From the course: Linux: Overview and Installation

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The origins of Linux and your future

The origins of Linux and your future - Linux Tutorial

From the course: Linux: Overview and Installation

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The origins of Linux and your future

- [Instructor] Where did Linux come from? In the late 1960s, AT&T created a commercial server operating system called Unix. It was modular and had separate libraries, command line tools, development tools like compilers, as well as drivers. Above this foundation was the graphics system, application services and so on. In the early 1980s, a man by the name of Richard Stallman and his GNU Project, had started working on replacing each module of Unix with GNU versions, in order to create a freely-distributable Unix clone. They named it GNU. GNU is a playful, recursive acronym which stands for, "GNU is not Unix." Unix was a perfect operating system to clone because it was powerful, stable, and secure, but most importantly, modular, which made it possible to replace each piece one by one. The core of the operating system, called the Kernel, is the most complex to replace. So in the beginning, Richard Stallman and the GNU…

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