3.9 Boxes, Shelves, Piles, and Racks

4.1 History of Linux
The development of the Linux operating system is one of the most startling events in the history of computing and opened an entirely new model of how large, complex, and robust software systems could be created. Linus Torvalds was a student in Finland in 1991 when he became interested in task switching and virtual memory. Because of their low cost and ubiquitous nature, Torvalds initially used Intel 80386 microprocessor based PCs for his work. While binary upwardly compatible with its predecessor, the Intel 80286, the newer 386 differed dramatically in its support for advanced memory management including virtual address translation. This provided the necessary support for a serious operating system, and Torvalds developed an early version of his lightweight kernel to be compatible with Minix, a Unix clone developed for teaching operating systems concepts by Dr. Andrew Tanenbaum, a computer science professor at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.
Torvalds' early version of Linux was primitive. While it had a virtual memory subsystem, it had few device drivers, and a primitive task scheduler. The virtual memory system had active memory mapping but did not include demand paging. There was no user interface, graphical or otherwise, just a text mode screen that ran a simple command shell. Nonetheless, Torvalds did one crucial thing. He made his early code, as limited as it was, available to the community via the Internet. He did this in October, 1991.
No one could have foreseen what would happen as a result of offering the seed of an operating system, freely to the world over a communications system that enabled the world to get to it, add to it, improve it, debug it, and use it. By early 1992. additional developers joined the team. These developers were distributed all over the world, many in the United States, and almost none had met each other in person.
There were many contributors to the early development of Linux and by the end of 1992, many enhancements had been incorporated including job control, demand paged virtual memory, basic networking subsystems and drivers. Linux was a usable operating system. With the release of this extended version, a core team began to make regular contributions. Eventually, release 1.0 was made available to the Internet community and represented a complete Unix-like operating system with the X Window system and the GNU programming environment. The source code was both free and publicly available.
Early versions of Linux were difficult to install. A series of distributions were developed to meet the needs of a growing community. At one time 30 floppy disks were required to install a complete Linux on a PC. Such early distributions provided

 



How to Build a Beowulf
How to Build a Beowulf: A Guide to the Implementation and Application of PC Clusters (Scientific and Engineering Computation)
ISBN: 026269218X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 1999
Pages: 134

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