Note

In 1984 Richard Stallman, an American software engineer, had a goal to create a completely free UNIX-compatible open-source (non-proprietary) operating system. The initiative was called the GNU Project (GNU’s Not Unix) and by 1991. Then Linus Torvalds developed a kernel and proclaimed it’s availability.

  • Basically Linux is not an OS, it’s a open-source kernel.
  • Here’s a basic diagram that will give a brief idea about the evolution of linux:
timeline
    title History of Linux: Major Milestones
    1991 : Linus Torvalds announces personal project on Usenet : First Linux Kernel release (0.01)
    1992 : Relicensed under GPLv2 (Open Source) : First distributions (SLS, MCC Interim Linux)
    1993 : Slackware Linux released : Debian Project founded by Ian Murdock
    1994 : Linux Kernel 1.0 released : Red Hat Commercial Linux founded : S.u.S.E. Linux founded
    1996 : Linux Kernel 2.0 released (Symmetric Multiprocessing support) : Tux the Penguin adopted as mascot
    1998 : KDE 1.0 released : Major corporations (Oracle, Sun) announce support
    1999 : GNOME 1.0 released : Red Hat goes public
    2004 : Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog) released
    2007 : Android (built on Linux kernel) announced
    2011 : Linux Kernel 3.0 released
    2015 : Linux Kernel 4.0 released
    2019 : Linux Kernel 5.0 released
    2022 : Linux Kernel 6.0 released
  • There are several distros available which uses the linux kernel as their base and it’s a picture i found on the web that demonstrates the evolution of distros pretty well[CURRENTLY THE PROJECT IS NOT MAINTAINED ANYMORE] -> DISTRO-EVOLUTION