How did a student's hobby kernel end up in servers and phones?
In 1991 a Finnish student began writing a kernel as a project. Today a modified version of it sits inside Android phones, web servers and even a Mars helicopter.
▶ Start the storyA student's hobby kernel ended up everywhere because it was free to use and change, and because it arrived at just the right moment. Linus Torvalds, a student at the University of Helsinki, began writing the Linux kernel in 1991, and he has been its lead developer ever since.
The timing mattered. The GNU Project, begun in 1983, was building a Unix-compatible system made entirely of free software, but it still lacked a working kernel. Torvalds had met Unix in a university course whose textbook came with , a teaching system whose licence limited it to educational use. Frustrated by that, he started his own kernel. He has said that had the GNU kernel or 386BSD existed in 1991, he probably would not have made Linux at all. Linux contained no Unix code, being a fresh , so it avoided legal trouble with AT&T.
Then the licence did the rest. Torvalds moved from his first licence, which forbade commercial use, to the . Under it, anyone may use, modify and distribute the . The Linux kernel has since been to more platforms than any other operating system, and it is the leading operating system on servers.
over 96.4%
Phones followed. Android is Google's operating system for smartphones, based on a modified version of the Linux kernel, and a team led by Andy Rubin built it at Google on that kernel. Since 2011 it has been the most used operating system on smartphones.
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Recap
Linux = a free kernel at the right moment, shared under the GPL so anyone could build on it.
💡 A trick to remember it · Torvalds shared the recipe for his sourdough starter: soon every kitchen, from servers to phones, was baking with it.
Surprising fact · Linux-based software has flown on the Ingenuity Mars helicopter.
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No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (16 claims) cites at least one of these.