On 14th of July 1789, french
demonstrators stormed the Bastille prison which was the symbol of an ailing monarchy that
had complete disconnect with the french people at the time. Few days later the
revolutionists made the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the famous french revolution
slogan Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité or
Freedom, Equality, Fraternity. Although it is irrelevant to our discussion the events
that took place in France after July 14th 1789, but what is relevant that this
revolution would not have the legacy it has today without Napoleon Bonaparte. In
1799, Napoleon took charge of the country and became the first consul before
declaring himself the Emperor in 1804. Napoleon has managed what other revolutionists have
failed to do, establish the legacy of the revolution.
Two hundreds year later, another European
revolutionist stormed the computer industry with a new operating system concept. Linus
Torvalds, a young computer scientist from Finland, built an operating system in 1991
that he called Linux. Although Linux is largely a Unix-based operating
system but its unique development and distribution concept makes it a true revolutionary.
Linus built the kernel of Linux in 1991 and
placed it on the Internet for free download. He did not only offer his operating
system for free, but started adding features and enhancements recommended by the small
community of Linux users. As his user community grew bigger, Linus eventually made the
source code of Linux available to any programmer to download and enhance provided that
such enhancement is made available to others for free.
I came across the Linux name in 1995
when I was working with a co-op student. He was fascinated with the system and used it as
his primary platform in his computer studies. At that time, I took Linux as a useful
academic tool to learn operating system concepts. It didn't occur to me that it might
achieve what it had so far.
I remember from the early days of the PC
industry in late 1970's and early 1980's, there was many different personal computers each
with different operating system and different architecture. I came across brands such as Osborne,
Kaypro, Atari, and of course Apple that is still a renowned brand in the
computer world. IBM came in early 1980's with its version of personal computers. It
assumed the leadership of the personal computer industry and gave it a legacy. But
Microsoft took over the leadership in middle and late 1980's after the weak reception of OS/2
operating system and due to Microsoft perseverance in building future generations of
PC operating systems. Whether we like it or not, whether Compaq and Dell are leading IBM
in PC sales, whether Windows 95/98/NT are the most or least reliable operating systems; I
give the credit to IBM and Microsoft for bringing computers into our offices and homes.
They assumed the leadership, and worked hard, obviously for a profit, to bring the power
of computing at affordable cost to many people all over the globe who never dreamed to
have it before.
As you may have read in our previous article
about processor wars between Intel and AMD, x86 platform has stepped
into the server market with the introduction of 80486 processors. There was strong
competition among the big operating and networking system players including IBM with its OS/2
and LAN Server, Microsoft with its Windows NT, Novell with its NetWare,
and SCO with its SCO Unix OpenServer and UnixWare. Because of many reasons,
Windows NT became the dominant operating system for the x86-based servers. However quietly
and surely, Linux was making headway into the server market in the last two years. In
1998, Linux was growing at 213% rate as a server operating system versus 27% growth rate
for Windows NT as shown in the chart below.
During the first Linux World Conference and
Expo between last March 1st and 4th, many major organizations showed
their support for Linux. This unprecedented support - from companies like Compaq,
Corel, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Informix, Intel, Interbase, Oracle, Sybase, and
many others - is a strong sign on the popularity of Linux. This high level of support is
due to several reasons. First, many computer firms want to break the dominance of
Microsoft on operating system market. Second, some computer companies such as IBM who
intends to put Linux on certain models of its RS/6000 computers (a non-x86 system) are
going to make substantive saving in R&D expenses as thousands of intelligent
programmers going to enhance the product for free. Third, application and
database companies are able to enhance Linux to suit their applications without waiting
for an authority to do it for them.
Let us go back to where we started. If
Napoleon didn't assume the power and establish the legacy of the french revolution,
wouldn't that revolution be a bittersweet event in the history of the world today? My
question now, if no computer industry authority took charge of Linux to establish its
legacy, wouldn't Linux be another rosy dream of the computer world? In other words, does
Linux need a kind of Napoleon to establish its legacy?
