History
Linux distributions began to appear very soon after the Linux kernel spread beyond its original developers. Distribution developers provided all the libraries and executables that were necessary in order to install the system. Early distributions included:
- H J Lu's "Boot-root" a two disk pair with the kernel and the absolute minimal tools to get started
- MCC Interim Linux, which was made available to the public for download on the FTP server of University of Manchester in February 1992
- TAMU, created by individuals at Texas A&M University about the same time
- SLS (Softlanding Linux System)
- Yggdrasil Linux/GNU/X, the first CD-ROM based Linux distribution
SLS was not well maintained, so Patrick Volkerding released a distribution based on SLS, which he called Slackware, released in 1993. This is the oldest distribution still in active development.
Users were attracted to Linux distributions as alternatives to the DOS and Microsoft Windows operating systems on the PC, Mac OS on the Apple Macintosh, and proprietary versions of Unix. Most early adopters were familiar with Unix from work or school. They embraced Linux for its stability, low (if any) cost, and availability of the source code for most or all of the software included.
Originally, the distributions were simply a convenience, but today, they have become the usual choice even for Unix or Linux experts. To date, Linux has proven more popular in the server market, primarily for Web and database servers (see also LAMP), and in embedded devices market than in the desktop market.
Read more about this topic: Linux Distribution
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)