Linux turns 29 this year, and for its birthday it's worth taking a look back at the most important moments in its history.
1991: Linus Brings Linux to the World
The following message was sent on August 25, 1991, to the Minix Usenet group. Torvalds had no idea what would happen later, when he wrote of his new free operating system that it was "just a hobby, and it won't be big and professional like gnu for 386 (486) AT clones."
1993 : Slackware
There were earlier distributions of the operating system, such as MCC and Yggdrasil , but Patrick Volkerding 's Slackware was the first widely successful distribution and is still updated and used today.
1994: Red Hat is born
Marc Ewing creates Red Hat Linux. Bob Young buys Ewing's company, merges it with his own, and forms Red Hat, the most successful operating system company to date.
1996 : KDE and SUSE
KDE, the first major desktop interface, is launched. Matthias Ettrich wanted to make a desktop that was easy to use . The K? stands for " Kool ". The name was also a play on Unix 's Common Desktop Environment (CDE) . That same year, after partnering with Slackware and Red Hat Linux, SUSE , the leading European Linux company, released its first standalone software, which remains a major force to this day.
1997: GNOME
Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena began working on a new desktop, GNOME, based entirely on free software.
1998: Halloween Memos
Microsoft begins targeting its rival. Eric S. Raymond, an early leader in Linux and open source, reveals the "Halloween Papers," which show that Microsoft views software as its enemy, and begins formulating campaigns against open source and Red Hat's operating system. More than a decade later, Microsoft would change course.
1999: Corel desktop
Corel releases the first desktop for this operating system. Although it was not successful, it paved the way for other well-known distributions, such as Ubuntu.
2000: IBM invests a billion dollars
This year, IBM announced that it would invest a billion dollars in Red Hat software in 2001. It would later prove to be IBM's best investment.
2001: Linux 2.4 is released
After some delays, version 2.4 is released. With this version, the company competes with Solaris and other high-end operating systems.
2004: Ubuntu
Based on Debian, Ubuntu becomes an extremely popular operating system and the most prominent of all cloud distributions.
2007: Android arrives
The Open Handset Alliance , which includes Google and many hardware vendors, announces Android. It would become the most popular operating system, running on more than a billion smartphones.
2008: Stock exchanges change
The New York Stock Exchange, soon followed by many other major stock exchanges around the world, changed its main operating system to Linux.
2012: Red Hat hits its first billion
Red Hat becomes the first $1 billion open source company. In 2016, it becomes the first $2 billion business.
2014: Microsoft loves Linux
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says Microsoft loves Linux. The company has since proven this by supporting the software.
2019: Microsoft launches Linux for Windows 10
Microsoft brings the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2.0, for Windows 10. With this, users can run both operating systems simultaneously.
2019: IBM acquires Red Hat
Red Hat acquired by IBM for $34 billion, making it the largest software investment.
2020: Conquering the cloud
The global cloud now generates $100 billion a year, with 90% allocated to Red Hat's operating system.
