Thread: Linux Turns 20 - Check out the New Horizon

Around 20 years ago, Linus Torvaldstold about his Operating System to Usenet discussion group. On Aug.25, 1991, he wrote, “Just a hobby, [it] won't be big andprofessional.” In the next post, he said, “Simply, I'd say thatporting [the OS to a different CPU] is impossible.” Actually, hehad started the project as a fun way to learn about Intel’s 80386processor unknown of the fact that something big is about to come.

Today, Linux has worked miraculously.It is available to modern processor architecture and can work onevery computing device including PC’s, smartphones, supercomputingclusters, netbooks and even more.

Linux has finally turned out to bebigger and professional and is supported by Dell, IBM, HP, Novell andOracle. As a matter of fact, Red Hat which is an S&P 500 Companyis the first Linux vendor having the total value of $7.3 billion.Nevertheless, it is widely known that during the period of 20 years,Microsoft has emerged as the biggest enemy of Linux.

However, as the open source OS enters anew decade, it has enormous opportunities to explore. The computingis changing at a greater speed and Linux has a huge role in it.Thankfully the drastic shift from Personal computers has led Linux toplay a role better than a mere OS.

It might be surprising to some butLinux is leading the new computing age. In 2003, the SCO Group hasbeen claiming that Linux is violating the intellectual property ofUNIX and has obtained market share due to commercial UNIX variantssuch as HP-UX, AIX, Solaris and Tru64. In addition, Microsoft hasalso alleged that Linux violates more than 200 of its patents.

It’s interesting to note that Linuxhas been highly innovative from the days of its infancy. UNIX workson RISC processors, a high end system. On the other hand, Microsofthas always been reluctant to use the Internet while Linux has beenutilizing Internet from the very beginning.

It is further dubious to believe thatthe present stature of Linux would have been unachievable without thepresence of Internet. In addition, the founder of Linux, Torvalds hada crucial role in the present life span of Linux. He still works oneach issue personally and has recently worked on Linux 3.0. It iswell known that Linux is an open source Operating system, andtherefore is the hard work of millions of programmers from across theglobe. Interestingly any one can download the program, check it out,modify and even use it without even paying a single cent. This iswhat has made Linux a maestro.

Programmers who have contributed to thesuccess of Linux have hailed from different backgrounds, some wereindividuals and others were students as well. However, in the lastfew years, people are using Linux for commercial viability. Out ofthe 30 Linux programmers, around 20 were doing it for commercial reasons. Besides these, other patrons to theopen source Operating System include Broadcom, Atheros, Intel,RealTek and Marvell.