Linux has been around for more than 20 years and serves happily in both desktop and server roles. But it didn’t show up overnight. Linux is the result of the collaboration of lots of people over the years.
To understand Linux, you have to go back to the birth of Unix. In 1969, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, a couple of programmers at Bell Labs wanted to continue their research into operating systems. Bell Labs had been participating in the Multics, a research project that included MIT and GE, to create an operating system that would provide an information utility. The idea was a lot like what’s now called “cloud computing,” but in the 1960s it was the operating system equivalent of Duke Nukem Forever, with development proceeding slowly. Bell Labs pulled out of the project, leaving Thompson and Ritchie missing the programming environment they experienced on Multics.