See also: last week's Linux History page.

This week in Linux history

Six years ago: LILO version 17 was released as was Qt 0.93 for Linux.

Five years ago: StarOffice Beta 3 was released.

Four years ago: S.u.S.E. Linux 5.1 was released. A French language edition of Red Hat Linux 5.0 was also released.

Three years ago (January 14, 1999 LWN): Creative Labs was in the news concerning the release of information on their Sound Blaster Live card. The company had done a turnaround in policy, starting with the position of not wanting to release its proprietary information and ending with a job posting for a Linux programmer. One can now find a device driver for the Emu10K chip in the Linux kernel source.

LinuxWorld.com ran an article on the Gimp and some potential problems due to two principal developers leaving. "If the story of Gimp's development represents an emerging pattern, then all is not well for open source software." Gimp still appears to be alive and well, so perhaps these problems were overrated.

The press pundits were predicting that 1999 would be the year of Linux, which it was, as was 2000 and 2001 ...

The OpenSSL project was announced. Its goal of creating an open-source full featured secure communications package has been reached, and it is still going strong.

The development kernel was version 2.2.0 pre7 with the 2.2.0 release coming soon. Various Linux distributions were readying their systems for the new kernel. Also, the Kernel Traffic newsletter was introduced.

In the development world, Gnome 0.99.3, code named Profiling Bonobo was released. Digital Creations (now Zope Corp.) opened up the source code to DCOracle, a Python extension to the Oracle database.

Corel introduced their Netwinder thin server product which ran Corel's own port of Linux. That seemed significant at the time.

Tucows opened Linuxberg, still the place to find all things Linux at Tucows.

Two years ago (January 13, 2000 LWN): The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) was attracting opposition. It contained a number of unpleasant components for the customers of commercial software, including remote shutdown code, contracts that could not be read until the box was opened, and transferability restrictions. Reverse engineering was also under attack, something that affected Linux developers. UCITA has since passed in a small number of states in the US and still remains as a threat.

Michael Tiemann, formerly from Cygnus, moved into the position of Red Hat's Chief Technical Officer after the acquisition of Cygnus by Red Hat. Red Hat also managed to complete a stock split, things were riding high and wild in the world of Linux stocks.

The second draft of the US cryptography regulations were discussed, some of the rules were about to be relaxed. This affected Linux in that the kernel could contain more secure versions of the encryption software without the need for user intervention.

The development kernel was up to version 2.3.39 with a 2.3.40 prepatch available. Lots of USB changes were in progress along with many other things. The stable kernel was version 2.2.14.

In the world of distributions, it was claimed that the Chinese government may have banned Windows 2000 in favor of Red Flag Linux. While Microsoft products were never banned, Red Flag Linux and other localized versions such as Bluepoint Linux remain popular in China.

The Linux Professional Institute announced free Linux exams and signed up over 300 people in a short time.

Caldera Systems filed for its IPO. The now renamed Caldera International succeeded in going public, and later acquired SCO, shifting some of its Linux focus into SCO's UNIX products.

LinuxOne's IPO filing wasn't looking very likely to succeed, people in the financial world were beginning to notice the real lack of technical substance in the company.

One year ago (January 11, 2001 LWN): The 2.4.0 kernel was released on January 4, 2001. This long awaited stable version of the Linux kernel left developers with no development branch to work on. The ancient kernel release 2.0.39 was announced on January 9, ending development on that branch. The older stable kernel release was at 2.2.18 and while occasional bug fixes were still getting in, new features were not accepted. New features were not accepted on the 2.4 branch either, at least at first. Most of the new features have had to wait nearly a year, for the recently announced 2.5. series to begin.

In the closed-source world, releases are a big deal because they are seen very seldom and usually contain major feature additions. By contrast, an open-source software release is essentially a milestone -- a declaration that what was already available is now stable.
-- LinuxDevices.com

The soon to be released Filesystem Hierarchy Standard v2.2 was discussed.

Bruce Peren's online magazine Technocrat.net shut down.

Lineo, Inc. announced the release of the uClinux 2.4 kernel. Mozilla 0.7 was released. Turbolinux started selling IBM Linux-based software. The NSA released a prototype of its Security-Enhanced Linux System.

There was much ado about a short-lived movie called "Antitrust", which contained a cameo spot with Miguel de Icaza and screen shots of GNOME.

Already, members of the open-source community are salivating over the film's release. They've flocked to the official MGM Web site to bash Microsoft and extol the virtues of open-source software. The forums there read more like postings on the open-source news Web site Slashdot than the starstruck opinions that often appear on such sites. Some postings urge people to switch to Linux. Others offer tech support.
-- News.com

Too bad the movie wasn't as good as the software it portrayed.

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol.

LWN Linux Timelines
1998 In Review
1999 In Review
2000 In Review
2001 In Review

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