August 25, 2021 marked thirty years of Linus Torvalds’ now-famous announcement (opens in new tab) on the comp.os.minix news group, where he shared plans to work on a free operating system (opens in new tab) for 386(486) AT clones as a “hobby” (with the publication date of September 17 1991).
Nobody, least of all Torvalds, would have imagined that three decades later, his hobby OS would not just outgrow his personal computer, but go on to become the backbone of much of the modern IT world.
Rob Gibbon, Product Manager at Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu (opens in new tab), has seen an explosion in the adoption of Linux (opens in new tab) over the years.
- Here are the best Linux laptops (opens in new tab) for running Linux
- Take a look at the best laptops for programming (opens in new tab)
- Also check our collection of the best Linux distros for business (opens in new tab)
“From server (opens in new tab) deployments and consumer electronics like smartphones (opens in new tab), televisions and smart speakers (opens in new tab), to industrial applications like automobiles (opens in new tab) and elevators, you'll find Linux enhancing the everyday lives of billions of humans worldwide – quite often in unseen ways,”.
But how did Linux become the phenomenon as we know it today?
