Thank you, Linux
For
making the digital world affordable for all
In
August 1991, Linus Torvalds, then a 21-year-old student in Finland, posted a
message for computer geeks: “I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby,
won’t be big and professional like gnu)... This is starting to get ready.” This
modest beginning of Linux is disproportionate to the silent revolution it
delivered for the growth of open source and free software movement in a quarter
century.
Today,
the most visible Linux devices are smartphones; nearly 82 per cent of them are
powered by Android, based on Linux. Except in the personal desktops segment,
Linux is the dominant OS for supercomputers, servers, popular gaming consoles
and even smart televisions.
A free world
Torvalds
had designed the OS as part of his graduate thesis and made it available for
free. As a student, I started using Linux-based systems for scientific
computations since mid-1990s. The commercial desktop operating systems then
would cost at least a few hundred dollars. In this backdrop, the idea of a free
operating system was liberating especially when research budgets were
constrained and did not fully recognise computers as part of scientific
research tools.
For
computer enthusiasts worldwide, the freedom to use, modify and re-distribute
the software was so attractive that they began coordinated efforts to improve
Linux. Today, this would be called crowdsourcing. Even before Torvalds’ free
Linux hit the computers, Richard Stallman in the US was already campaigning along
similar lines. Stallman had created the Free Software Foundation in 1983 as a
reaction to increasing restrictions on the use of proprietary software in
1970-80s.
By
1990, Stallman had created a whole suite of free software such as editors,
compilers and device drivers, many of which are used even today. But the
missing component was a working piece of operating system kernel, essential to
boot up a computer and start working. It is precisely this missing piece that
Torvalds provided in 1991. When combined with Stallman’s free software, an
entire desktop computer could run with free software. The changes were
phenomenal. This movement has grown so strong today that for every commercial
software a free and open source version with similar functionality is available.
Open source lets others innovate the code as well.
Those many Linuxes
In
the last 25 years, Linux kernel has grown too. The latest version released this
year has nearly 21 million lines of source code up from about ten thousand in
1991. According to a 2015 Linux Foundation Report, 12,000 programmers and many
technology companies worldwide have contributed towards this effort. Today,
Linux OS is a multi-headed hydra with many variants, some of which have become
commercially successful by providing support and integration services though
the Linux software is free.
In
spite of such contributions to humanity towards making digital world affordable
to all, linux is not familiar among the general public. Yet, most of the search
engines, email services and mobile phones we use are powered by linux OS. As
modest as its beginning was in 1991, it continues to work silently behind the
scenes. As Stallman once said, “Our movement has much in common with Gandhi’s;
both are movements for freedom and to end a form of oppression”.
Source | Business Line | 2 September
2016
Regards
Pralhad Jadhav
Senior Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
Note | If anybody use these post for forwarding
in any social media coverage or covering in the Newsletter please give due
credit to those who are taking efforts for the same.
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