Intelligence: 40 Fast Facts on Linux

Share

• 1. Linus Torvalds developed the Linux kernel while still a student at the University of Helsinki in 1991.
• 2. Last year, 75% of Linux code was developed by programmers working for corporations.
• 3. In December 2009, IBM announced a new mainframe system designed for Linux.
• 4. IBM chose Linux for what is expected to be the world's most powerful supercomputer, Sequoia, due in 2011.
• 5. Linux powers 446 of the world's top 500 supercomputers.
• 6. Some 95% of the servers used by Hollywood's large animation studios are powered by Linux
• 7. The first major film produced on Linux servers was 1997's Titanic.
• 8. Director James Cameron again chose Linux servers for box-office smash Avatar.
• 9. Google runs its web servers on Linux.
• 10. GOOG has contributed about 1.1% of the code in the current Linux kernel.
• 11. Linux has a strong following in smartphones and other devices in the consumer electronics world.
• 12. Palm's WebOS, Google's Android and Nokia's Maemo smartphone operating systems are built on top of the Linux kernel.
• 13. TiVo uses a customized version of Linux for its appliances.
• 14. In 2009, Linux had 33.8% revenue marketshare of servers, compared to Microsoft's 7.3%.
• 15. As of January 2010, Linux still only has a 1.02% marketshare within desktops.
• 16. Torvalds created Linux based on the GNU General Public License (GPL).
• 17. Torvalds wouldn't have written his own operating system if GNU had had a kernel at the time.
• 18. The GNU Project then a lacked lacking drivers, daemons and a kernel.
• 19. Under the GPL, any person or group distributing the Linux kernel must make the source code available to the recipient of the package.
• 20. Said Torvalds: "Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did."
• 21. Torvalds failed to register the name "Linux" when he first started his open source ventures.
• 22. In 1994, William Della Croce, Jr. filed for trademark in the U.S.and asked for royalties from Linux distributors.
• 23. Torvalds and his lawyers won the battle for the Linux name in 1997.
• 24. There are over 300 distributions of Linux actively deployed today.
• 25. Linux gained traction beyond the coder cult with 1993's Slackware distribution, which was easier for non-programmers to use.
• 26. The Debian distribution was one of the first truly community-oriented Linux coding projects.
• 27. Debian's code base remains the foundation for other distros such as Ubuntu, Knoppix and Xandros.
• 28. Debian v. 4.0's source code containes 283 million lines of code.
• 29. $7.37 billion: projected cost to produce that amount of code in a commercial environment.
• 30. The first commercially-produced, live-CD distribution of Linux was Yggdrasil, released in 1992.
• 31. Red Hat was one of the first commercial Linux distributions to truly cater to the enterprise.
• 32. Ubuntu was the first Linux distro to be offered by a major OEM (Dell) to desktop users.
• 33. The Xandros distribution helped make the netbook craze possible when it was chosen by ASUS for the first iterations of the EeePC.
• 34. Linux-based Apache wasn't named for Geronimo's tribe, it was called "a patchy server" for its cobbled-together source code.
• 35. In 2002, The Register claimed Microsoft spent $421 million just to fight Linux.
• 36. In 2003, the SCO Group earned enmity by claiming that IBM transferred UNIX code into Linux and asking for redress.
• 37. The Indian state of Kerala made it mandatory for all of its high schools to run Linux on their computers.
• 38. The federal government of Brazil favors Linux operating systems over all others in its PCs.
• 39. In 2009, Brazil carried out the largest thin-client deployment of Linux to date, with 350,000 nodes.
• 40. IDC projects that Linux support sales will top $1 billion by 2012.