History of the linux distro: The first 30 years: Part 1

The first Linux distribution was released by computer program named HJ Lu in 1992. HJ Lu distro was called ,Boot/Root. It consisted of just two 5.25” floppy diskettes:

LINUX 0.12 BOOT DISK: The “boot” disk was used to boot the system first.

LINUX 0.12 ROOT DISK: The second “root” disk for getting a command prompt for access to the Linux file system after booting.

That same year we saw more user friendly distros "MCC Interim Linux" developed by the Manchester Computing Centre in England and "TAMU Linux" developed by Aggies at Texas A&M with the Texas A&M with the Texas A&M Unix & Linux Users Group. In fact TAMU 1.0A. was the first Linux distribution to offer the X Window System instead of just a text based operating system. 

Peter MacDonalds Softlanding Linux System ( SLS).

Softlanding Linux System was founded by Peter MacDonald in May 1992 and it was the first Linux distro to be distributed across the world to the novice user. SLS was available on floppies (30 5.25 floppies or 25 3.5 floppies), QIC150 or CDROM from the address below for a flat rate distribution fee of US $99 ($125 Canadian) + $15 shipping and handling. 

Now to put things in perspective 30 floppies was a bit much even back then. To put that in context, DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1 were 3 and 6 floppies respectively. Windows 95 itself was available on 13. However, SLS was the first linux distro to offer a comprehensive Linux distribution containing more than the Linux kernel and basic utilities, including TCP/IP and the X Window System. 

Debian, Slackware, S.U.S.E

Debian and Slackware are two longest running Linux disro in the world. They both evolve via SLS. As good as SLS was it had a very bad reputation reputation for being very buggy, both Debian and Slackware were both started due to frustration with the initial project. 

 

Slackware was created by Patrick Volkerding July 17, 1993. In fact Slackware is based on SLS and is longest existing distros in the world. 

 

Ian Murdock formed the Debian Project August 16th, 1993 after moving on from the SLS model. Debian was the only distribution open for every developer and user to contribute their work.The first named release, "Buzz", came out in 1996. Debian 2.1, "Slink", appeared in March 1999, and introduced us to the Advanced Package Tool (APT), which brought automatic dependency resolution to Linux software management. According to DistroWatch, about 120 Linux distros are based on Debian. 

 

SUSE Linux got its start back in 1992 when Thomas Fehr, Roland Dyroff, Burchard Steinbild, and Hubert Mantel launched the SUSE project. Their company began with selling the German version of Slackware on floppy disks. SUSE Linux didn’t become its own independent version until 1996. The first distribution under the name S.u.S.E. (Software und System-Entwicklung) Linux was published as S.u.S.E. Linux 4.2. 

 

In 2003, Novell acquired Linux OS developer SuSE, more on that later.

Red Hat Linux

In 1994, Marc Ewing created his own Linux distribution, which he named Red Hat Linux. The name Red Hat came from Ewing’s experience in his college computer lab. He would wear his grandfather’s red Cornell lacrosse cap, and people would say, “If you need help, look for the guy in the red hat.” 

At the time redhead seemed to be a very good alternative to Microsoft Windows which at the time was in trouble with the U.S. Justice Department for monopolistic practices. In 1994 Department of Justice led by Janet Reno opened an investigation resulting in a settlement in which Microsoft that same year consented not to tie other Microsoft products to the sale of Windows. Red Hat went down a different path at Microsoft. Red Hat pioneered the original open-source business model. Instead of protecting trade secrets and filing patents for expensive proprietary products, Red Hat offered a stable, accessible distribution of a constantly evolving, community-developed operating system called Linux. They went public in 1999 with a record-breaking initial public offering (IPO). 

Enoch/Gentoo

Enoch Hit the scene with 0.75 of their distribution in December 1999. Their goal was to create a distribution without per-compiled binaries that was tuned to the hardware and only included required programs. Then later on it was renamed Gentoo with the release of their version 1.0 on March 31, 2002. The key architect of Enoch Daniel Robbins set up the non-profit Gentoo Foundation in 2004, transferred all copyrights and trademarks to it, and stepped down as chief architect of the project. He stepped down as Chief architect of the project that same year. Gentoo Linux was named after the gentoo penguin, the fastest swimming species of penguin. Gentoo It's definitely not for a non-technical user. A widely used Linux distro based on Gentoo is called Sabayon. Sabayon is a beginner-friendly Gentoo-based Linux distribution. They aim to deliver the ultimate"out of the box" for a novice user.

CRUX

Crux development started in May 2000, but the first public release, version 0.5, was only made available to the public in January 2001 It was maintained by Per Lidén. CRUX is a Linux distribution developed from scratch and not based on any other distribution, but It seem distributions development was influenced by Slackware Linux. CRUX like Slackware and Gentoo target experienced Linux users. Programs are install is delivered by a tar.gz-based package system with BSD-style initscripts. CRUX is not based on any other Linux distribution. It is not a distribution that's widely used but it inspired a great distribution that is widely used, Arch Linux

Arch Linux

Arch Linux definitely paved the way for rolling release Linux distros, giving it a major place in modern Linux history. It was indeed inspired by another minimalist distribution called CRUX. Judd Vinet started the Arch Linux project in March 2002. Arch Linux is different distributions like Debian, Red Hat, and SuSE , Arch does not come with a graphical installer, and the whole installation process is done via a terminal. This can be a little intimidating for new Linux users. Arch Linux uses exclusively a rolling release model which means there are no a milestone or major releases for new versions. It ships software as released by the original developers with minimal distribution-specific changes. Arch Linux has its package manager called Pacman. Like apt for Debian and dnf for Fedora, package installation in Arch Linux has been done using Pacman. However, unlike other Linux distributions, Arch Linux doesn’t have out of the box graphical package manager. On a side note both Steam OS 3 and Chimera OS gaming centric distros are based on Arch Linux.