Evolution Not Intelligent Design - GNU/LINUX

Whenever I start my computer and see the screen , I get to see a dream that has evolved over decades of work. It all started with one man Richard Matthew Stallman being unhappy with the state of affairs in the software space , where proprietary software was taking over. They were no longer able to share and modify software between friends and colleagues. The new device drivers that came did not have the source code available for improvement and modification. 

He started the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation(FSF). The target behind starting the GNU project was to come out with an Operating System in which user's will have the freedom to study, modify and distribute the original and modified versions of the software. 

For this purpose the FSF came out with the GNU General Public licence in 1989. The various components were made by contributions from programmers around the world , some of them hired by the FSF. Many did it for free. By 1989 most part of the operating system was ready except for the Kernal. Stallman went for an advanced Kernel design , name Hurd.

The Hurd project did not go according to plans and till today it is under development . However in 1991 and Finnish University student Linus Trovalds started a project to build a little operating system for personal use. He used lots of components made by FSF in this project. He was assisted by many programmers over the internet. The came out with a monolithic kernel and named it LINUX.  Linus released the kernal under the GNU General Public license in 1992 and thus the GNU/LINUX operating system was born. 

After this many organisations, businesses, individuals and univesities  provided many lines of codes to the operating system. Evolving it over a period of time.  Hundreads of distributions of different sizes and utilities came into existence. 

GNU/Linux is the most used server side operating system and 97% of all supercomputers in the world run on GNU/Linux. So the operating system is a beautiful machine that is created by contributions from thousands of people. 

GNU/Linux is used in machines of different shapes and sizes. Modified version of Linux Kernal is used in the Android Operating System, Firefox OS, Tizen etc. Linux is the OS of choice for single board computers like Parallella, Raspberry PI etc. 

Many people are now using GNU/Linux in their desktops and the numbers are going up. Its a powerful operating system that is rarely affected by any virus. 

Some interesting facts about GNU/LINUX.

1) The GNU/ LINUX operating system is called the Linux operating system by people. Actually it is a mistake. While Linus Trovalds only created the Kernel of the Linux Operating System as his final year project a the University of Helsinki. Much before that in 1985 Dr Richard Stallman started the Free Software Foundation and embarked on a mission to create a completely Free Operating System[Free in terms of Freedom not necessarily in terms of price. ] By the early 90s most of the operating system was complete but it lacked the Kernel. The Hurd Kernal that was being made for the GNU OS was far from completion at this time Linus released the Linux Kernal under Free License  and thus GNU/LINUX came into existence. 

2) GNU/ LINUX has lots of different distributions viz: Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Debian, Kali etc.  The creator of Debian Ian Murdock(there were other developers as well they were all communicating and sharing and delivering code over the internet) actually named it after his the then girlfriend Debra and his name Debra+ Ian = Debian.

3) Majority of the servers of the world use Linux as their Operating System. The reasons for that being .

   i) Linux is a FREE operating system. People are free to study , modify and distribute the source code of the operating system (both the original and modified versions). Because of this companies have the freedom to change the source code of the operating system as per their needs and requirements. 

   ii) Linux is far more stable than its competitor Windows. While Windows operating systems crash frequently there is hardly anyone who has seen a Linux Operating System crash.

 iii) Linux is far more secure than Windows , primarily because it is a multiuser Unix like Operating System and only the Administrator or the Root User has the administrative privileges and and few users and applications have the privilege to access the kernel . Because of this Linux is modular and well protected. 

     Unlike Windows there are hardly any issues with viruses on GNU/LINUX .

iv) The cost of ownership of Linux even the Enterprise version is far less than that of Windows. 


4) Different distributions of Linux are available for computers with different levels of hardware and again being Free OS it can scaled down to fit the requirements of a lower end computer. Take Raspberry PI for example, for  the lower processing power and RAM of the $ 20 computer, developers have come out with modified version of Debian and Fedora like Raspbian and Pidora operating systems. 

5) The world's most popular smartphone and tablet operating system Android has a kernel that is a modified version of the Linux Kernel. Firefox mobile OS is also a version of Linux. There are other versions of Linux based mobile OS coming up like Jolla Sailfish and Tizen.

GNU (GNU is Not Unix)

       As the title of these blog suggests the full form of GNU is GNU is Not Unix.The father of Free Software Movement Richard Stallman started the Free Software Foundation in 1983. There is an interesting description he gives as to why he started the Free Software Foundation , while working at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the 1970s he says they lived in an Free Software Enviroment there were lots of operating systems and other software with source codes available alongwith freedom to modify and distribute them in the community  but by the 1980s things changed and free software kept disappearing and the enviroment changed to more of proprietry software which Stallman felt was ugly , morally ugly.

           So Richard Stallman started the Free Software Foundation in 1983 with a goal to make it possible to use software and have freedom. For that to be practicle they needed an Operating System that was Free the only free OS at that time was PDP 10 which was obsolete in 1980s and so was many of the software that they had previously written.

         So they decided to build an operating system that was UNIX like and was totally FREE. For this the GNU project was started to build the GNU operating system.The following question was asked to Richard Stallman regarding the journey of  building the GNU OS (it is followed by the detailed answer given by RMS)

What was the journey to develop GNU/Linux like?

We had to start from a point that was just a little more than zero, and work our way up to freedom. There were a few free programs in 1983 when I started GNU, but those were in no way near a whole OS. There was a lot of work to do, and during the 1980s, we did it. There are hundreds of components that you need to have a UNIX-like OS, even at the most basic level. A few components we found with somebody else, who wrote them for different reasons, but were free software. But the other components we had to develop.

So I wrote some of them, and recruited people to write others, and in some cases, convinced people to develop free programs — for instance, the CSRG (Computer Systems Research Group) at Berkeley. They had written a lot of code to change UNIX, but their code was mixed in AT&T’s code, and so was proprietary. I met them in 1984 and requested them to separate their software and release it as free, which they subsequently did. I wanted to use that code in the GNU system.

By 1992, we had almost the complete GNU system, but one essential component was missing: the kernel. We started developing one in 1990. I chose an advanced design, which gave it somewhat the character of a research project, and it took six years to get a test version. Unfortunately, nobody succeeds every time. But we didn’t have to wait, because in February 1992, Linus Torvalds, who had a proprietary kernel called Linux, decided to make it free. The combination of the Linux kernel with the rest of the GNU system made a complete OS, which was basically GNU, but also contained Linux. So calling it only the Linux OS is wrong; it is the GNU/Linux OS.

 So you see what we call today LINUX  is actually GNU+LINUX it should be described as GNU/LINUX people are of the misconception that it was LINUS Trovalds who started it off Linus provided the Kernel to the GNU project and and GNU/LINUX  came into existence being free is was constantly developed and improved upon  to our present day Fedora,Debian,Android,Ubuntu,Mint and thousands of other distributions of GNU/LINUX .