Celebrating the 26th anniversary of its launch, facts you do not know about Linux

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In the last week of August 1991, 26 years ago, Linus Torvalds sent a letter to his mailing list asking for the opinion of some Minix users about the new born Linux.

Linus is the founder and the father of the Linux operating system, which is the kernel of many popular distributions such as Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Fedora, Chrome OS, and of course the Android system.

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Linus's message was a bit strange. He wanted to know what features Minix users wanted to get, justifying the following:

• He is working on a new operating system.
• The new system will be different from Minix system. It is a completely new system that comes to rid users of their problems with current operating system "Minix.

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The strange thing is that Linus, that university student, launched Linux as a hobby, and he did not count on it much or he did not look at it as that next big thing that will change many concepts in the world of technology.

Now, I am going to list some unknown facts about Linux:

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1- Linux is being developed under the auspices of the Linux International Foundation, with more than 115 million lines of code in the digital warehouse.

2- The kernel of Linux is the largest open source software project around the world, averaging 185 contributions a day from participants from around the world.

3- 41 thousand programmers worked on Linux source code over time to get to the current OS, which is equivalent to $ 5 billion in salaries for programmers.

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4- The Linux Foundation pays US $ 10 million per year for Linus to remain in the institution, where his fortune is approximately $ 150 million.

5- Regardless of the wealth of Linus, he works from home, alone, along with his pet. He uses a vertical desk to work on the feet. He also work out next to the desk when he takes breaks.

6- Linus wrote the Linux kernel completely when it was launched, but his contribution to the kernel now is only 1%. He decided to leave the programming task to the developers, while his current function is to verify the source code and ensure that it works fine.

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7- When looking at people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or even Mark Zuckerberg, they all left the university to fulfill their dreams. But Linus graduated from the university and he continued his studies to get a master's degree in computer science.

8- Linus is the creator of the Git versions management system, but he never relied on it or on the contributions coming from it to the Linux kernel.

9- The penguin was chosen as the logo for Linux, and this penguin bears the name Tux.

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10- Many developers working in international companies contribute to Linux. For example Intel developers contributed more than 10% of the total development, Samsung developers more than 4%, IBM more than 3%, and finally Google by more than 2%.

11- 97% of the Super Computers around the world rely on Linux, including NASA computers and servers.

12- SpaceX also relies on a modified version of the Linux system to manage its space flights.

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13- In 2009, the German city of Munich decided to switch to the use of Linux in its computers instead of Windows, which saved them over 10 million euros because there was no need to purchase software licenses.

14- Small Raspberry Pi computers are running Linux.

15- Titanic, the famous film was produced using Linux servers, making it the first film based on this system.

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16- Dronecode distribution of the Linux system is used by 1000s of companies today to run their drones.

17- Companies such as Toyota and Jaguar intend to rely on a Linux-based distro named automated-grade to include it in their cars as the car computer OS.

18- Linux offers many distributions, and many distributions are based on other distributions, Ubuntu distribution, for example, is based on the Debian distribution, while OpenSuse is based on slackware distribution.

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19- Red Hat develops Linux distributions for other companies. It is the largest company built on an open-source project.

20- Linux distributions do not have to come with a GUI. Many Linux distributions rely on the command line interface only.

21- The Linux kernel primarily controls the files system, the networks, and the operations and tasks management as one unite. While the rest of the system functions are done by separate units and thus any malfunction in a unit does not mean that the system will collapse completely.

22- Despite the fact that Linux is a Windows competitor, Microsoft has included the Bash command prompt in the latest Windows 10 system.

Now lets finish this post with this awesome video for the legend:

I am a big fan of Linux and its distros, and I hope are :). Thank you for reading

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds
https://github.com/torvalds
https://www.tecmint.com/lesser-known-facts-about-gnu-linux/

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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