The Linux Operating System |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Linux is a UNIX-like operating system that is largely (and increasingly) POSIX-compliant (1). It was first written by Linus Torvalds (see The Rampantly Unofficial Linus Torvalds FAQ ), who started in 1991 with the idea of learning the capabilities of an 80386 processor for task switching. Originally named Freax , it was originally hosted using the Minix operating system. Linus' complaints with Minix were that it was written:
A pretty good flame war over this ensued on Usenet involving such luminaries as Linus Torvalds, Andrew Tanembaum, Ted T'so, David Miller, and others; see Linux is Obsolete Both of these design assumptions seemed crippling, sacrificing performance for academics. The assumptions for Linux have changed slightly since then; portability now is a goal, and it is certainly not simply an ``academic'' requirement for software. It notably moved up on the priority list when Digital Equipment Corporation (now a Compaq company ) gave Linus an Alpha-based system; today there are commercial enterprises actively selling and supporting products based on the various ports to IA-32, PowerPC, MIPS , Alpha, and ARM architectures. Since that time thousands of people have contributed patches, fixes, and improvements to the kernel, adding improved performance and support for many devices and file systems, as well as an increasing variety of platforms. Linus presently works for the formerly rather secretive Transmeta Corporation. Linus' fame has regrettably resulted in there being something of a ``personality cult'' surrounding him, with kids that I'd have to term as ``worshippers.''
The "cult" began fairly early when an FTP site administrator hated the name Freax and insisted on using the more "egotistcal" name Linux. Of course, the "worshippers" have gotten younger and more clueless over the years... The historically original and still the primary platform supported is that of IA-32 (aka``Wintel-PCs'') but there are now ports to many other CPUs. The IA-32 , Alpha, and SPARC versions can reasonably be regarded as ``production versions;'' MkLinux on PPC should soon be in that form. For more architectural details see Linux Architecture.
More details can be found at the following site: About the Linux's author: Linux's suppliers: |
||||||
|
Designed by Nguyen Thanh Qui April 03 2004 Digital Signal Processing Lab
|
||||||
