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Interesting facts about Linux Linux趣事
Today, August, 25th, is the 23rd birthday of Linux. The modest Usenet post made by a 21 year old student at the University of Helsinki on August 25th, 1991, marks the birth of the venerable Linux as we know it today.
今天，8月25号，是Linux的第23个生日。1991年，8月25日，21岁的赫尔辛基大学的学生发布了举世闻名的Usenet post，标志着现在世界著名的Linux正式诞生。
Fast forward 23 years, and now Linux is everywhere, not only installed on end user desktops, smartphones and embedded systems, but also fulfilling the needs of leading enterprises and powering mission-critical systems such as US Navy's nuclear submarines and FAA's air traffic control. Entering the era of ubiquitous cloud computing, Linux is continuing its dominance as by far the most popular platform for the cloud.
23年以后的今天，linux已经无处不在，不仅仅被安装于桌面系统，智能手机和嵌入式系统，甚至也被龙头企业用于他们的关键系统，比如说像美国海军的核潜艇（US Navy's nuclear submarines）和联邦航空局的空中管制系统(FAA's air traffic control)。进入无处不在的云计算时代，linux在云计算平台方面仍然保持着它的优势。
Celebrating the 23rd birthday of Linux today, let me show you some interesting facts and history you may not know about Linux. If there is anything to add, feel free to share it in the comments. In this article, I will use the terms "Linux", "kernel" or "Linux kernel" interchangeably to mean the same thing.
今天，我们一起庆祝linux 23岁生日，就让我们告诉你一些你可能不知道的linux趣事和linux历史。如果有什么要补充的，请在评论中分享出来。在这篇文章里，我可能用会用“linux”，“kernel”和“Linux kernel”交换着表示同一个意思。
- There is a never-ending debate on whether or not Linux is an operating system. Technically, the term "Linux" refers to the kernel, a core component of an operating system. Folks who argue that Linux is not an operating system are operating system purists who think that the kernel alone does not make the whole operating system, or free software ideologists who believe that the largest free operating system should be named "GNU/Linux" to give credit where credit is due (i.e., GNU project). On the other hand, some developers and programmers have a view that Linux qualifies as an operating system in a sense that it implements the POSIX standard.
1.关于linux是否是一个开源的操作系统这种争论总是无休无止的。事实上，“Linux”操作系统的核心组件参照的是kernel（内核）。而 反派认为Linux不是一个纯粹的操作系统，因为他们认为仅仅一个kernel并不是一个操作系统，自由软件的推崇者认为最大的操作系统应叫做“GNU/Linux”把功劳归于应得的人（比如：GNU project）。另一方面，一些linux的开发者认为，linux拥有成为一个操作系统的资格，因为它实现了POSIX标准。
- According to openhub.net, the majority (95%) of Linux is written in C language. The second popular language for Linux is assembly language (2.8%). The dominance of C lanaguage over C++ is no surprise given Linus's stance on C++. Here is the programming language breakdown for Linux.
2.从openhub网站的额统计来看，绝大部分（95%）的Linux是用C语言写的。第二（2.8%）受欢迎的是汇编语言。毫无疑问，C语言比C++ 的更受欢迎，也表明了linus对C++的立场。下面是Linus编程语言的分类。
- Linux has been built by a total of 13,036 contributors worldwide. The most prolific contributor is, of course, Linus Torvalds himself, who has committed code more than 20,000 times over the course of the lifetime of Linux. The following figures show the all-time top-10 contributors of Linux in terms of commit counts.
3.在世界上，Linux已经被13,036个贡献者创建和修改。当然，贡献最多的还是Linus Torvalds自己。在他的一生中，他提交了20,000以上的代码。下图显示了所有提交次数最多的前十位Linux贡献者。
- The total source lines of code (SLOC) of Linux is over 17 million. The estimated cost for the entire code base is 5,526 person-years, or over 300M USD according to basic COCOMO model.
4.Linux的代码行（SLOC）有超过1700万行。估计整个代码库的花费大概是5,526人年，或者是超过300M（1M=10*1000万亿）美元，基于 模型的基本估算法（basic COCOMO model）。
- Enterprises have not been simply consumers of Linux. Their employees have been actively participated in the development of Linux. The figure below shows the top-10 corporate sponsors of Linux kernel development, in terms of total commit counts from their employees, as of year 2013. They include commercial Linux distributors (Red Hat, SUSE), chip/embedded system makers (Intel, Texas Instruments, Wolfson), non-profits (Linaro), and other IT power houses (IBM, Samsung, Google).
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The official mascot of Linux is "Tux", a friendly penguin character. The idea of using a cuddly penguin as a mascot/logo was in fact first conceived and asserted by Linus himself. Why penguin? Personally Linus is fond of penguins, despite the fact that he once was bitten by a ferocious penguin, causing him infected with a disease.
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A Linux "distribution" contains the Linux kernel, supporting GNU utilities/libraries, and other third-party applications. According to distrowatch.com, there are a total of 286 actively maintained Linux distrutions. The oldest among them is Slackware whose very first release 1.0 became available in 1993.
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Kernel.org, which is the main repository of Linux source code, was compromised by an unknown attacker in August, 2011, who managed to tamper with several kernel.org's servers. In an effort to tighten up access policies of the Linux kernel, Linux foundation recently turned on two-factor authentication at the official Git repositories hosting the Linux kernel.
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The dominance of Linux on top 500 supercomputers continues to rise. As of June 2014, 97% of the world-fastest computers are powered by Linux.
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Spacewatch, a research group of Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, named several asteroids (9793 Torvalds, 9882 Stallman, 9885 Linux and 9965 GNU) after GNU/Linux and their creators, in recognition of the free operating system which was instrumental in their asteroid survey activities.
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In the modern history of Linux kernel development, there was a big jump in kernel version: from 2.6 to 3.0. The renumbering to version 3 actually did not signify any major restructuring in kernel code, but was simply to celebrate the 20 year milestone of the Linux kernel.
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In 2000, Steve Jobs at Apple Inc. tried to hire Linus Torvalds to have him drop Linux development and instead work on "Unix for the biggest user base," which was OS X back then. Linus declined the offer.
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The reboot() system call in the Linux kernel requires two magic numbers. The second magic number comes from the birth dates of Linus Torvalds and his three daughters.
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With so many fans of Linux around the world, there are criticisms on current Linux distributions (mainly desktops), such as limited hardware support, lack of standardization, instability due to short upgrade/release cycles, etc. During the Linux kernel panel at LinuxCon 2014, Linus was quoted as saying "I still want the desktop" when asked where he thinks Linux should go next.
If you know any interesting facts about Linux, feel free to share them in the comments.
Happy birthday, Linux!
via: http://xmodulo.com/2014/08/interesting-facts-linux.html