Introduction

It has not been a bed of roses for Linux and FOSS .As it has been with alll
revolutions in the world history,Linux and FOSS have had tough time.But
now the Sun is shining over Linux.

19 years back Linus Trovalds a computer Science student first posted about
his ‘minix clone’.No one expected it ti grow into a powerfull Operating
system..But as it is said when the going gets tough its the tough that get
get going.And today despite ignorance,despite ridicule Linux has proved its
power.

How It All Begun

In the year 1969 Engineers at AT & T Labs who had been withdrawn from
the project MULTICS were sitting idle.Dennis Ritchie & ken Thomp-
son who were among them decided to modiy the multics to form a better and
stable OS,thus the UNIX was born.UNIX was written in C language, it was
Multitasking,multiuser, and was powerull and was distrubuted freely.Later
on companies started commercialising it and soon hackers lost control of it.
Frustrated by this a hacker RICHARD STALLMAN at the MIT AI LAB set
out to built a UNI like OS but which was entirely free. In 1984he started
the GNU (GNU is Not Unix) project.And in 1985 he founded the Free Sot-
ware Foundation.Stallman developed Emacs a tet editor and several appli-
cations needed for an OS.But finall when it came to the kernel he wasn’t
successful.It was during this time that Linus Trovalds a student made a ker-
nel which he named Linux.Soon Stallman adopted Linux as the kernel.Thus
GNU/LINUX was born an OS for the hackers ,of the hackers and by the
hackersAnone could use it and anyone could modify it and most importantly
it was free.And soon everyone began contributing to the new Linux kernel.

The Present Scenario

Ater a long bumpy ride for 19 years now the GNU/Linux OS is gaining pop-
ularity.Enterpriseslike RedHat Inc. and Novell have released several server
editions that are stable and reliable used on almost all networks today.And
companies like Canonical are giving Microsoft Corp. a tough time with their
UBUNTU a GNU/linux OS for the home users.
This rising popularity of Linux is due to the virus free environment, it ensures
a crash-free system and most of all software worth of thousands of dollars
are available for free.There is nothing that cannot be done on a linux system.
What Bill Gates considered as an OS of the hobbyist and student, today has
reached the desktop of common Man.It has shaken the foundations of Mi-
crosoft.it has ended the monopoly of Microsoft in the field of microcomputer
OS. Linu provides a secure system where crashes and data losses are mini-
mum.The kernel can be modified according to our taste and needs to bring
out the maximum potential of our hardware.Users receive support from a
community of hackers willing to share and help.In Linux there is no copy-
rights or piracy, its all about sharing.The television is called ‘the idiot box’
because we switch it on and see whatever is telecasted.PCs which use ‘win-
dows’ are also idiot boxes.GNU/Linux is based on the idea that we deserve
to know and decide how our systemswork and we have the right to make it
work the way we want.It is for this right that hackers like Richard Stallman,
Linus Trovalds and many others are fighting for.This is a revolution and its
time we too became a part of it. LONG LIVE REVOLUTION!!!!!!!.