Linux is 30: How a student’s hobby became a key component in the business IT stack

How did Linux go from a niche passion project to changing computing forever?

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August 25, 2021 marked thirty years of Linus Torvalds’ now-famousannouncementon the comp.os.minix news group, where he shared plans to work on a freeoperating systemfor 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 ofUbuntu, has seen an explosion in the adoption ofLinuxover the years.

“Fromserverdeployments and consumer electronics likesmartphones, televisions andsmart speakers, to industrial applications likeautomobilesand 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?

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Current page:Introduction

With almost two decades of writing and reporting on Linux, Mayank Sharma would like everyone to think he’sTechRadar Pro’sexpert on the topic. Of course, he’s just as interested in other computing topics, particularly cybersecurity, cloud, containers, and coding.

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