2.3.3. GNU/Linux comes onstage
In July 1991 Linus Torvalds (a Finnish 21-year old student) placed his first
message mentioning his project (at the time) to build a free system similar
to Minix. In September he released the very first version (0.01), and every
few weeks new versions would appear. In March 1994 version 1.0 appeared,
the first one to be called stable, though the kernel that Linus built had been
usable for several months. During this period, literally hundreds of developers
turned to Linux, integrating all the GNU software around it, as well as XFree
and many more free programs. Unlike the *BSDs, the Linux kernel and a large
number of the components integrated around it were distributed with the GPL
licence.
Of the many developments to have emerged around Linux, one of the most
interesting is the distribution concept1. The first distributions appeared soon,
in 1992 (MCC Interim Linux, of the University of Manchester; TAMU, of Texas
A&M, and the most well-known, SLS, which later gave rise to Slackware, which
is still being distributed in the first decade of 2000), entailing the arrival of
competition into the world of systems packaged around Linux. Each distribution
tries to offer a ready-to-use GNU/Linux, and starting from the basis of
the same software has to compete by making improvements considered important
by their user base. In addition to providing pre-compiled ready-to-use
packages, the distributions also tend to offer their own tools for managing the
selection, installation, replacement and uninstallation of these packages, in
addition to the initial installation on the computer, and the management and
administration of the operating system.
Over time, distributions have succeeded each other as different ones became
the most popular. Of them all, we would highlight the following:
1) Debian, developed by a community of volunteer users.
2) Red Hat Linux, which was first developed internally by the company Red
Hat, but which later adopted a more community-based model, giving rise
to Fedora Core.
3) Suse, which gave rise to OpenSUSE, following a similar evolution to Red
Hat.
4) Mandriva (successor of Mandrake Linux and Conectiva).
5) Ubuntu, derived from Debian and produced on the basis of Debian by the
company Canonical.
gnuLinEx
In the beginning of 2002 the Extremadura Regional Government publicly announced
the gnuLinEx project. The idea was simple: to promote the creation
of a distribution based on GNU/Linux with the fundamental objective of using
it on the thousands of computers to be installed in public schools throughout
the region. Extremadura, situated in the western part of Spain, bordering
Portugal, has approximately 1 million inhabitants and has never stood out
for its technological initiatives. In fact, the region had practically no software
industry.
In this context, gnuLinEx has made a very interesting contribution to the free
software panorama on a global scale. Beyond being just a new distribution of
GNU/Linux based on Debian (which is still a worthy anecdote), and beyond
its enormous impact on the mass media (it was the first time that Extremadu
ra made the front cover of The Washington Post and one of the first that a
free software product did), what is extraordinary is the (at least apparently)
solid backing of a public administration for free software. The Regional Government
of Extremadura decided to try a different model where educational
software was concerned, and then to extend this model to all the software
used within the scope of its influence. This has made it the first public administration
of a developed country to have decisively adopted this approach.
A lot of interest was generated around the Regional Government's initiative,
within Extremadura and outside of it: there are academies that teach IT using
gnuLinEx; books have been written to support this teaching; computers are
being sold with gnuLinEx pre-installed. In general, they are trying to create
an educational and business fabric around this experience in order to give it
support. And the experience has been exported. At the beginning of the 21st
century, several autonomous communities in Spain have backed free software
in education (in one way or another), and in general, its importance for public
administrations is widely acknowledged.
Knoppix
Since the end of the nineties, there are GNU/Linux distributions that can be
easily installed, but Knoppix, whose first version appeared in 2002, has probably
allowed this idea to reach its full expression. It is a CD that boots on almost
any PC, converting it (without even having to format the disk, since it can be
used "live") into a fully functional GNU/Linux machine, with a selection of the
most frequent tools. Knoppix combines good automatic hardware detection
with a good choice of programs and "live" functioning. For example, it allows
a rapid and direct experience of what it means to work with GNU/Linux. And
it is giving rise to an entire family of distributions of the same type, specialised
for the specific requirements of a user profile.
OpenOffice.org
In 1999, Sun Microsystems bought a German company called Stardivision,
whose star product was StarOffice, a suite of office applications similar in functionality
to the Microsoft Office set of tools. One year later, Sun distributed
most of the StarOffice code under a free licence (the GPL) creating the
OpenOffice.org project. This project released version 1.0 of OpenOffice.org
in May 2002. OpenOffice.org has become a quality suite of office applications
with a similar functionality to that of any other office product, and,
more importantly, it interoperates very well with the Microsoft Office data
formats. These features have made it the reference free software application
in the world of office suites.
Mozilla, Firefox and the rest
Practically since its appearance in 1994 until 1996, Netscape Navigator was
the unchallenged market leader in web browsers, with market shares of up
to 80%. The situation started to change when Microsoft included Internet Explorer
with Windows 95, causing Netscape Navigator to gradually lose market
share. At the beginning of 1998 Netscape announced that it was going to
distribute a large part of its navigator code as free software, which it did in
March that same year, launching the Mozilla project. For quite a while the
project was clouded by uncertainty, and even pessimism (for example, when
its leader, Jamie Zawinski, abandoned it), because as time went by no product
was resulting from its launch.
The case of SCO
At the beginning of 2003, the SCO corporation (formerly Caldera Systems and
Caldera International) presented a legal case against IBM for alleged breach
of its intellectual property rights. Although the case was complex, it centred
on the accusation that IBM had contributed to the Linux kernel with code
belonging to SCO. In May 2007, the matter had still not been resolved and had
even become more complicated by further legal suits (IBM and Red Hat against
SCO, SCO against AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler, two large IT users) and by
SCO's campaigns threatening to pursue big companies that used Linux, etc.
Ubuntu, Canonical, Fedora and Red Hat
Although Canonical (the company that produces and distributes Ubuntu)
could be considered a recent arrival to the business of GNU/Linux distributions,
its activities deserve our attention. In a relatively short time, Ubuntu
has established itself as one of the best known and most widely used distributions,
with a reputation for good quality, and great ease of installation and
use. Ubuntu also stands out for its greater attention to including fundamentally
free software than most distributions produced by companies.
Customised distributions
Since Linux came onto the scene, a large number of groups and companies
have created their own distributions based on it. But during these years, the
phenomenon has caught on with many organisations and companies that
want customised versions for their own requirements. Customisation has
been able to expand because the process has become cheaper and there is
widespread availability of the technical knowledge to do so, even making this
a niche market for certain companies.
2.6. Summary
This chapter presents the history of free software. The sixties was a period
dominated by large computers and IBM in which software was distributed
together with the hardware, and usually with the source code. In the seventies,
software started to be sold separately, and soon proprietary distributions,
which did not include source code and did not give permission to modify or
redistribute, became almost the only option.
In the decade of the 1970s, work began on developing the Unix operating
system at AT&T's Bell Labs, giving rise later to Unix BSD. Its evolution, in
parallel with the birth of the Internet, served as a testing field for new ways
of developing in collaboration, which later became common in the world of
free software.
In 1984, Richard Stallman started to work on the GNU project, founding the
Free Software Foundation (FSF), writing the GPL licence, and in general establishing
the foundations of free software as we now know it.
In the 90s Internet matured offering free software communities new channels
for communication and distribution. In 1991, Linus Torvalds started to develop
a free kernel (Linux) which helped to complete the GNU system, which
already had almost all the parts for becoming a complete system similar to
Unix: C compiler (GCC), editor (Emacs), windowing system (X Window), etc.
This is how the GNU/Linux operating systems were born, branching out into
many distributions, such as Red Hat Linux and Debian GNU/Linux. Towards
the end of the 90s, these systems were completed with two desktop environments:
KDE and GNOME.
In the decade of 2000, free software managed to lead in some sectors (such
as for web servers, dominated by Apache), and new tools appeared covering
a large number of IT requirements.
See also
Interested readers will find in
Appendix B a list of some of
the most relevant dates in the
history of free software
留言列表
