Linux's Remarkable Journey From One Dev's Hobby To 40 Million Lines Of Code - And Counting
ZDNet, Tuesday, July 1st, 2025
Longtime programmer Jonathan Corbet tells the story of Linux and reveals what's made it successful over its three decades.
When Linus Torvalds posted his now-legendary 1991 announcement about a "hobby" operating system kernel, no one would have predicted that Linux would become the backbone of modern computing. In a speech at the Open-Source Summit, North America, Jonathan Corbet, executive editor of LWN and longtime kernel developer, recounted the Linux kernel's remarkable journey, highlighting its disruptive beginnings, its unique development model, and the challenges that have shaped its evolution.