Video summary: this article is a detailed summary of the video “How Linux Took Over the World: 35 Years in 35 Facts”, from the channel Jono Bacon — former Ubuntu community lead at Canonical.
Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffl2DFHoZdY
On 25 August 1991, a 21-year-old Finnish student wrote a sentence that Jono Bacon calls “one of the most catastrophically wrong predictions in the history of technology”: “just a hobby, won't be big and professional”. Thirty-five years later, that hobby left a room in Helsinki and reached the surface of Mars. Bacon tells this saga in 35 facts — one for each year. We've gathered the most striking ones here, grouped by chapter. (Complements our anniversary post, Linux turns 35.)
The Improbable Beginning (1991–1994)
The first fact is the Usenet message. The second is delightful: Linus wanted to call the system “Freax” (free + freak + Unix) — a terrible name. It was Ari Lemke, the volunteer who ran the university's FTP server, who hated the name so much that he created a directory called linux on his own, without consulting Linus. The most important software on the planet may have been named by a sysadmin exercising a silent veto.
The version 0.01 had 10.239 lines of code — you could read it all in a weekend (keep that number). Within a few months, strangers started contributing: Ted Ts'o, from North America, came in without a contract or payment and, three decades later, still maintains the ext4. In January of 1992 came the decision Linus would call “the best he ever made”: relicensing the kernel under the GPLv2 — the legal engine that transformed generosity into durable infrastructure.
That same month, the respected professor Andrew Tanenbaum published the academic verdict: “Linux is obsolete”, for using a monolithic design instead of a microkernel. Keep the word “obsolete” — we'll come back to it in 2017. In 1993 and 1994 came Slackware (by Patrick Volkerding, still the oldest active distro today) and Debian — which Ian Murdock named by combining Deborah, his girlfriend, with Ian. His story is at The history of Ian Murdock. The kernel 1.0 (1994) already had 176 thousand lines and was celebrated with champagne and folding chairs in an auditorium in Helsinki.
The Penguin and the Arrival of Money (1996–2001)
Linus was bitten by a penguin at an Australian zoo and joked that he had caught “penguinitis” — hence Tux, designed by Larry Ewing in 1996 with free software. Companies spend fortunes on mascots that say nothing; this one cost a bite and means everything. Then came the desktops (KDE in 1996, GNOME in response), and Wall Street went crazy: Red Hat went public in 1999, and VA Linux surged ~698% on its first day — a record that lasted 25 years.
In December 2000, IBM announced US$ 1 billion in investment in Linux — and the debate over whether that was “serious business” ended right there. The empire's response came in 2001: Microsoft's then-CEO, Steve Ballmer, called Linux a “cancer”. Keep that quote in mind — the turnaround comes in 2016.
Processes, Git, and the Foundation (2003–2008)
Not everything was a party. In 2003, the SCO group sued IBM, raising the claim to US$ 5 billion and threatening companies that used Linux — the case hung over the community for years until SCO went bankrupt. In 2005, a license conflict stripped proprietary version control from the project, and an annoyed Linus wrote the foundation of Git in about ten days — the foundation of platforms like GitHub and GitLab (see The history of Git). The same Finn created two of computing's most influential tools.
In 2007, the Linux Foundation, was born, with an unusual task: help competing companies cooperate around a technology none of them could control. It employs Linus and Greg Kroah-Hartman without deciding a line of code — developers govern the kernel, the foundation protects the surroundings.
The penguin in your pocket (2008–2014)
In October 2008, Android reached the market with the Linux kernel at its heart — and passed 3 billion active devices in 2021. Around 2010, an analysis showed that ~75% of kernel contributions came from developers paid by companies. A betrayal of the volunteer spirit? Bacon disagrees with a great line: “it is not selling out, it is winning so hard that the winners switched sides.” Then came the Raspberry Pi (2012, US$ 35, more than 60 million sold), systemd (2010, adopted despite the flame wars), and, in 2013, Docker — which did not invent containers but made them easy (see The history of Docker). And there was the famous 2012 moment when Linus raised his middle finger at Nvidia onstage — years later, Nvidia opened its kernel modules (the current relationship is in The history of NVIDIA).
The price of success (2014–2018)
Success created a new enemy: Linux itself. In 2014, Heartbleed exposed a catastrophic flaw in OpenSSL — software that protected half the internet and was maintained by practically one developer receiving ~US$ 2.000/year in donations. The industry responded by creating the Core Infrastructure Initiative to fund the projects sustaining “digital civilization.” And the turnaround Bacon promised arrived: in 2016, Microsoft — the “cancer” company — joined the Linux Foundation as a platinum member; today more than 60% of Azure cores run Linux workloads.
In November 2017, payback for Professor Tanenbaum: the world's 500 largest supercomputers all ran Linux — all 500, a situation that has persisted ever since. “Professor, how is ‘obsolete’ doing?” In 2018, the emergency response to Meltdown/Spectre — coordinated secretly by Greg Kroah-Hartman — showed how years of quiet stewardship pay off in a crisis.
Mars, Rust and the 40 million lines (2018–2025)
In September 2018, Linus did something rare for powerful institutions: he publicly acknowledged that his behavior had hurt people and took time off to change — returning with the same demand for quality, but a less sharp tongue. In April 2021, NASA's helicopter Ingenuity flew on Mars running Linux: thousands of open-source contributors can literally say that something they helped build flew on another planet.
In 2022, the Steam Deck (Arch + KDE) made it hard to say with a straight face that “Linux cannot run games”; and Rust entered kernel 6.1 — the first major new language accepted alongside C in decades. In 2024, the XZ Utils backdoor — one of the most sophisticated supply-chain attacks ever attempted — was stopped because a Microsoft engineer noticed half a second of SSH slowdown. And the final fact: in January 2025, the kernel crossed 40 million lines (remember the initial 10.239?). A Harvard and Toronto study estimated at US$ 8,8 trillion the cost of recreating the value free software delivers today.
Timeline: 35 years in milestones
- 25/08/1991 — Linus Torvalds announces on Usenet the “hobby” that “will not be big and professional”;
- 09/1991 — version 0.01: 10.239 lines; Ari Lemke creates the directory
linuxon FTP and buries the name “Freax”; - 01/1992 — kernel relicensed under the GPLv2; Tanenbaum declares “Linux is obsolete”;
- 1993 — the birth of Slackware (July) and Debian (August);
- 03/1994 — kernel 1.0, with 176 thousand lines, celebrated in Helsinki;
- 1996 — Larry Ewing draws Tux; KDE is born (GNOME comes in 1997);
- 1999 — IPO of Red Hat; VA Linux rises ~698% on its first day;
- 12/2000 — IBM announces US$ 1 billion in Linux;
- 2001 — Ballmer calls Linux a “cancer”;
- 2003 — SCO sues IBM and haunts the community for years;
- 04/2005 — Linus writes the foundation of Git in about ten days;
- 2007 — creation of the Linux Foundation;
- 10/2008 — Android reaches the market with the Linux kernel;
- 2010 — the arrival of systemd; ~75% of kernel contributions are already corporate;
- 2012 — Raspberry Pi at US$ 35; Linus's finger at Nvidia;
- 2013 — Docker popularizes containers;
- 04/2014 — Heartbleed exposes OpenSSL's underfunding; the Core Infrastructure Initiative is born;
- 11/2016 — Microsoft joins the Linux Foundation;
- 11/2017 — 500 out of 500 largest supercomputers run Linux;
- 01/2018 — coordinated response to Meltdown/Spectre;
- 09/2018 — Linus takes a break and returns with a less sharp tongue;
- 04/2021 — the helicopter Ingenuity flies on Mars running Linux;
- 2022 — Steam Deck on the market; Rust enters kernel 6.1 (December);
- 03/2024 — the backdoor in XZ Utils stopped because of half a second of SSH slowdown;
- 01/2025 — kernel crosses 40 million lines;
- 25/08/2026 — 35 years since the announcement — and the “hobby” supports everything from the cloud to Mars.
The lesson of 35 facts
Bacon closes with what matters: nobody should have built this. No board approved version 0.01, no investor funded it. A student wrote 10 thousand lines, gave them away, and shrugged. Then strangers appeared — Ted Ts'o, Volkerding, Ian Murdock, Greg KH, Andres Freund, and thousands of others — and stopped being strangers. Linux's most innovative part, he says, is not the source code, it is the social machine that grew around it. Living proof that betting on open source, global collaboration, and technical merit is still the best bet — the same thesis running through the origins of UNIX and the history of Linus Torvalds.
The original 35-minute video is worth watching — it is one of the best Linux retrospectives ever made.