Linux’s Roots in Unix

Linux grew within a culture of free exchange of ideas and software. Like Unix — the operating system on which Linux is based — the focus was on keeping communications open among software developers. Getting the code to work was the goal, and the Internet was the primary communications medium. Keeping the software free and redistributable was a means to that goal. What, then, were the conditions that made the world ripe for a computer system such as Linux?

In the 1980s and 1990s, while Microsoft flooded the world with personal computers running DOS (Disk Operating System) and Windows operating systems, power users demanded more from an operating system. They ached for systems that could run on networks, support many users at once (multiuser), and run many programs at once (multitasking). DOS and Windows didn’t cut it. Unix, on the other hand, grew out of a culture where technology was king and marketing people were, well, hard to find at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. A quote from Dennis Ritchie, co-creator of Unix and designer of the C programming language, in a 1980 lecture on the evolution of Unix, sums up the spirit that started Unix. He was commenting on both his hopes an....