<p>The <strong>history of Linux</strong> began in 1991 with the commencement
of a personal project by <ahref="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland">Finnish</a> student
<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds">Linus Torvalds</a>to create a new free operating system kernel. Since
then, the resulting <ahref="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel">Linux kernel</a> has
been marked by constant growth throughout its history. Since the initial
release of its <ahref="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code">source code</a> in
1991, it has grown from a small number of <ahref="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Programming_Language">C</a> files
under a license prohibiting commercial distribution to the 4.2.3 version
in 2015 with more than 18 million lines of source code under the <ahref="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License">GNU General Public License</a> v2.</p>