relevant Linux distributions. As he mentions, there's another video about distributions only.
@@leogama3422 indeed, and was released only a few weeks after Slackware in 1993. Never used Debian so was not aware of it.
My first installation of Linux was Slackware.
Yes, the first few Linux installations I did were all Slackware. Later I went on to use Red Hat, Mandriva (originally "Mandrake"), and Debian, before pretty much settling with Ubuntu for the last 14 years.
Slackware! That was my first distro (1994) and seemed to be by far the most popular at the time. Red Hat Mother's Day edition was their first popular distro and it was released 1995. I encountered it installing Caldera, which was based on Red Hat (Mother's Day edition IIRC).
Fantastic video. Subscribed to this channel, because of the great quality. 👍🏽
Hey you're doing great, keep these coming
I'd love to meet Linus . He's one of my Heroes. He just wanted to make something that was open source and free.
Linus Torvalds, the living legend. No one can ignore him.
Nah it's Terry Andrew Davis remember that name.
A copy/thief is what l-anus torvalds
Loving this new video format
Love this kind of videos from you. Entertaining and I learned something. Keep it up!
Been using linux since Redhat Deluxe 5.2. It's been a huge part of my life and still is. My fav distro became Slackware.
Banger of a video bro, your channel is a goldmine! Linux the WORLD
Appreciate it!
Yey, another great programming channel to binge on 🥳
someone likely beat me to it, but Debian was released on September 15, 1993 for the 0.1 version. The first stable version was in 1996. But when referencing the origin of the kernel itself during its Alpha build phase in this video, I think its important to do so for Debian as well.
Many thanks for a wonderful video!
I'm a computer geek since the 80:s, but started to run Linux 1995, with an early Red Hat. Now, 27 years later, I still love Linux and it is the very base of my career as an embedded C++ developer. I am very thankful to all the work of Linus as well as all the many thousands of developers that have built the beautiful systems that I see and use every day!
You should do a video on micro vs monolithic kernels. Many (mostly new) Linux users aren't even aware of the difference and have never even been introduced to these fundamentally different approaches to OS design.
Microkernels are pretty much a relic of history at this stage. ∗cough∗ GNU Hurd ∗cough∗
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 That's just simply not true. While you don't necessarily need a microkernel for standard desktop operating systems, although I personally much prefer them (for example the L4), the standard consensus among operating system engineers is that microkernels are far superior to monolithic kernels for security and fault tolerance. So while you won't see a Debian Mint or Arch Linux distribution with a microkernel, they are commonly used in critical systems infrastructure such as hospital operating rooms, commercial aircraft and power grids. And btw, GNU Hurd is and always has been developed by only a few volunteers in their spare time.
@@liquidmobius Nobody has got one working properly to production quality. Nobody. FreeBSD I think has the vestiges of a microkernel at its heart, but that had to be bastardized somewhat in the name of performance.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 You mean like macOS?
@@liquidmobius That’s FreeBSD-based.
Why not mention MINIX? That is a “true” microkernel design.
1:10 Multics had some features that would still be considered advanced today. For example, something still lacking in present-day Linux is the ability to share ownership controls over a set of files/directories between more than one user. Linux has ACLs, but there is no ACL entry conveying ownership privileges, like there was on Multics.
More features doesn't mean it's better or more advanced. Especially things like universal file level ACL is all about compromises. More features at ACL come at cost. I think Linux ACL hits sweet spot where it is just good enough for majority of use cases where Linux is used whilst maintaining simplicity and performance. And if you need to do more you can always rely on extensions and additional software.
Great vid. Took me back a ways. I remember fiddling with Linux very early on, so I was surprised to see no mention of three distros that defined Linux before Red Hat:
- first, Slackware. Patrick Volkerding deserves as many accolades as Linus, IMO. Without Slackware, there would have been no SuSE and many others. I still recall downloading it over FTP from a long-distance 2,400bps modem! Thank goodness for Walnut Creek CDROM, which came along very quickly after that, and you could buy it on CD from them.
-second, Mandrake Linux. It was the Red Hat for new users. It had a totally different UI and was easier to get started than with RH.
-and finally, Gentoo. The most maddening yet powerful of those early days of Linux distributions. As a source-based distribution, you were free to download the sources and compile binaries to your particular hardware and only install those tools you really wanted. It was the most customized version of Linux possible, at the time.
Thanks for the trip back in time! I ran Linux on the desktop since 1999…never became the Year Of The Linux Desktop we all thought would come…so I moved to the best BSD-based alternate in macOS in 2006 ;)
God, I remember trying to set Mandrake up in 2002 and having to wrestle with getting my sound and networking configured, ugly fonts... amazing how far we've come that my Thinkpad running Ubuntu just works now.
Isn't it GNU/Linux? 😁 Wonderful coverage of the history, thanks for sharing.
What an amazing video. Thanks for the education my friend!
Hello. I am sure you have a lot of the information correct, and it's difficult to track down all the correct information, however, there is a TH-cam video of Linus himself explaining why he invented it and released it. Linus Trovalds himself explained he developed it because he wanted a cheaper computer OS and didn't want to pay for an OS.
And did'nt want to pay for MINIX
And what is cheaper than an _actual_ homemade solution, right? The guy is a freaking genius
@@ciano5475 paid for minix?
Minix was designed to teach CS students on how the OS works
@@techwithtee8721 but before 2000 wasn't free, it had a commercial licence
Thank you for pointing out the GNU/Linux thing. Yes GNU was integral to modern Linux operating systems, but at the end of the day, its still linux at the kernel and core of the PC
This is a great video! But you missed OpenSuse, that is very important to the Linux history and the commercial success of it. Also they make the most coolest songs about tech. I think you should somehow mentioned them.
Nor OpenSolaris
Hi ForrestKnight, this was an excellent presentation.
The screen at 6:15 seems to show a library database entry for the Seven Brothers, the first novel ever published in Finnish in 1870. In the 2004 tv show Great Finns (similar to the BBCs Great Britons), viewers voted author Aleksi Kivi to be the 9th greatest Finn ever, while Linus Torvalds was voted to be the 16th. However, before Linus the list included Lalli (should be disqualified for being probably mythological), Väinö Myllyrinne (a pun entry, tallest Finn ever), Ville Valo (HIM was a really big at that point) and Matti Nykänen (one of the best ski jumpers ever but also bit of problematic character, I mean Linus was never sentenced to prison for stabbing people for petty reasons), so I think honestly Linus is quite close to the actual top ten.
love this. Linus really did do something crazy without even realizing the impact it would have on the world. I work for the Gov and I use RHEL every single day. What a cool college story
1:17 There were other groundbreaking OSes from around this time--you have already mentioned Multics, let me add also TENEX and ITS. Why is it most people only remember Unix nowadays, and none of the others? It is because Unix was the only one to make the leap to becoming a _portable_ OS. The others were developed on particular hardware architectures; when those died, they died with them.
While the original PDP-11 architecture that Unix started on is a museum piece nowadays, the OS architecture itself was sufficiently adaptable to make the jump to 32-bit, and then 64-bit, hardware. And Linux has carried that portability tradition to the next level, being ported to an average of one new major architecture for just about every year of its existence.
Awesome video! Really appreciated it!
Great video Forrest! I'm suscribing to your channel! I share the ideas of other comments, such as it would be great to mention git since it was created mostly by the same community that develop Linux. Also I think that Alan Turing is up today one of most influential people in computer science and technology, but many of the contributions made by him are the product of many people, of teams, in the same way that happens with Linux and many other important FOSS projects.
Thank you Forrest 🧡
Linus goes and writes a complete kernel from scratch. Even if we leave aside the fact that he was actually able to pull it off, it still remains that he did it in just 21 weeks! 10_239 sloc in 21 weeks means 487 sloc every week. This is an amazing feat, especially for a 21 year old student with no real-world experience.
A friend of mine, did the same in 1995. He even did a full filesystem, only using Norton Disk Editor and wrote the filesystem in HEX.
For the OS/Kernal it self, he used pure x86 assembler. It was a proof of concept.
Yup. The mid 90's were the most bizarre times in computing. I am happy to have seen and experienced a tiny bit of it my self.
Youre lying, lanus didnt write nothing, he copied minix
As I am taking a class about Operating Systems in university with Linux being the case of study, I'm loving it.
I hope they teached you that Linux is the Kernel of an operating system called GNU/Linux.
@@NoSpeechForTheDumb Everyone knows that
@@noodlechan_ oh, if people know that and still say it wrong they are twice as ignorant I presume.
@@NoSpeechForTheDumb It's just simpler and short to refer to it as "Linux". By referring to it as "Linux" it doesn't imply that Linus Torvalds created by his own the entire operating system and even if one wishes to refer to the operating system's kernel it's just simple to say "Linux kernel".
That's why you won't see everybody saying "GNU/Linux". It's industry standarts, culture...
@@noodlechan_ of course it is shorter. But please just imagine: You develop some gigantic software system for years. It is 90% finished but that final 10% are especially difficult for you out of some reasons. Then you realize that someone else has done that part already and you can easily adopt it and finally release your product. Would you be happy if people named your software after the author of that final 10% only and completely ignore your efforts?
Loving the new contents bro. Keep them coming .
Absolutely, will do! I'll keep them coming as long as you keep watching
Man just seeing this videos brings so much memories when I first started programming. For years Linux was like a religion to me!
Nice one @fknight! 👏
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux,” and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use.
missing opportunity of calling it "...gnuanced than that" @ 3:50 xD
I love linux history... I've been using Debian since 2012, I guess, and it serves me really well...
That's awesome. Thanks for the very informative history about Linux, which I really like, have several distributions newest versions on hand but still don't use on a daily basis. I wonder why. (Rethorical remark)
Maybe it's, because one still needs certain commands to make "things run", like sudo, get apt, etc.
I am here, before a Prof. will send this video to their Students.
does Linus deserve Nobel price?
Why not
Awesome historical documentary of Linux, really learned a lot and appreciate it
Your content is incredible. I really appreciate all the work you put into your videos.
First contact with Linux was on my Atari computer with Linux68k. Switched to PC later. Startet my own business with open source only. Lots of people who told me at the time that I couldn't do it without windows. Proved them wrong. :)
As far as I can tell, Linux wasnʼt the first open-source OS. It might have been the first i386 one, which is what was relevant to its history here, and most of the counterexamples I thought of only opened up later, but OS/360 and the SHARE operating system apparently were both open source much earlier.
Also, what about Minix, I think this existed before Linux?
@@jeroenvanjaarsveld1897 Depends on how you count; it, along with its code, was available for purchase for educational purposes; it could be redistributed to students but for no cost but general redistribution was not allowed.
IBM’s OSes were never “open source”. Source code may have been available to customers, but under restrictions.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 Huh, okay, Wikipedia listed them as public domain and I couldnʼt find anything skimming about that being a recent change.
@@danielrhouck Initially IBM made its software available to customers free of charge. But this was seen as unfair to independent developers who wanted to create a software industry. So as a result of the 1956 “Consent Decree”, I think it was, IBM were forced to “unbundle” -- charge extra for the OS etc.
If anyone from the IT industry deserve credit it's one man THE LINUS TORVALD
Great video, very inspiring. I caught one error though: Debian was released in 1993, not 1996. It's also kinda weird that you didn't mention any of the actual original Linux distributions or Slackware but did mention Ubuntu lol. But whatever, still an interesting video. Cheers
not to mention suse, mandrake, caldera, Yggdrasil, etc!
I just realised that Linux kernel was realeased in my birthday, september 17, what a coincindence.
I am a linux noob, being using Knoppix for a long time, but only recently instaled Linux (Mint) in one of my computers.
I know it's GNU linux. But the word linux just rolls off the tongue better. BTW, a nice history video on linux, I mean, gnu linux.
That and GNU isn't at all necessary nowadays
@alfie gordon Even though I don't say gnuLinux, I know that gnu was a major contribution to the linux operating system with many programs and utilities to interact with the kernel.
The world cried over the passing of Steve Jobs, but I genuinely believe it will be on another scale for someone like Linus Torvald. Every single person interacts with Linux every day without even realizing it, as said in this video almost all of the companies in the world professionally develop using git version control (which he created) and also deploy their infrastructure on Linux. His passing will be a sad day for computing, but what this man has done is nothing short of remarkable. He changed open-source software forever.
The world won't cry over the passing of Torvald. They didn't when Dennis Ritchie kicked the bucket either. Jobs was a marketing pioneer. He convinced a generation of people, somehow, that he was comparable to Leonardo da Vinci, or insert polymath here. The average person doesn't even know what Linux is, let alone Linus, but they probably know who Jobs was.
No… you’re right, but the big difference here is how many developers, do you’ll have the big corporations dedicate like a memorial on their websites to him, that’s what I think anyway.
@@switchp8286 Yeah, I was a bummed out that when Dennis Ritchie passed that it barely made the news. Everyone uses tech these days, and Dennis Ritchie was the guy that created the language that was used to build much of the tech they use, yet no respect.
@@JoeyGarcia It's just the way it is
The pi chart at 10:00 adds up to like 153%
Great video, summarizing the history of Linux.
BSD is a FOSS OS that came before Linux.
BSD wasn't a complete FOSS OS. 386BSD was the first for BSD, and released after Linux.
@@fknight Ah, okay.
I loved this video, I am pretty sure that everything in it is mostly right. I am a software developer starting 1989. I watched Linux and the open source movement grow realtime. My friends in the open source community always crack up on client requirements. Let me speak slowly for you...are you ready?... Guess what... clients don't give a bleeding fig about this. Of course Linux is on the Mars probe but you know what? The accountants over at Texas Instruments, the biggest big iron engineering firm on the planet, run their back office with Windows.
And Texas Instruments has their own idiocy to blame for allowing surveillance capitalism steal their data, corporate ecomic status and what ever patents they're currently working on. Windows analyzes all data the user runs through it.
Azure Office is a means to steal economic data.
MS is feeding all this to it's AI and analyzing it. Well, if you want to end up as Billy Boys squads next hostile take over. Go ahead.
There's a reason MS keeps growing by constantly buying companies now. Something it didn't do before.
Guess who clearly does care about this? Well, Jeff Bezos of course. He has his AWS for the same grabbaging.
And, Elon Musk whose Tesla and SpaceX don't touch MS bullshit, a 3rd party cloud or software they haven't audited with a fucking orbital lift cables lenght of a pole.
For the record Low-Earth Orbit starts at 100 000 kilometers.
Also, for the record LibreOffice is IEEE754 standards compliant, meaning you can do shit that Excel does in several hours in mere seconds with GPU accelerations and the best thing is it's not some proprietary unfinished IEEE-754-1985 by Microsoft bullshit with rounding errors to fuck your data and economic projections up, in addition to, sending them to home to Redmond for analysis.
And won't cost half million dollars to run a TOP500 company with... Guess what? As a responsible proprietor of your customers, you should make them care. Because they're idiots that are endagering themselves, and others, you included by not caring.
Hey, nice video, i shared it to my friends. Please also make a video on vim.
Edit: I use arch btw.
I appreciate that! Will do
Just subbed, great video. Will continue to watch other ones seem interesting.
8:54 No mention of Suse?
I think this video should start with Richard Stallman, he is the founder and father of the free software movement. for some reason, people mention more Linus than Richard even when Richard was more responsible for what we call Linux OS. I recommend the book "Free Software Free Society". I like many points of the video, especially when it teaches about GNU/ - . a good informative video :)
I've read that Linus would drink 14 litres of coffee a day and had terrible ingrown toenails during the early years of Linux.
That was his main inspiration for creating an operating system - that one day, he could cure his coffee addiction and finally get his toenails sorted out.
I'm not sure how true that factoid is, but another little known fact is that Linus was actually christened at birth as "Linux Gnu Torvalds", as his parents were both soothsayers and could see into the future. They told him, when he was just 5, "Linux, son, Linux will never be the most popular desktop OS".
Amazing history here.
I doubt the toenails part. Remember, he was living in a country that offered free Socialist-style healthcare to all its citizens.
I can't doubt this. Ingrown toenails really do suck.
you forgot the part that he only ate raw fusilli
Loved the video Forrest!
This video got you a new subscriber. I've been using Linux since 0.99pl10. I downloaded a now long defunct distro called Soft Landing System. Shortly after that Windoz was reduced to a boot loader for games and nothing more. Now, due to Micro$oft making it all but impossible to dual boot I don't even run Windoz games any more so my home is a Windoz free zone. Linux forever!
huh? I learn my (not very smart) school kids how to make a machine dual boot windows 10 and Linux, even they can do it. (although for them it;s just a trick they learn, to pass the lesson, they don't know the technical details behind it. But they can do it in 10 minutes
@@Blackadder75 First, let me say a teacher should NEVER insult the intelligence of their students on social media.
"They can do it in 10 minutes". On what hardware? It works on some computers but not on others. Ask Ubuntu has dozens of posts from people who had the same difficulty I had. It does not work on my HP or my Lenovo and I am NOT going to buy another computer just to run stupid Windows because, why bother. I've been dual booting since the beginning because there were a few games I liked to play, but the last Windows version I was able to dual boot on my computers was Windows 7. Before you ask, yes I know how to enable legacy boot in the BIOS. Also, I refuse to bother with booting from a USB stick when I want to run Linux. Granted, Windows 8 was the last version I bothered with. Every time I installed Windows 8 it stepped on Grub and Linux would no longer boot. Reinstalling Grub did not fix it. There may be a way to work around secure boot, UEFI and Windows on my hardware with newer systems, but it's just not worth the time or money to do it. Windows is just not worth the disk space or the trouble. If something comes up where I am forced to use Windows I'll just boot my old Windows 7 in Virtual Box, then delete it when I'm done.
@@redpillcommando I am not insulting my students, I just said they are not the brightest, which is not an insult. They are not Leonard / Sheldon type of students, more like Penny. (If you know that tv show)
I am not teaching at university, but at what americans would call community college I think. I am proud of my students for achievements within their capacities (which for them is not the academic field)
As for the dual boot situation, you know more about it than me, I can just tell you our experiences in class. We have all HP machines, laptops and desktops, all from 2011-2017. Probooks, Elitebooks, Prodesks, several generations. (the teachers and students have newer machines for personal use) but these are just school devices we use for the lessons.
What they learn is to install W10 (or W11) on a SSD, then make unallocated space on that drive, then install a linux distribution (We use Suse, Ubuntu and Mint , but I assume any other would also work)
Most of those linux installers ask if they should override windows or install alongside... and when it;s done, they restart the machine and they get a choice.
Sometimes it doesn't work immediately and they have to troubleshoot something, usually a BIOS setting. (In fact that is a reason for this lesson, to learn more about those settings)
Calling Linux 'the first open source operating system' is most likely wrong. If I remember correctly, there where 'free' and 'open' Unix BSD's before Linux, and the definition of what is 'open source' is very much dependent on the license. I recall reading somewhere that Linus commented that had he known that a free Unix OS existed, he wouldn't have developed Linux.