In order to understand the popularity of Linux, we need to travel back in time, about 30 years ago...
Imagine
computers as big as houses, even stadiums. While the sizes of those
computers posed substantial problems, there was one thing that made this
even worse: every computer had a different operating system. Software
was always customized to serve a specific purpose, and software for one
given system didn't run on another system. Being able to work with one
system didn't automatically mean that you could work with another. It
was difficult, both for the users and the system administrators.
Computers
were extremely expensive then, and sacrifices had to be made even after
the original purchase just to get the users to understand how they
worked. The total cost per unit of computing power was enormous.
Technologically
the world was not quite that advanced, so they had to live with the
size for another decade. In 1969, a team of developers in the Bell Labs
laboratories started working on a solution for the software problem, to
address these compatibility issues. They developed a new operating
system, which was
- Simple and elegant.
- Written in the C programming language instead of in assembly code.
- Able to recycle code.
The Bell Labs developers named their project "UNIX."
The
code recycling features were very important. Until then, all
commercially available computer systems were written in a code
specifically developed for one system. UNIX on the other hand needed
only a small piece of that special code, which is now commonly named the
kernel. This kernel is the only piece of code that needs to be adapted
for every specific system and forms the base of the UNIX system. The
operating system and all other functions were built around this kernel
and written in a higher programming language, C. This language was
especially developed for creating the UNIX system. Using this new
technique, it was much easier to develop an operating system that could
run on many different types of hardware.
The
software vendors were quick to adapt, since they could sell ten times
more software almost effortlessly. Weird new situations came in
existence: imagine for instance computers from different vendors
communicating in the same network, or users working on different systems
without the need for extra education to use another computer. UNIX did a
great deal to help users become compatible with different systems.
Throughout
the next couple of decades the development of UNIX continued. More
things became possible to do and more hardware and software vendors
added support for UNIX to their products.
UNIX was initially found only in very large environments with mainframes and minicomputers (note that a PC is a "micro" computer).
You had to work at a university, for the government or for large
financial corporations in order to get your hands on a UNIX system.
But
smaller computers were being developed, and by the end of the 80's,
many people had home computers. By that time, there were several
versions of UNIX available for the PC architecture, but none of them
were truly free and more important: they were all terribly slow, so most
people ran MS DOS or Windows 3.1 on their home PC
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