With the birth of Free Software Movement started by Richard Stallman & his supporter’s, & an important decision taken by Linus Torvalds by licensing Linux kernel under GPL has revolutionized the computing world to an extent without which the computing world hadn’t taken it’s glorious form what we see today.

It’s almost 26 years Free Software foundation came into existence & Linux Kernel turned 20 recently. With a huge excitement I’m writing important achievements made by free software community & its contribution to the world.

Who use GNU/Linux?

· Humans ;-)

· Super Computing: 91% of the top 500 super computer run on Linux.

 

· Astronomy: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory sees the universe more clearly.

· Aeronautics: German Air Traffic Control does it’s radar processing on Linux

· Mobility: Google’s Android was built on top of GNU/Linux.

· Education: HRD Ministry, Govt of India introduces Rs 1500/- tablet that runs on GNU/Linux with plan to distribute this tablet to 504 universities and 25,000 colleges across the country.

· Manufacturing: ThyssenKrupp Electrical Steel manages it’s production lines on Linux

· Financial Services: London Stock Exchanges new trading platform runs on Linux

· Banking: UMB Financial Corp secures it’s IT infrastructure with Linux

· Retail: Café Coffee Run’s it’s ERP on Linux. Mahindra Retail deploys SAP ERP+SUSE Linux on
commodity x86 hardware

· Insurance: ING Life, India migrates its desktop fleet from windows to Linux.

National Insurance Company migrates 1000+ servers from UNIX to Linux.

· Services Industry: Just Dial powers its mission-critical intranet and extranet applications on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux. Tax Spanner, the best income tax intermediary runs its business on Linux.

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 GNU/Linux: The Journey so far

· 1983
GNU project is announced by Richard Stallman.

· 1985
The GNU Manifesto, a statement by Richard Stallman advocating the cause of free software is
published.

· 1987
MINIX was first released by Andrew S. Tanenbaum with its complete source code made available
for study and research which also inspired creation of Linux Kernel.

· 1991
Linus Torvalds creates Linux kernel.

· 1992
Linus licenses Linux under GPL, a license by Free Software Foundation.

· 1993
Redhat founded & releases it’s distro a year later.
Slackware becomes the first commercial standalone distribution.
Debian Linux distro released.

· 1995
First version of MySQL released.

· 1996
Apache web server is born.

SUSE Linux,a German Linux distro is released.

PCQ Linux version 1 is released.

· 1997
First “Linux virus” known as Bliss Discovered.

· 1998
OSI formed

GOOGLE is born, and runs on custom designed version of Linux.

Mandriva Linux released.

· 1999
Sourceforge.net is born.

The GNOME project gave birth to Gnome Desktop.

· 2001
The US National Security Agency (NSA) releases SELinux under the GPL.

· 2002
The Gentoo foundation released the first version of Gentoo Linux.

· 2003
Fedora OS,developed by Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat came into being.

Bill Reymonds released PCLinuxOS.

· 2004
Cannonical released debian based Ubuntu.

Cent OS project resulted in CentOS OS,bassed on RHEL.

· 2006
Linux Mint distro was released based on ubuntu targeted at people with less or no prior Linux
experience.

· 2010
The first smartphone based on Android, Google Nexux One was released.

· 2011
Linux kernel 3.0 released. 2,00,000+ apps available for Google Android.
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I'm happy that I had utilized two days of my bench period in writing this at Accenture :-)
  
Sources : PC Quest,Wikipedia,My knowledge ;-) 
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THE  JOURNEY BEGINS

The day you are born,  before you take in fresh air you hear weird noises saying “Mera beta Engineer Banega”, “Nahi Mera beta Doctor Banega” , “ Isko tho MBA hi karvana padega “,  "Dekho iska chehra, yeh tho class mein FIRST ayega " . Hey little chap!!!, you are lucky as you don’t understand them so early :-)

“We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.”  ~ Stacia Tauscher

SCHOOL 
Poor parent’s are in tough position in finding a school with good educational standards & a one which they can afford. Today, many schools loot parents pockets with a tag “INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL PVT LTD”. Yes no offense, all do have Mineral Water & Air Conditioner’s :P , the other things such as playgrounds, practical learning systems & a good mentoring system are found only with a few out of many.

We see many school kids carrying heavy bags that results in physical stress on the body. Still no offense, bacha ko B.D, A.D se lekhar aaj tak har cheej eki din mein padana hein :P. Apart from paying hell amount of money to school, little one’s are sent to tuition's killing their free time to play. BTW why are they sent, Haha... you have many answer’s for it. Jot them down &  just give them a DAMN!!!

As a result of competition, Life turned out to be a RACE. Race in terms of finding all the ways your kid can have edge over others & Race in term’s of RACISM. Who ever wins award them & what about the rest?? MAKE THEM RUN FASTER. 

COLLEGES OR CORPORATE’S OR MANUFACTURER’S? 

These logos still haunt :P . Get up by 6.00am, RUN, RUN…RUN. The time you come back to home is left to their choice :-(  These educational institutions  have gone to an extent of advertising that resulted in loss of interest in choosing subjects like economics, history, political sciences etc as their career in many states of India. These institutions apart from charging heavy fee’s from all the students for IIT-JEE, AIEEE, EAMCET etc only give importance to the cream leaving the rest in dustbin. The amount of profit’s they make every year from hard earned money of common man is of no match to the justice they do for everyone. Hey ppl, don’t forget to breathe during these years of lifelessness :P :D

ENGINEERING

Yes we got a chance to breathe :P . But confused with many choices available we land up in some stream to drive the future :P. We have lot’s of fun, explore many things. Today lakhs of engineer’s are produced each year, but are left jobless. Many land up in doing a job that is no way related to what they have learnt in engineering. Here, few lucky one’s don’t repeat mistakes done in the past, they go by their passion. What about the rest? The cycle repeats Graduate>JOB>Marriage>Unka Bachein>Phir cinema REPEAT! :P :P

Mental Illness as a result of stress

Your family member’s, uncle’s, aunt’s expect you to become something which you don’t even  know or you are not interested at all. Many times we keep fighting with our inner interest’s & what the outside world expects out of us. As a result many endup with anxiety disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorders, bipolar disorder, depression, eating disorders,  schizophrenia & few commit Suicides. Recent statistics show that teens in Southern India have the World's Highest Suicide Rates in the world.

Motivation

A good effort in understanding each other(parents & children) will help in providing good support during difficult times & achieving your goals formed out of your passion. Few movies in the recent times such as "Taare Zameen Par" & "3 Idiots" made a good effort  in educating the challenges & the problems faced. Hope many such movies come up focusing on various issues that gives coming generation “A RAY OF HOPE”.

For the one’s who feel this article very pessimistic in nature, Trust me you are very lucky. But this is the reality with many. Soon in the future, Let's hope many feel lucky too ;-)

Note: Few of my sentences were taken from the movie 3 Idiots, couldn't find a better way to express ;-)