Jeremy Garcia of LinuxQuestions.org and Bad Voltage (a podcast) delivers 25 years of Linux in five minutes: starting with Linux’s first steps as “just a hobby” for creator Linus Torvalds, to its staggering popularity today with 135,000 developers from more than 1,300 companies and 22 million lines of code .

It’s a lot to cover.

1991: Linux begins with Linus Torvalds’ post to Usenet saying it’s “just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu.” 

1992: First GPL release of Linux; it was initially licensed under a custom license that had some commercial restrictions.

1993: After Linux was released under a GPL license, we begin to see the first distributions: Slackware and Debian. 100 developers working on Linux at this point.

1994: 1.0 release of Linux; the only machines supported were single-processor, i386 computers.

1995: 1.2 release of Linux; see more outside contributions to the kernel.

1996: Tux the mascot is created.

1999: 2.2 release of Linux; Linus Tovalds passes Linux maintenance to Alan Cox.

2001: 2.4 release of Linux; IBM pledges to spend 1 billion dollars on Linux, and a new maintainer steps up, Marcelo Tosatti.

2002: Linux development moves from patches and email to source control management.

2003: 2.6 release of Linux; SCO Group files a lawsuit against IBM.

2004: The commercialization of Linux increases; companies want regular releases.

2005: Linux has some licensing issues, so Linus writes Git and moves kernel development to it (very popular today).

2006: First LTS (long term support) release of Linux, lead by Greg Kroah-Hartman.

2009: Red Hat market cap equals market cap of Sun Microsystems, which at the time is the largest commercial Unix manufacturer.

2011: 3.0 release of Linux: Linus Torvalds says there’s “no change.”

2012: Linux server revenue sales equal that of the rest of the Unix market combined.

2015: 4.0 release of Linux: live patching.

2016: Over 135,000 developers from more than 1,300 companies have contributed to the Linux kernel since the adoption of Git; 22 million lines of code.