Jason Eckert's Website and Blog (2024)

The official USENET Linux annoucement took place on the 25th of August, 1991:

The first Linux kernel was only 65 KB in size. While this may seem small by today’s standards, it was larger than all the memory in a Commodore 64.

According to DistroWatch.com, at any one time there are over 250 actively-maintained Linux distributions. This also means that there will always be some Linux distribution being used out there that you’ve never heard of before.

According to the TOP500 index (top500.org), 100% of all top 500 supercomputers run Linux, and have for quite some time now:

Slackware (released July 17, 1993) is the oldest distribution of Linux.

In 2020, the Linux kernel had approximately 27.8 million lines of code. Today it has over 30 million.

The first port of Linux (developed for i386) to a new architecture was to the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) Alpha. It was started in 1993 and took approximately one year. It was officially completed in 1995.

According to Gartner, Linux had a desktop marketshare of 2.4% by the end of 2021. While this may seem small, it’s the highest it has ever been for desktops.

Approximately 80% of all Linux contributions come from developers who are employed or otherwise sponsored by large enterprises that have a vested interest in the development of Linux.

Freax (Free + UNIX) was Linus’ original recommended name for what later became known as Linux.

It’s fitting that one of the most iconic Linux distributions (Red Hat) was released on a holiday: Halloween, 1994.

Linux version 0.99 (1992) used GPLv2. Prior versions just had a generic license forbidding commercial use or redistribution.

Steve Ballmer accused Linux of being “a cancer” (in all fairness, given its rapid adoption rate he wasn’t entirely wrong with this analogy).

In 2001, Linux was the first operating sytem to support the 64-bit Intel architecture used everywhere today. AMD64 (also called x86_64) was first introduced by AMD in 1999.

Creating the git version control system that is used by nearly all software developers worldwide. It was arguably the biggest thing that happened to open source developers since, well, Linux.

Version 1.0 of Linux dropped on March 14, 1994. Just before the movie Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult.

Steve Jobs offered Linus a job in 2000 on the condition he stop developing Linux. It’s a good thing Linus turned it down.

Most of the Linux kernel is written in the C programming language (although Profanity would be equally correct).

The first Linux book was published in 1993. It was Matt Welsh’s Linux Installation and Getting Started.

The first issue of Linux Journal was released in March 1994, and it included an interview with Linus Torvalds.

Titanic (1997) was the first movie developed on Linux (SuSE on DEC Alpha) using customized open source software tools.

Tux was named after Linus Torvalds (Tux stands for “Torvalds UniX”).

The Apache web server. The rise of the World Wide Web in the 1990s was made possible by this free web server that could run on a free operating system such as Linux or BSD UNIX. If only commercial web servers and operating systems were available, the cost of hosting a Web server would be too high for most enthusiasts, and the Web would not have had the explosive growth it had in the 1990s.

Linux is a popular laundry detergent in Switzerland. This must be incredibly confusing for tech workers over there…

Linus uses Fedora Linux on all the computers in his household. Even after purchasing an Apple M2-based MacBook in 2022 to run Asahi Linux, Linus chose to use the Asahi drivers and boot software only and load Fedora for ARM on it.

The Linux Foundation gives Linus Torvalds $1.5 million dollars USD per year for his hard work directing the development of Linux.