Linux Origins Linux is considered a new operating system. Because it is UNIX-based, however, much of the technology behind it is over 30 years old. In 1969, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, two software engineers at AT&T Bell Labs who had previously worked on the Multies (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) operating system, began developing a portable operating system. They called this operating system "UNIX" as a pun on Multies. (The c later mutated to an x.) To make this operating system portable, Thompson and Ritchie had to develop a language that was not bound to a specific platform, and so the C language was born. The C source for their entire UNIX operating system could be copied and then recompiled on various platforms. Because AT&T Bell Labs made the C source code for UNIX freely available, several UNIX variants emerged: BSD (Berkley System Division) UNIX, Sun Microsystems SunOS, and AT&T's System V. After the federal breakup of AT&T. As a result, companies that wanted to use UNIX had to formally license it. The various vendors who began to license UNIX rights from AT&T ended up tweaking their own flavors of UNIX so that they could lock their customers into their particular variant. Despite these "UNIX wars," as they were called, UNIX was still very successful, and most technical colleges had UNIX in their curriculum. To circumvent UNIX licensing, Andrew Tannenbaum, the author of several highly successful books on operating systems and compilers, created his own flavor of UNIX, called MINIX, for the sole purpose of teaching UNIX to college students, Much later, the University of California at Berkley also created a UNIX derivation called Free BSD that, like MINIX, was intended to be freely modifiable and distributable. Today, however, the most well-known and successful free version of UNIX is Linux, created by Linus Torvalds. In the early 1990s, Torvalds, then a graduate student at the University of Helsinki, became tired of the limitations of MINIX. He began to develop Linux as his own version of UNIX for the Intel platform. Through Internet newsgroups and forum, Torvalds invited other computer scientists to assist with his pet project. On October 5, 1991, the initial version of Linux, 0.02, was released. Version 1.0, the first business-quality version, was made available in March 1994. Linux has received so much positive press that its adoption ware has exceeded that of any other UNIX variation, include IBM's, AT&T's and Sun Microsystems'. Interestingly, Free BSD, which is comparable to Linux in features and quality, has nowhere near the acceptance rate, mostly because of bad timing. While Linux was the darling of the press, BSD was in litigation with AT&T to determine whether BSD UNIX contained propriety Bell Labs material. By the time BSD was free from the litigation, Linux had gained the industry momentum. Who Needs Web Hosting on Linux Linux is a great operating system for colleges and universities, not only because it's free and runs on old computers that other operating system can't handle, but because all the code for Linux comes with it. Students can research the code, make modification, reconfigure, and recompile the entire operating system. In fact, Linux enhancements and bug fixes quite often come from the computer-science departments of universities. Linux is a good host for a desktop graphical user interface (GUI). The desktop metaphor of a GUI allows users to organize application windows on their monitors in the same way that they organize papers and books on their desks. A desktop GUI also enables the point-click capabilities of a mouse, where a picture represents an action that will occur when the user clicks on it. GUIs have improved the usability of computer applications, and today expect a GUI environment for their PCs. Cost Effectiveness Virtually all business requires cost justification for new directions. Although the Linux operating system is free, there are other costs to consider. First, there is the question of technical support, both internally and externally. Then, there is the question of whether or not Linux is a verifiable reliable, stable, and secure platform. If a company dedicates a thousand work-hours to the deployment of a Linux-based web site, and it fails, that's a loss of perhaps $100,000. Even if the project were a success, would an NT or Solaris server solution have been less costly? To answer the question of server costs, companies look at three factors: hardware, software, and support.
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