From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I can recommend the book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, which I've read multiple times. I can also recommend Linus' autobiography Just For Fun.
You can also consider The Cathedral and the Bazaar... though ESR can be a bit much.
That said, here are some random articles I've saved that you might be interested in:
Cuckoo’s Egg is a hacker true-crime from the 80s. Sorry no link. Lunch break.
Can also recommend Just For Fun - that Finnish sense of humour doesn't come across well, and while he's good with English he certainly isn't Shakespeare, but it does fly by.
History of Linux, abridged: Linus was using Minix on his own PC while at University, but was a bit fed up with its networking capabilities, so he'd written a toy operating system for a couple of his classes. While experimenting with adding features to it, he deleted his Minix partition by accident. Might as well continue with the one he'd written, since it was almost capable enough to be a daily driver. Publish the source, get a few collaborators in to add in the features that they found most useful, repeat. Boom.
There were some good pieces on Groklaw back in the day about the history of unix and Linux.
It's certainly older but Revolution OS is pretty thorough.
Great video. Our Linux Users Group will watch it every few years... it's amazing to see how much has changed in 20 years.
I know you want to go deeper, but here's a nice summary of linux's early history: https://lwn.net/Articles/928581/
Just For Fun by Linus Torvalds is a good source. Very readable.
This old film by AT&T about UNIX is also very good and gives you a good idea of the OS/software landscape at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
GNU has interviews and more clarifying all the way back to MIT AI lab, lisp machines the printers proprietary code triggering free software movement, etc.
Linux just happened because GNU hand't developed a proper kernel yet; Linus wrote that himself on an mail to the Linux Kernel or Minix mailing list IIRC.
Check these out:
the git history tree for the Linux kernel
Doesn't go back far enough
Lol that's a pretty fun idea actually- just to see the commits evolve over time. I know there are over 1 million commits but yeah when you think about it all of them pretty much document the state of kernel at that time.