:: GNU/Linux: The Big Picture ::

By: Hale Pringle

GNU/Linux - the Big Picture

It is extremely unlikely that anyone in the "computer" industry does not know the something called Linux is moving. For most, it is something small, fast and unknown moving in the darkness outside the mainstream Windows world. They know that it is something like UNIX, only different. The next step up is usually "It was created by a computer science student in Finland." For many this is enough to stop their curiosity dead in its tracks. "There is no way I'm going to bet our company on something a comp-sic student diddled into existence!"

While there is an element of truth in this perception, the image portrayed misses the point of Linux completely. Let's take a look at the big picture.

First, Linux is just part of a major movement called "open source." This is a relatively new model for software development and it flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Instead of "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door," open-source seems to say "Build a better mousetrap, give it away and it will become better yet." The logic behind this escapes the average business oriented mind. This short piece isn't going to go into the logic behind open-source other than to say it harks back to the days when farmers helped each other with major projects. Everyone knew that "we" could build a better barn in a couple of days than "I" could build in a couple of years. The same thing hold true of software. When we get enough people working together the results are quite powerful.

Back to GNU/Linux. There are literally thousands of people involved, but there were two in the beginning. These two threw the first pebbles that resulted in the avalanche we see today.

Richard Stallman

The first was Richard Stallman - Free Software's spokesman and arguably one of the greatest hackers to ever sit in front of a computer. Mr. Stallman had the ability to dream and he turned this dream into an Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT in the 1970's. In its day, this was one of the most innovative, exciting and high-tech projects in the country. There were several similar projects around the country and they shared their ideas and their code. An insight made in one lab was soon helping people all over the country who were working on the same type of problem. Often the original contributor gained more than he or she gave away as others took the idea and expanded on it, feeding the new and improved version back into the network of labs. In the early 80's this informal network fell apart when big business and large salaries lured many of the key players away and replaced the informal network with proprietary, closed and competitive shops. In Stallman's view the new rules lead to programmer's "hoarding" their code and he decided to fight back. He created the Free Software Foundation and started to work on a completely free Unix like operating system that he called GNU (GNU's Not Unix). For Stallman free software was much more like "free speech" than it was "free beer." To this day most people hear "free software" and think that it is something you get for nothing. That isn't the point at all. The freedom is in what you can do with the software. You get the source code and you can add, subtract, redo, mold, spindle and in general go anywhere you want to go with it. This is a far cry from getting a free copy of a proprietary software package in binary form and being allowed to run it as much as you want. Stallman's project created the GNU C compiler. This is a C compiler that anyone could use for anything and not owe anyone license fees or royalties. A large number of the other utilities that make Unix the well rounded darling of Computer Science departments around the world were also rewritten and available through the GNU project. Stallman attracted the idiosyncratic genius of dozens of programmers - the same power that made Unix a web of fragmented powerhouses - who built a wealth of tools and made them part of the GNU project. The only thing they didn't have was the core of the operating system - the kernel. Work on the GNU kernel (codename Hurd) sputtered and stalled for a number of reasons.

Linus Torvalds

Enter a Finnish Computer Science student named Linus Torvalds. He was working on a Unix look-alike designed for educational environments called Minix. Eventually he decided he could write a better one. Around 1991 he published his first version - number .02 onto the internet. (Remember that this was several years before the advent of the browser driven WWW that we surf today.) His original kernel didn't support hard drives since he didn't own one. It was however written from scratch using the GNU C compiler and it ran! A number of other kernel hackers were intrigued and started to "help him." Soon Linus's efforts were shifted from sitting in front of a 386 PC with two floppy drives to refereeing a free-for-all where a number of brash, ego-driven programmers clashed and meshed. Basically in international family came into being. They fought, called each other names and built. The result was something they could all be proud of.

Stallman's GNU project plus Torvalds kernel = GNU/Linux

Taken separately, Stallman's ideas and bundle of Unix-like tools and Torvalds' kernel don't amount to much. One had a bunch of tools that had to be run on someone else's proprietary system and the other had a basic operating system that would boot on a 386 PC. Once you had booted, there wasn't much you could do. Ah, but put them together and you have a rock solid core operating system with a large bundle of tools and basic applications. This foundation is something you can bet the company future on and a growing number of large firms are doing just that.

So what is GNU/Linux today?

GNU/Linux (which is usually just called Linux) has evolved into one of the turning points in computer history. We hear numbers like 2% of the desktops run Linux. It is easy to forget that this translates into several million desktops. Today the Linux big picture includes a growing number a companies generating their income building Linux distributions, 9000 plus desktop applications, a significant proportion of the web servers that drive the Internet, cross platform compilers and applications (e.g. java applications that run anywhere) and major powers like IBM and Sun . Just like the Windows computing environment is a far cry from the $50,000 DOS system that Bill Gates bought just before the IBM PC came out, Linux is a far cry from a "a Unix-like kernel written by a Finish computer science student." Linux is not just free - it is freedom. For those looking at forced upgrades and yearly rental costs, it bears thinking about.

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