The Making of Linux: The World's First Open-Source Operating System

[@fknight]

*Edit from May 2023:* The second episode in this series just launched! The Making of GNU: The World's First Open-Source Software - kzbin.info/www/bejne/qYKnp56aZ9ynrrc 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!

[@robgrainger5314]

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.

[@JoeyGarcia]

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.

[@kinkinkijkin]

@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.

[@jfbeam]

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.

[@TymexComputing]

Anyone got HURD by this video ? :-D

[@qwertykeyboard5901]

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!

[@Bomkz]

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.

[@sleepete12]

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]

@@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.

[@sleepete12]

@@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...

[@sleepete12]

@@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

[@jamesrosemary2932]

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.

[@randomrfkov]

That was relatively fast.

[@masterkamen371]

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.

[@josemedeiros007]

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.

[@TruthDoesNotExist]

I remember 3 month months ago flashing a usb with gentoo and taking 10 hours to compile and install i to my laptop

[@IvanToshkov]

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.

[@so1044]

this and also the fact that Linux is the reason git even exists today

[@leogama3422]

And the number of contributors also

[@usualAl]

Squash & merge?

[@hixo6780]

Where can you find the full commit history? Is it lost/seperated from the modern repository?

[@snooks5607]

@@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

[@dordly]

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.

[@arkates3625]

scrolled way too much to find someone mentioning this.

[@n.m4497]

Wrong, he got told about Open Source and convinced by one of his friends to make it free through the GPL license

[@cccmmm1234]

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.

[@guardrover]

This is a great comment

[@shallex5744]

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

[@_marlene]

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!!

[@xSuperFryx]

Windows > Linux

[@MarcABrown-tt1fp]

@@xSuperFryx You're a year late bud.

[@herdenq]

@@MarcABrown-tt1fp A year late and incorrect

[@NoSpeechForTheDumb]

FreeBSD > max(Linux, Windows)

[@ShaferHart]

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).

[@rickintexas1584]

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.

[@georgecopeland5426]

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.

[@kenoliver8913]

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.

[@georgecopeland5426]

@@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.

[@Kaboomnz]

@@kenoliver8913 Just because KZbin 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.

[@badstate]

Why haven't you tried out Linux? It's free, you know!

[@wcrb15]

I'm loving these video essays you've been doing. :)

[@fknight]

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!

[@taneliharkonen2463]

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

[@007rockford]

You will create new karnel Tanelix.... you can do it 😌

[@Michael_Walsh]

good review of the Linux kernel and clarified the difference between a kernel and userspace, well done. Subbed

[@DominicRichens]

@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.

[@pamus6242]

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.

[@nsssayom]

Beautiful! I can't appraciate enough the easy flow of this video. Great work...

[@JayMartMedia]

I actually teared up during this video out of sheer awe. Nice vid.

[@m4rt_]

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.

[@williambroughman]

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

[@techguy16]

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.

[@staninjapan07]

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

[@rafaelpalmalima]

Nice compilation of Linux history 👏🏻 it'll definitely help new users understand the importance of Linux in the IT world.

[@bigbrothertw]

its cool to see you brought up minix, normally it gets skipped over in discussions ive had

[@NoSpeechForTheDumb]

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...

[@aribashhar3960]

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.

[@fknight]

Very cool! I'll add Edsger to the list! Thank you for sharing. I'll see what I can do about those longer videos 😉

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

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.”

[@rxphi5382]

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?

[@fknight]

I can do that. Adding it to the list!

[@rxphi5382]

@@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😁

[@fknight]

@@rxphi5382 that’s great to hear, congrats! Glad I could help

[@olumideajose2162]

Please I will like you to speak more abt the linux architecture. How it all works together and how to build your own distro

[@fknight]

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

[@olumideajose2162]

Linux is a gold mine, always fascinating

[@n.m4497]

You don't build your own distro. It's doable but requires lots of work.

[@mskiptr]

@@n.m4497 Linux From Scratch lesgooo!!!

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

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.

[@HardTrancid]

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.

[@Vash.Baldeus]

8:54 No mention of Suse?

[@AustenWho]

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.

[@K2_Chris]

Yeah I was surprised too...

[@FishKungfu]

Me too since Slackware came out in 1993.

[@NomadicWolf]

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.

[@loathingkernel6537]

> 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.

[@bearcb]

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.

[@ioanstef1983]

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!

[@PixelSheep]

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 👍

[@olympian3]

My favourite part was when he yelled “ITS LINUXIN TIME” and GNUed all over the place

[@gilbert1975nf]

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.

[@Atomic-Purple-Guy]

I'd love to meet Linus . He's one of my Heroes. He just wanted to make something that was open source and free.

[@djanthony6662]

Started with Slackware 4.0 as my first distro many years ago. Still feels like yesterday.

[@WoefulMinion]

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.

[@josemedeiros007]

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.

[@hibbertsa]

What an amazing video. Thanks for the education my friend!

[@terminalvelocity4858]

Watching this on Arch Linux which I have used for almost 6 years now. Linux is amazing!

[@thunderseere]

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.

[@cinskybuhsrandy5099]

Thanks, watching this on Debian, been using it since potato was stable.

[@leogama3422]

​@@cinskybuhsrandy5099 Are you writing this from a keyboard plugged into a potato? 😅

[@cinskybuhsrandy5099]

​@@leogama3422 I'm writing this from a keyboard plugged into a bookworm, I'm not stuck in the past.

[@neerajwa]

True. Stability is the most desirable quality for any user .

[@HarhaMedia]

Extra stability is good but not for the normal desktop user. I prefer Gentoo to get the latest versions of kernel and software easily.

[@Brutus34100]

Hi ForrestKnight, this was an excellent presentation.

[@corewarrior]

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.

[@fknight]

In that case, maybe I'll have to make a video about Git

[@coolbrotherf127]

@@fknight That would be cool. I really don't know much about the history of Git.

[@DRSDavidSoft]

It's very interesting, I'm subbing so hopefully you make a video on Git: The History!

[@Shvmadogg]

I can't see how the hell is that relevant for this video. It's not a video titled: Linus Trovalds projects or something

[@wadecodez]

Git was developed by Linus

[@Mon.k.e.y]

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.

[@dmays67]

Adopted LINUX oh God 30 odd years ago. Loving the journey. Loving the philosophy. Here for my OPEN SOURCE brothers and sisters :) What a feeling!!

[@testowykana1763]

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.

[@thatonedudemike3259]

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

[@solomonthatcher7247]

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 ;)

[@troyroa7768]

Loving this new video format

[@vishaldinesh]

Hey you're doing great, keep these coming

[@dmays67]

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!!

[@ArchLars]

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.

[@APO208]

Awesome video! Really appreciated it!

[@akshaystravelogue]

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!

[@pinoyguitartv]

Yey, another great programming channel to binge on 🥳

[@fanaFSF]

This is one of the best summaries I have ever seen. And it also included Stallman and the GNU project. Thank you very much

[@krazeemonkee]

my, my what a pretty monospaced font @0:14.. my i please inquire of its name 🙏🏽

[@merik7928]

i think what i get from this project is that the profit motive holds everyone back, as you said with those stats of how much linux is used and how it helped progress alot of things just proves that community driven, working together with the main goal of actually improving things with smart minds, in contrast to making things for the sole purpose being... profit.

[@Honeypotio]

Nice one @fknight! 👏

[@ankanroy2]

If anyone from the IT industry deserve credit it's one man THE LINUS TORVALD

[@kds8709]

Banger of a video bro, your channel is a goldmine! Linux the WORLD

[@fknight]

Appreciate it!

[@sakamocat]

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!

[@playlisthive_90s]

One can't even fathom or acknowledge the impact it had towards the growth of human kind and civilization is just astounding

[@programmingmindset]

Linus Torvalds, the living legend. No one can ignore him.

[@iwerkcor-v8173]

Nah it's Terry Andrew Davis remember that name.

[@fachadolid3030]

A copy/thief is what l-anus torvalds

[@3v068]

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

[@liquidmobius]

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]

Microkernels are pretty much a relic of history at this stage. ∗cough∗ GNU Hurd ∗cough∗

[@liquidmobius]

@@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.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

@@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.

[@liquidmobius]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 You mean like macOS?

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

@@liquidmobius That’s FreeBSD-based. Why not mention MINIX? That is a “true” microkernel design.

[@hamtrucker]

I love Linux! I am still a amateur user, but I will never go back!

[@gregwhittier5206]

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).

[@kieronwiltshire1701]

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.

[@switchp8286]

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.

[@kieronwiltshire1701]

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.

[@JoeyGarcia]

@@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.

[@switchp8286]

@@JoeyGarcia It's just the way it is

[@reralt]

Loving the new contents bro. Keep them coming .

[@fknight]

Absolutely, will do! I'll keep them coming as long as you keep watching

[@dannybsmusic2539]

Loved the video Forrest!

[@dennislee5582]

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.

[@gascham]

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.

[@leogama3422]

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.

[@dennislee5582]

@@leogama3422 indeed, and was released only a few weeks after Slackware in 1993. Never used Debian so was not aware of it.

[@ReinierKleipool]

My first installation of Linux was Slackware.

[@jamesclarke8564]

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.

[@themaninblack1316]

Thank you Forrest 🧡

[@MilMike]

Love this kind of videos from you. Entertaining and I learned something. Keep it up!

[@anthonydunn729]

You said this started with Linus wanting an open source version. But I didn't know that term even EXISTED before Linux. But if it did then the story of Linux arguably begins with THAT. Aaand now I have to go look that up.

[@D0J0P]

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]

BSD development has a whole different culture around it -- more centralized, less adaptable. I doubt it could have filled the gap.

[@D0J0P]

@@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.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

@@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.

[@leogama3422]

​@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 But it could have tampered with the development of an alternative to the point of it being unpractical...

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

@@leogama3422 Not a chance. Open-source is about enhancing competition, not killing it.

[@josemedeiros007]

My friend and I bought Redhat 5.1 in 1997, before that I had Slackware 2.0 from a Linux book I bought in 1996 at Computer Literacy in San Jose, 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 to dual boot Windows 95 and Linux. When I worked at Valinux in late 1998 we installed RedHat 5.2 with KDE that was unsupported at the time on users desktops.

[@danielrhouck]

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]

Also, what about Minix, I think this existed before Linux?

[@danielrhouck]

@@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.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

IBM’s OSes were never “open source”. Source code may have been available to customers, but under restrictions.

[@danielrhouck]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 Huh, okay, Wikipedia listed them as public domain and I couldnʼt find anything skimming about that being a recent change.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

@@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.

[@chucklanman3315]

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.

[@felipedelima123]

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.

[@tiderbean]

Nor OpenSolaris

[@smtek]

Nice piece of history! I believe the final push distros needed to become a full alternative to Windows was done by Valve with the Proton layer. It's been almost two years now daily driving Linux without needing to boot up Windows!

[@CayoBuay]

Isn't it GNU/Linux? 😁 Wonderful coverage of the history, thanks for sharing.

[@rogerdeutsch5883]

Fantastic video. Subscribed to this channel, because of the great quality. 👍🏽

[@mikkoolavijarvinen3653]

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.

[@blitzio]

Awesome historical documentary of Linux, really learned a lot and appreciate it

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

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.

[@sk-sm9sh]

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.

[@Nemethon]

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. :)

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

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.

[@PCartCast]

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.

[@pravinpalve3771]

does Linus deserve Nobel price?

[@Iamharshal01]

Why not

[@pushkarshinde2561]

Yes.

[@Checkit-]

Yes

[@worde2000]

Over Due

[@robbylebotha]

He deserves the Nobel Peace prize. I have no idea if he has it yet but if not, a petition ahould be made, if anyone who has any device that runs on Linux has to vote for him, so basically, thats about 7 billion votes, give or take.

[@fierytuner]

missing opportunity of calling it "...gnuanced than that" @ 3:50 xD

[@patmaloyan620]

Just subbed, great video. Will continue to watch other ones seem interesting.

[@lionpersia]

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.

[@brostenen]

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.

[@fachadolid3030]

Youre lying, lanus didnt write nothing, he copied minix

[@noodlechan_]

As I am taking a class about Operating Systems in university with Linux being the case of study, I'm loving it.

[@NoSpeechForTheDumb]

I hope they teached you that Linux is the Kernel of an operating system called GNU/Linux.

[@noodlechan_]

@@NoSpeechForTheDumb Everyone knows that

[@NoSpeechForTheDumb]

@@noodlechan_ oh, if people know that and still say it wrong they are twice as ignorant I presume.

[@noodlechan_]

​@@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...

[@NoSpeechForTheDumb]

@@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?

[@momentomoridoth2007]

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.

[@Pugopugo]

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!

[@nickbuchholz6841]

The pi chart at 10:00 adds up to like 153%

[@screweddevelopment12]

9:59 those numbers don’t add to 100, and ‘primary OS’ suggests that they are mutually exclusive

[@KevinRollman]

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 KZbin 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.

[@ciano5475]

And did'nt want to pay for MINIX

[@leogama3422]

And what is cheaper than an _actual_ homemade solution, right? The guy is a freaking genius

[@techwithtee8721]

@@ciano5475 paid for minix? Minix was designed to teach CS students on how the OS works

[@ciano5475]

@@techwithtee8721 but before 2000 wasn't free, it had a commercial licence

[@Lucasalastuey]

I'd add fedora came from a branch of RedHat and CentOs an Initial copy of Redhat Enterprise, ubuntu, kali, mint, and the swiss pocket knife DSL based on Debian...I remember old battles was vi vs emacs and Tanenbaum vs Linus

[@michaelcook5585]

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

[@tekvax01]

not to mention suse, mandrake, caldera, Yggdrasil, etc!

[@weaselontheclock6695]

Why does the PI chart @ 10:01 add up to well above 100% for primary OS's

[@DV-ml4fm]

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.

[@alfiegordon9013]

That and GNU isn't at all necessary nowadays

[@DV-ml4fm]

@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.

[@TheOneOriginalPolo]

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 ;)

[@BrianSmith-ct3kh]

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.

[@oglothenerd]

BSD is a FOSS OS that came before Linux.

[@fknight]

BSD wasn't a complete FOSS OS. 386BSD was the first for BSD, and released after Linux.

[@oglothenerd]

@@fknight Ah, okay.