Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

After years of efforts, Linux has finally realized its "hegemony". The world's TOP 500s run on Linux, which is more impressive than Intel-92 per cent of TOP 500s use Intel processors.

So how did Linux get to this point? How did this operating system, created by Finnish college students 26 years ago, suddenly rise and overwhelm Unix, Microsoft Windows and other Unix-like systems?

For beginners, the Unix system is decentralized and bundled with vendor processors. AT&T 's Bell Labs licensed Unix System V to suppliers, and then they created their own style of system. Sun Microsystems launched Solaris,IBM, launched AIX,HP, launched HP-UX,SGI, launched IRIX. But none of them are compatible, and migration often requires recompilation.

"if it wasn't for Unix, there wouldn't be Linux," said Steve Conway, vice president of Hyperion Research research in IDC's high performance computing (HPC) division. "the Unix era has given way to the Linux era because Linux is more open than vendor-specific. So this is an opportunity for Linux to have a major operating system for the entire community."

Most Unix-like systems do not support the x86 architecture. SunMicrosystems's SunOS is a text-based operating system, and the company has Solaris on x86 architecture, but has never made much progress. All other Unix-like systems are targeted at custom RISC processors. Of course, no one saw a big increase in x86 architecture on the server at the time.

Before Linux, only Xenix jointly developed by Microsoft and SCO and FreeBSD developed by BSD, 386BSD and 4.4BSD strongly supported x86 architecture in Unix-like systems. But Xenix is a desktop operating system, never a server operating system. When it was sold to Caldera Systems in 2001, the opportunity had already slipped away from it, and Linux was already growing rapidly.

And then Microsoft. Cluster software was launched as early as Windows NT 4.0, but the first real effort was made through Window Compute Cluster Server 2003 in 2006. However, the company has never done much in this regard.

"as far as Microsoft is concerned, they targeted the HPC market for several years, but they didn't invest much," Conway said. "at the time, it didn't look like the HPC market would be as big as it is now. In the 1990s, the high-performance computing market was worth $2 billion. Last year, it reached $22 billion."

Linux takeoff

In the mid-1990s, a team of developers proposed a way to centralize the processing power of x86 servers to replace the expensive proprietary HPC systems at the time. Called Beowulf, it was not bound to a specific operating system at the time, and any free and open source operating system could do it. But its inventors used Linux, and then the trend began.

"what really carries Linux is the arrival of clusters around 2000, and that's when clusters really enter the HPC market," Conway said. "its attraction lies in commodity technologies, including Linux. Over the past decade, the HPC market has grown at a compound rate of 20%."

Beowulf also supports FreeBSD, so why didn't FreeBSD take off? Conway thinks it's one of those technologies that have good ideas but don't seize good opportunities.

Linux has something that FreeBSD doesn't have: Linus Torvalds (Linus Tovaz). Torvalds is a very tough leader, many people say he is too tough, he may be more boring to employees than Jobs. But he has always been the one who led Linux forward.

The last advantage is vendor support, which FreeBSD has never had. Linux has organized the company. Red Hat develops Linux in a way that FreeBSD never had. Finally came to the explosive port, SuSe and Canonical. Then there is the addition of big roles: in 1999, IBM announced support for Linux. Since then, the Unix system has become a "walking corpse", but no one knows yet.

Maybe Linux is not the pioneer of history, just standing on the shoulders of giants, but it is really tall.

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