LinuxCon 2016: JTechpreneur celebrating Linux OS at 25

Happy Anniversary to Linux Operating System

The Internet is going gaga on the 25th Anniversary of Linux as users converged for the annual LinuxCon event from August 22nd to 25th where they celebrated and focused on tech and how Linux has changed/improved over time. Linux OS, an Operating System that was fired up on Aug. 25, 1991 from a small "completely personal passion project,” for creator Linus Torvalds, now runs most of the modern society -- creating billions of dollars in economic value and bringing companies from diverse industries across the world to work on the technology together. Now, one of the key accomplishments of Linux over the past 25 years has been the “professionalization” of open source.

Related Post: The History of Linux Operating System

Hundreds of companies employ thousands of developers to contribute code to the Linux kernel. It’s a common codebase that they have built diverse products and businesses on and that they therefore have a vested interest in maintaining and improving over the long term.
The legacy of Linux, in other words, is a whole new way of doing business that’s based on collaboration, said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of The Linux Foundation said this week in his keynote at LinuxCon in Toronto.

“You can better yourself while bettering others at the same time. Linux has proven it…,”

Zemlin said.

“Sharing is a higher purpose - it matters. That’s the magic of open source. That’s what this movement, and Linux in particular, has accomplished… billions of dollars are being invested into a future that’s based on sharing.”

If you have read the post I wrote on The History of Linux then you might be familiar with some of the below stunning facts about Linux. Let's look at them as you join me in celebrating Linux at 25:

Fact 1: There are 115 million lines of code in The Linux Foundation's collaborative projects. Compare this to the 45 million lines of code in Windows XP.

Fact 2: The Linux kernel is by far the most active open source project on Earth. Its accepts an average of 185 patches each day.

Fact 3: It’s taken about 41,000 person-years to build Linux — the equivalent of about $5 billion in developer salary.

Fact 4: The Linux Foundation pays Linus $10 million per year to continue his work on Linux. His net worth is $150 million.

Fact 5: Despite this the sums of money involved — and all the systems that rely on Linux — Linus works from home, alone, with his cat.

Fact 6: While Linus was serving as in the Finnish military — doing ballistics calculations — he bought a copy of Andrew Tanenbaum’s Operating Systems: Design and Implementation. This book described Minix — a simplified educational version of Unix — and opened Linus’s eyes to the Unix philosophy.

Fact 7: Even though Torvalds wrote 100% of Linux’s first release, his original contributions now account for less than 1% of its total codebase. These days he says he’s too busy merging in code written by other contributors to do much programming himself.

I do not have a five-year plan. I do not have a moonshot. I’m perfectly happy with all the people walking around looking at the stars saying “I want to go there.” But I’m looking at the ground, and I want to fix the pothole that’s right in front of me before I fall in. — Linus Torvalds

Fact 8: Other famous software icons like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college to pursue their projects full-time. Linus not only continued school after the initial success of Linux — he even stuck around to get his masters in computer science.

Fact 9: Even though Linus created Git, he doesn’t accept pull requests through GitHub. Linux is listed on GitHub, though, and it has more than 35,000 stars.
Fact 10: Linux’s mascot is a penguin named “Tux”

Fact 11: Developers from a wide range of companies contribute to Linux. Here they are, ranked by contributions:

Fact 12: 97% of the world’s supercomputers run on Linux — including clusters used by NASA.
Fact 13: SpaceX uses a special fault-tolerant design of Linux in each of its Merlin rocket engines. Through this, Linux has helped complete 32 space missions
Fact 14: In 2009, the government of Munich, Germany switched from Windows to Linux. They claim to have saved more than €10 million in software licensing fees so far. But the switch may have cost them that much or more in lost productivity.

Fact 15: Linux powers the tiny $5 Raspberry Pi computer.

Fact 16: Is Linux the king of the world? Titanic was the first feature film produced on Linux servers.

Fact 17: Even though video game developer Valve’s founder Gabe Newell has publicly stated that he thinks Linux is the future of gaming, his company’s Linux-based Steam Machine console flopped. Linux’s overall market share has fallen a bit since 2010.

Fact 18: Dronecode is Linux for Drones. About 1,000 companies develop drone services that run on top of this operating system.

Fact 19: Toyota and Jaguar plan to run their future cars using Automotive-grade Linux.

Fact 20: Linux is available in many distributions, or “distros.” Most distros are based off of other distros. The most popular distro is Ubuntu, which is based off of Debian.

Fact 21: Red Hat is a company that makes an enterprise-focused distribution of Linux. It is the largest company built around open source software, and is on track to make $5 billion in revenue this year.

Fact 22: Linux doesn’t necessarily come with a graphic user interface (GUI). Many developers interact with it through a command line shell — usually Bash. You can choose from a variety of GUI shells, such as Xfce and KDE. When you hear the term “Xubuntu”, it means “Ubuntu with Xfce.” Can you guess what “Kubuntu” means?

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Fact 23: Linux uses the GNU General Public License.

“The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software — to make sure the software is free for all its users.”

— GNU GPL preamble

Fact 24: Linux uses a “Unix-like” design, where its monolithic Linux kernel oversees file systems, networking, and process control. The rest of the functionality is handled by modules — many of which are from the GNU project.

Fact 25: Even Microsoft Windows — Linux’s biggest competing operating system — is embracing Linux. It recently integrated Ubuntu Bash into Windows 10.