Why so many distros? The Weird History of Linux

August 25th, 1991. A 21-year-old graduate

student in Helsinki named Linus Torvalds

announces he's doing a free operating

system. Just a hobby, won't be a big

professional thing. Fast forward a few

years later, and that hobby evolves into

one of the most important projects in

the history of computing. Most operating

systems were created to
make shitloads of money.

"That's right, it's $99! It's an

incredible value, but it's true! It's

Windows from Microsoft. Order today!"

But Linux was a revolution based on a

simple principle: software should be free

and open. Today, we'll take a look at the

weird history of Linux, and in the

process, answer the question of why are

there so many Linux distros? But before

we can even talk about Linux we need to

travel back to 1969. While grandpa was

dropping acid at Woodstock, Ken Thompson

and Dennis Ritchie were creating the

Unix operating system. Unix was well-

loved by both businesses and

universities. There was one problem,

though. The code was owned
by AT&T, and in

1977, when UC Berkeley created their own

Berkeley Software Distribution, AT&T sued

them. That put limitations on Unix

development and led to a period known as

the Unix Wars. A few years later, in

1983, Richard Stallman creates the GNU

Project, which was intended to be a free

and open replacement for Unix. But Unix

was a big, complex project with hundreds

of different applications, and replacing

it was no easy task. Over the next few

years, the project recreated many of the

applications that you know and love

today. Tools that are often used

synonymously with Linux, like Tar, Bash,

and Emacs, just to name a few. By the

early '90s, GNU had all this great

software, but it was missing one

essential component: the operating system,

kernel. A complete operating system needs

a kernel to sit in between the hardware

and the software, where it can allocate

CPU and memory resources to run software

applications. Luckily, it was right around

this time that Linus Torwalds was

working on his hobby operating system.

Originally, it was going to be called

Freax, because the name Linux was too

egotistical. But as fate would have it,

the admin for the FTP server at the time

didn't like the name and changed it

without his consent. And the name stuck

from there on out. Initially, Linux was

released with a proprietary license that

had limitations on commercial use.

However by the end of 1992, it was

released under the GNU General Public

License, and this gave birth to a

complete operating system that we know

today as GNU Plus Linux. The following

year, hundreds of developers jumped on

the Linux project and started adapting

it to the GNU environment. The beauty of

the Linux kernel is that it gave

developers the ability to build custom

operating systems that felt like Unix,

but didn't come with the fear being sued

down the road. Ultimately, this led to

some of the first Linux distributions,

like Soft Landing, Igrasil, and Slackware.

But what is a Linux distro exactly? A

distro is a complete operating system

based on the Linux kernel that contains

a bunch of packages and libraries, and

typically a package manager to install

additional applications, and possibly a

Windows system if there's a GUI involved.

Many distros might share the same

default user interface. Popular UI

options include Gnome, KDE Plasma, Mate,

Cinnamon, and a bunch of others. Today,

there's nearly a thousand different

Linux distros out there, and they've all

been customized to serve different

purposes. Some of them are designed for

enterprise users, while others are for

home users. Some distros only run on

servers, while others are designed for

desktop, mobile, and embedded devices. And

each distro is usually backed by a

community that has its own set of

philosophical and technical opinions.

Most of these older distros are no

longer maintained and just considered

historical artifacts. One exception is

Slackware. It had a release as recently

as 2016, and has spawned a bunch of

different variations. Most notably, it led

to the OpenSUSE project, which remains

a very popular general purpose distro,

and is usually associated with

professional power users. But the most

significant distro to come out of 1993

was Debian. It was established by Ian

Murdock, and its name
comes from his name

combined with his ex-wife's name. And its

first official release came in 1996 as

Version 1.1 Buzz, and since then, each

release contains a code name with a Toy

Story character. A few years later, it led

to the creation of advanced package tool,

or APT, although it was originally

developed under the code name Deity. The

Debian community is huge, and it's a

great distro today and very popular on

servers, but can also be used as a

general purpose distro. It's minimal and

stable, which are traits that have

allowed it to father a huge number of

offspring distros. Some of them are

highly specialized, like Raspberry Pi OS

or Steam OS. But by far the most popular

child of Debian is Ubuntu, which was

first released in 2004, and is managed by

a British company called Canonical. It

follows a semi-annual release schedule

where each release is named after an

animal and a word with the same letter,

like Cosmic Cuttlefish. It's extremely

beginner friendly and was really one of

the first distros to open up Linux to

the mainstream home computer user. In

recent years, though, it's received a lot

of hate from the Linux community for

releasing closed source software and

also selling data to third-party

companies. In any case, it remains

extremely popular, and it even has a

variety of different flavors, like

Kubuntu, Zubuntu and Lubuntu, which are

their own distributions that offer

slight variations on the original. Like

Kubuntu, for example, it's designed to be

a great entry point if you're

transitioning from Microsoft Windows to

Linux. In addition, Ubuntu has spawned

many other variations, like Linux Mint,

Peppermint and Pop OS, just to name a few

of the most popular options. Debian has a

huge family tree, but if we go back to

1994, there is another Linux distro that

also has a huge family tree called Red

Hat. It was created by Mark Ewing, and is

known for its focus on security and

reliability for enterprise users. Red Hat

adopted a business model where they

maintain an open source operating system,

then make money by selling consulting,

integration, and add-on services to big

enterprise clients. Today, it generates

billions of dollars in revenue, and was

recently acquired by IBM for an

11-figure price tag. Red Hat has given

birth to a bunch of children, most of

which are associated with enterprise

work, and use either the RPM or YUM

package manager. Popular descendants

include Rhel, Sent OS,
and Fedora, which is

not only great for enterprise servers,

but also works well as a personal

workstation. And it's even the distro of

choice by Linus Torvalds himself. Now, one

thing that you'll notice about Linux

distros is that many of them do a lot of

stuff that you don't actually need that

takes up space on your hardware and

ultimately makes your life more complex.

There are two Linux families that came

out in the early 2000s that are focused

on simplicity, performance,
and minimalism.

GenToo, with its Enoch distro, came out in

2000, and Arch came out in 2002. If you

like to keep things simple, then you'll

probably like the Arch family of Linux

distros. It has its own package manager

called Pac-Man, and has adopted a rolling

release model. Unlike Ubuntu, that has a

new major release every 6 months, Arch

releases small updates that can be

continuously updated in the OS. Arch is

also the parent of Manjaro, which is one

of the most popular distros of today. In

addition to all these families that

we've looked at, there are many popular

independent distros, like the extremely

lightweight Alpine, Fire OS for Amazon

devices, and Android, which is used by

billions of people every day. When you

think of the Linux kernel like the

engine in your car, it starts to answer

the question of why are there so many

Linux distros. Some cars are designed to

go fast, others for comfort, some are

engineered for enterprise, and others are

just for fun. As a developer, Linux is

like a free engine that you can use to

build your own car. That freedom, along

with GNU and the greater open source

ecosystem, motivates people to try new

things and to profit by creating

innovation within that ecosystem. People

who are threatened by it call it

communism, but in reality, it's the polar

opposite and the free market at its

finest. Today, even Microsoft fully

supports Linux through its WSL project.

I'm gonna go ahead and wrap things up

there. There's a lot of aspects of the

Linux history and the histories of

individual distros that we didn't cover,

but hopefully this gives you a general

idea of how Linux came into existence

and the evolution of Linux distros over

time. Oh, and there's one random thing I

almost forgot. Back in 2005, the source

code for Linux was managed under a

version control system called BitKeeper.

That was controversial, though, because

it's proprietary software. So Linus

Torvalds did what any legend would do

and he created Git. Before you go, make

sure to like and subscribe, and stay

tuned for a lot more Linux content on

this channel. Thanks for watching, and I

will see you in the next one.