– Only 2 per cent of the code, which was originally written by Torvalds, remains in the current Linux kernel.
– Linux is used in government offices in many countries. In India, Linux is also used for educational purposes in Tamil Nadu.
– The top 10 supercomputers in the world use Linux. Linux accounts for 33.8 per cent of the world’s data servers compared to the operating systems from Microsoft, which account for only 7.3 per cent.
– Bullet trains in Japan, the New York Stock Exchange, CERN and the San Francisco traffic control systems run on Linux.
– Some of the biggest technology related companies like Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook etc. use Linux as their primary operating system.
– In 1991, the GNU project that was developed, did not have any kernels or drivers. That is why Torvalds was led towards working on the Linux kernel development.
– Hollywood director, James Cameron had said that hit movie Avataar was the first movie to be shot completely in 3D using free software on Linux-driven machines.
– The first Linux distribution to be offered by an original equipment manufacturer was Ubuntu. This was done by Dell.
– The well known and very popular digital recording system TiVo also uses Linux.
– Google’s Android operating system, which led to a revolution in the mobile phones industry, is known to be based on Linux.
– Linux itself is not an operating system, rather, it is a kernel. GNU Linus is the operating system.
– The original Linux kernel had only 10,239 lines of code, whereas, today the standard version of the kernel has only 10 million lines of code. This is growing at 10 per cent per year and nearly 4,500 lines are added to the code. In addition, about 1,500 lines in the code are altered almost everyday.
– Yggdrasil Computing Inc was the company that started commercial distribution for Linux for the first time. The freeware was launched on CDs by Yggdrasil in 1992.
– An asteroid has been named after Torvalds in order to honour him.
– A study conducted by the European Union showed that redeveloping the most recent Linux kernel would cost about $1.14 billion.
– The Linux mascot is a penguin named Tux. The name of the Penguin is based on the fact that a penguin’s body is coloured like a tuxedo. But, there are also theories that the name comes from the words Torvalds and Unix.
– The Debian operating system was the first GNU/Linux-based system, which was developed.
– Creator Torvalds originally wanted the Linux kernel to be called Freax. This could be a mix of the words free, freak and the letter X, which would indicate the fact that it resembles Unix. His friend, Ari Lemmke, who was the administrator for the FTP server that was hosting the kernel for downloads, called it the kernel of Linux Torvalds.
– The Linux kernel runs on so many operating systems that it is the most widely ported operating system in the world.
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