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This article mainly introduces the history of the development of GNU/Linux, the article is very detailed, has a certain reference value, interested friends must read it!

Linux is a free-to-use and free-spread Unix-like operating system, which is mainly used on computers based on Intel x86 series CPU. This system is designed and implemented by thousands of programmers around the world. Its establishment is not restricted by the copyright of any commercial software and can be freely used by Unix-compatible products all over the world.

I. the invention of the computer

There is no way in the world, and when there are many people walking, there is a way. There is no computer in the world, so there are many people thinking about it. Without a computer, everything is out of the question.

The three people contributed greatly to the invention of the computer. Alan Turing (Alan Mathison Turing), Atanasov (John Vincent Atanasoff), and John von Neumann.

Turing theoretically proved the feasibility of computers; Atanasov practiced Turing's theory; and Von Neumann laid the architecture of modern computers.

Turing said it should be possible to do it, which has been proved; Atanasov made one without saying a word; Von Neumann said it would be better to do so.

Alan Matheson Turing

Turing did a lot of work and died miserably because he was gay. His last moment was to eat an apple stained with potassium cyanide. Some people say that Apple's Logo is in memory of Turing, which is not true. Turing was honored by the Turing Award, the highest award in the field of computer research, established by the American computer Society in 1966.

Atanasov was not well-known and lived a long time. The first computer in the world was the ABC computer invented by Atanasov, not the ENIAC in many books.

Von Neumann is handsome, smart, has a wide range of research fields and has many stories. The computers we use today are deeply branded, which is called the von Neumann architecture.

There are many theories about the father of computer, but there are different versions. All three people can be called the father of computer. Von Neumann was once regarded as the father of computers. Von Neumann said that he did not deserve it and that the honor should go to Turing.

In the early years, the computer centers all over the world were at Princeton University in the United States, with shining stars. Von Neumann used to work here, Turing studied here, and they chatted in the Princeton garden. Von Neumann wanted Turing to be his assistant, but was turned down.

Von Neumann

Second, the original Unix and C language

In the early days, the computer was large, there were many electronic components, and it cost a lot of electricity to start, and it was also very inconvenient to use. If nothing else, it is unbearable to do only one thing at a time. First cook the porridge, then cook the porridge half an hour later. A cook who spends a lot of money can cook when cooking porridge, isn't it? Doing one thing at a time is called a single task, which is stupid.

If you can't stand it, you have to think of a way, so someone came up with the idea of an operating system. The purpose of the operating system is to make the computer easier to use and play a greater role.

In 1965, MIT, Bell Labs and General Electric Co., Ltd. worked together to build a super operating system with a domineering name: Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing System), multiplexing information and computer systems. It allows multiple people to do many things at the same time, also known as a multi-user multi-tasking operating system.

Multics had a good name, didn't get it done, and his goal was so big that he didn't get paid for his ambition.

In 1969, the progress of the Multics project was slow and was forced to stop, and the two people involved in the project, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, were idle. They're all from Bell Labs. If there is no work to do, just play games. The two of them found a broken computer to play a game they developed before.

In the process of porting the game to an idle machine (PDP-7), a simple operating system is implemented. By 1970, this simple system was available, but only for two people at the same time. Some people make fun of them, saying that your stupid thing is far from Multics, so call it Unics (UNiplexed Information and Computing Service). Unics is the opposite of Multics, making fun of Multics rather than making fun of them. Ken Thompson changed his name slightly to Unix.

Since then, the Unix era began. 1970 is the first year of Unix, and this year is already the year of Unix46. The calculation of the Unix timestamp from January 1, 1970 has a lot to do with the time when Unix was born.

The early operating system was first written in assembly language, which is low-level and backward and painful to write. In the process of developing Unix, Thompson invented B language, and Ritchie made improvements on the basis of B language, which is called C language.

After the invention of the C language, Ritchie and Brian W. Kernighan, a colleague at Bell Labs, co-authored a book on the C language, which was later called Krisr. Kernighan is not as famous as Ritchie, but he is not mortal. Unix commands that the K in Awk is Kernighan.

Then Thompson and Ritchie rewrote the Unix system in C language. The result was quite satisfactory and Unix was able to meet people. In 1974, Dennis M. Ritchie and Ken Thompson published their first paper on UNIX, "The UNIX Time Sharing System", and Unix has been widely known ever since.

In recent years, the center of the world's computer has been Bell Labs, Thompson, Ritchie, Kernighan and many more. Both Thompson and Ritchie later won the Turing Award.

If you plant flowers intentionally, you will not live, but if you plant willows unintentionally, you will become shady. Multics goal is ambitious, did not succeed, Unix and C language at the beginning did not think so much, but also spare time works, and finally become a great career!

Unix and C language are evergreen trees in the computer field. From the invention until now has maintained the exuberant vitality, since the invention has basically maintained the original appearance, it shows that it is great!

Unix

C language

Third, the chaotic development process of Unix

As soon as Unix appeared, it attracted people's attention, and many people asked Thompson and Ritchie for the source code of Unix. It was an open era, an era of mutual learning and research, and it was common to share the source code of programs with others. A copy of the Unix source code has been spread to various laboratories, schools, companies.

There is a group of people who are keen on Unix at the University of California, Berkeley. After they get the source code, they continue to study and improve, which has greatly promoted the development of Unix.

There are two main lines of Unix development at this stage, one within Bell Labs and the other at Berkeley. Berkeley's achievements are brilliant, and they are responsible for the implementation of the famous TCP/IP protocol on Unix. Later, the Unix they made was called BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution).

Berkeley has the same splendor at the moment, and the most outstanding one is Bill 喜悦. Author of a series of software such as Bill Joy,Vi, Csh, etc., and founder of Sun. Without Sun, there would be no Java language today.

When Unix was born, Bell Labs was barred from the computer business because of antitrust laws. In fact, I did not expect that the development momentum of Unix is so good.

By 1983, AT&T, the parent company of Bell Labs, had been forcibly split into several small companies and was no longer subject to antitrust laws. At this time, AT&T released the latest version of Unix System V, announcing that from now on Unix can only be used commercially and is no longer open source. AT&T wants to make a lot of money with Unix.

BSD has been greatly affected. They don't want to rush to make money. They want to open source. No way, Berkeley decided to rewrite the affected source code in BSD. Several students from Berkeley set up a company to develop the BSD project. Until one day, they announced that there was no original source code from Bell Labs in BSD. AT&T does not buy it, sue you, sue, file a lawsuit.

This is a long lawsuit, before the lawsuit is over, the Unix copyright has been resold several times. Several companies that bought the rights continued to sue BSD, and several companies also sued each other.

When the smoke dissipated, BSD finally launched its own Unix, because of copyright problems, can no longer be called Unix, can only be called Unix-like system.

BSD's Unix-like system is the predecessor of FreeBSD and MacOS. The operating systems on Apple computers and iPhone phones used today are all developed from the BSD.

The long lawsuit drained people's enthusiasm for BSD and let BSD miss the best development opportunity. Later, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD were all differentiated from BSD, free, open source, excellent, but never regained their glory, because there is already Linux.

Unix development process diagram

4. Dr. Stallman's GNU plan

When AT&T wants to make money from Unix, not only AT&T, but many commercial companies want to make money from software. No longer free, no longer open source code, no longer learn and study each other through the source code.

What a good time it used to be, why do you only recognize money now? All this makes a person very dissatisfied. He once saw that there was something wrong with the system and wanted a copy of the source code to help modify it, and others sneered.

The world is declining, he wants to challenge this frustrating era, he wants to return an open source, free system and the world. Please remember this person's name, Dr. Richard Stallman (Richard Matthew Stallman).

Stallman is a veteran hacker and author of Emacs. Emacs and the aforementioned Vi are two powerful editing tools in the computer field. Which is more powerful, Emacs or Vi, is one of the most controversial topics. In order to fight less, never say Mercedes-Benz to the owner of a BMW.

Dr. Stallman has long hair, a big beard, slovenly, and has always been single. He devoted himself to the free software movement and founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF). He came up with a great plan with ambition, the GNU (GNU's not Unix) plan. Not Unix, not Unix, is a free, free, open source system as easy to use as Unix.

Dr. Richard Stallman.

GNU is going well at first, and GLibc, GCC, GDB, and this series of essential operating system software are all progressing methodically. All "G" come from the initials of Gnu. Why is it called "G"? Dr. Stallman said he thought it was funny at the time, and he listened to a song when he was a child and liked it very much. The name of the song was "The Gnu".

It didn't seem easy to build a complete operating system, and GNU didn't realize he was in big trouble until he finished a lot of software. The kernel project Hurd of the GNU system has been slow to be satisfactory. The kernel is to the operating system what an engine is to a car.

5. The birth of Linux

In 1991, Linus Torvalds was a student at the University of Helsinki in Finland. He studied the operating system at the university. He also wanted to play with an operating system. He was already using Bash, GCC and other software of the Gnu project. Influenced by GNU, he put a crude operating system kernel on the Internet.

This kernel system is Linux,Linus's Unix,Linus 's Unix. The name was not chosen by Linux, his usual style was to make fun of it, but at that time the administrator said that Linux was fine, so the name was decided.

Linux has aroused the interest of many people after it was put on the Internet, and they have joined the Linux development process through the Internet. In 1993, more than 100 programmers participated in the Linux kernel code. At this time, it is the era of the Internet, they do not need to know each other, do not have to meet, through online discussion, through online collaboration, to promote Linux.

With the release of Linux1.0 in March 1994, Linux has become a basic usable kernel. From then on, Linux never stepped on the brakes and grew from a seedling to a towering tree step by step.

Linus was attacked by penguins when he was a child. He chose penguins when he ordered Logo for Linux. I don't know what the logic is. Besides QQ, there is also Linux who looks like a penguin.

Linux has created an unprecedented software development model. Many people work together, the code is submitted at any time, and there are problems to be modified in time. All the participants are not elites, but a group of enthusiastic supporters. Before and after countless people participated in the development of the Linux project, the organization is not very rigorous, there are a lot of quarrels and discussions. Linus often writes code and occasionally acts as an arbiter rather than a traditional leader.

Later, Eric Raymond, the trumpeter of the open source movement, wrote an article called "Cathedral and Mart" to analyze the development model of Linux. The cathedral must design good drawings, the use of excellent craftsmen, orderly engineering plan can be built, noisy and disorderly as the vegetable market can build a cathedral? The answer is yes, because they have built it.

Linus later admitted that when he developed Linux, he didn't know about projects such as FreeBSD, and if he had known, he wouldn't have written Linux. At that time, various BSD systems were under the shadow of litigation, which promoted the development of Linux to some extent.

At the beginning, they did not have any drawings. While they were building, they invited people to visit. If something went wrong, they could fix it at any time. In some places, they simply pushed it down and started all over again. They have no strict organization, only a general division of labor. People are using the church all the time, giving them all kinds of advice. The church they built is good enough. The church they built has never been completed and will continue to be built.

Eric Raymond has to mention that he worked with Dr. Stallman in his early years and helped Dr. Stallman modify the Emacs code. He is better at giving speeches and writing articles than writing programs. "Cathedral and Bazaar" is a masterpiece of open source culture. Dr. Stallman is the spiritual leader of the open source movement, and Raymond is the evangelist and theorist of the open source movement.

VI. Various distributions of Linux

Isn't it a perfect match that while the GNU project struggles for the kernel, the Linux kernel project comes out of nowhere? Yes, quick hands didn't have time to sympathize with Dr. Stallman's pain and put together a bunch of GNU projects and Linux to build a new system, GNU/Linux.

Well, finally, you can use it, and you can use a completely free, open source system.

Today, many people call the system they use Linux, which is very unfair and indifferent to the work of GNU. The correct name is GNU/Linux.

With GNU/Linux is not everything, can only be a basic operating system, in order to use better, there is still a lack of a lot of software. It's like having a Windows system, without Word, without Excel, without browsers, without games, and there's not much to do.

Fortunately, in the era of the birth of GNU/Linux, there have been many excellent open source projects, they have nothing to do with GNU, some personal development, some organizational development, all follow the concept of free and open source. These open source projects include Apache, Perl, Python, Vim, TeX, and so on.

People in the storage system simply put it together, which is the so-called GNU/Linux distribution. The first company to build GNU/Linux systems was Redhat, and then there were a lot of GNU/Linux distributions, Slackware, Mandrake, Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu, and so on. Some are dead, some are alive and well.

The so-called GNU/Linux distribution is a set of GNU/Linux saved up. Choose the basic software from the GNU project, plus the Linux kernel, find a bunch of open source software that is free and licensed under a copyright agreement, and finally do an installation program, and you're done. A better distribution is generally more thoughtful, and it is easier to update, install, and uninstall the software package.

Can you save a GNU/Linux distribution yourself? Of course, Linux From Scratch, an online project, teaches you to build your own GNU/Linux distribution from scratch step by step.

In 2002, South African businessman Mark Shuttleworth spent $20 million on a trip to space in a Russian spaceship. The following year, he founded Canonical, a company dedicated to promoting open source culture, and launched Ubuntu, a GNU/Linux distribution. Rich people do things differently. Ubuntu has done too well. GNU/Linux users have joined in one after another. Ubuntu basically unifies the jianghu of GNU/Linux distribution.

VII. Behind GNU/Linux and open source culture

GNU/Linux has come * *, * * although it has not become a system in most people's computers, but everyone can't do without it. Many Internet companies have GNU/Linux running on their servers, but the list is not fully confirmed, such as Google, Facebook, Taobao, Baidu, Tencent, Fiction Reader, and so on.

The Android phones that most people use are also based on the Linux kernel.

The prosperity of GNU/Linux has grand plans, personal efforts, and many invisible forces at play.

Without Unix, there would be no GNU/Linux, and it is Unix that gives great inspiration.

There is no C language, there is no GNU/Linux,C language simple, elegant, between high-level language and low-level language, the preferred programming language for the development of system software.

Without the development of a series of Unix standards, there would be no prosperity of GNU/Linux. The standard is "cars on the same track, books on the same text, unified weights and measures". Qin Shihuang can be regarded as the earliest standard maker. Following the Posix standard paves the way for the development of GNU/Linux.

Without the Internet, there would be no GNU/Linux,GNU/Linux. It is not developed by one person, but the result of the cooperation of countless people around the world. It would be unthinkable without the Internet. Of course, GNU/Linux also feeds the Internet. Countless Internet companies use GNU/Linux to build servers, and GNU/Linux also promotes the prosperity of the Internet.

Without Dr. Stallman's efforts, there would be no GNU/Linux. His contribution is not only to create the GNU organization, but also to write Emacs, GCC and GDB. His spirit inspires countless people to contribute to the open source movement.

And of course Raymond's arms waved and shouted, waving flags and shouting.

There are also people and organizations who developed open source projects before the birth of GNU/Linux. Because Larry Wall was lazy, he was obsessed with reports all day and released the Perl language. Professor Gartner stopped important work for ten years because he was dissatisfied with the typesetting workers, and invented the great typesetting software TeX;Guido. In order to get rid of the boredom of Christmas, he wrote a new script language, Python.

After the release of GNU/Linux, under the influence of our predecessors, countless people accepted the ideas and ideas of open source, accepted the baptism of open source culture, and sprung up the open source culture movement. Countless people and organizations who have contributed to open source projects have released PHP, MySQL, Ruby, Node.js, X.Org, Gnome, KDE. They enrich GNU/Linux, they further promote the open source culture movement, and they continue to inspire others.

The original intention of KDE (Kool Desktop Environment) is to develop an easy-to-use desktop system. Windows system is a kind of desktop, easy to use, not like programmers working on black screens all day. For desktop systems to have browsers, they divided into a group of KHTML to develop browsers. There are very few browsers in the world that can develop core browsers, and KDE has done it. Later, Apple quarreled with Microsoft and wanted to develop its own browser, which was based on KHMTL and developed its own browser Safari. The core browser module of KHTML is called Webkit. When Google launched Android phones, the browser was also based on Webkit.

Today's browsers for both iPhone and Android phones are Webkit kernels.

The formulation of various copyright license agreements also paves the way for the development of GNU/Linux, including GNU's GPL and LGPL, as well as Apache License and BSD agreements. It is impossible for everyone to have a copyright agreement for their own open source agreement project, and a good copyright license agreement has been established to make the software spread better.

As a matter of fact, open source is not free. Some people say that GPL uses freedom to obliterate freedom. The GPL license requires that any software that contains an GPL license must be released with open source. BSD and Apache License are relatively loose and can be regarded as quasi-free software.

Version management software also contributed to the development of GNU/Linux and the open source culture movement. The Linux kernel was originally developed using commercial version management software, but one day Mr. Linus Torvalds got unhappy and made one of his own. He likes to take the name of self-mockery and tease and name it Git, which means something useless.

Git is not useless, it is so easy to use, the Linux kernel source code has been managed by Git ever since. Git is free and open source, and Git has made a great website github.com, a great source project hosting website. Many open source projects have hosted the source code on Github.

The above is all the contents of this article "what is the History of GNU/Linux?" Thank you for reading! Hope to share the content to help you, more related knowledge, welcome to follow the industry information channel!

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