[ Thanks to Steven J.
Vaughan-Nichols for this link. ]
“Let’s take a look at this last decade and see how
Linux made its journey from niche operating system to its current
prominence.“2001 – Linux Kernel 2.4
“The Linux 2.2 kernel was great… for standalone servers and
brave desktop users. It was only after the Linux 2.4 kernel was
introduced in early January 2001 that Linux took dead aim at moving
from Web servers and branch file and print servers to running the
enterprise. Yes, it added some desktop-friendly features, better
device support in general and USB support that really worked in
specific, but its improved support for clustering, multiple
processors and up to 64GBs of memory is what paved its way to being
an enterprise server powerhouse.“2001 – The Mixed Blessing of Proprietary Drivers
“With Linux 2.4’s new driver model it became possible for
vendors to support Linux with proprietary drivers. NVIDIA with
32-bit 3D graphics drivers, followed in 2002 with 64-bit drivers,
was the first proprietary software/hardware company to take
advantage of it. The good news is it let people use proprietary
software and firmware-based graphic and Wi-Fi devices on Linux. The
bad news is that you have to use proprietary software even now to
get the most from some devices”