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Linus Torvalds while attending University of Helsinki began working on a new operating system which he named "Freax." -
August 25, 1991
Torvalds announced the first version of his new operating system. This would be the first version of Linux -
In 1992 the Linux kernel was released under the GNU General Public License this made it an open source software and therefore available on a wide scale. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZlOCHYu1Vk
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in 1993 Torvalds meets Tove who would later become his future wife. This is significant due to how they met (through technology) "He was running introductory computer laboratory exercises for students and instructed the course attendees to send him an e-mail as a test, to which Tove responded with an e-mail asking for a date" -
in 1994 the first commercial Linux distribution, called Red Hat https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/History_of_Red_Hat_Linux
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Debian is released in 1995 as another popular Linux distribution https://lwn.net/Articles/246055/
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In 1996, Linux Professional Institute was founded to offer certification and training for Linux professionals thus making the operating system that much more credible. "Our mission is to promote the use of open source by supporting the people who work with it." -
in 1998 the Open Source Initiative is established to promote open source software including Linux. https://opensource.org
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In 1999 the GNOME and KDE desktop bodies were created which offered user-friendly interfaces for Linux. -
In 2000 IBM announced its support for Linux which lead to an increased use by businesses and governments. https://money.cnn.com/2000/12/12/technology/ibm_linux/
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In 2003, the Linux kernel version 2.6 was released, introducing new features and improvements. Which included work done on the scheduler. https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6530
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In 2011 Linus Torvalds was given the award of the Millennium Technology Prize for his work on Linux and the good it has done for technology and the world. -
In 2015, Microsoft announced its support for Linux which included the ability to run Linux on its Azure cloud computing platform. https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2015/05/06/microsoft-loves-linux/
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In today's world, Linux is used in a wide range of applications including servers, supercomputers, mobile devices, and embedded systems. It is estimated that Linux powers over 90% of the world's supercomputers and a large portion of web servers.