Wired: The Greatest OS That (N)ever Was (1997)
Linux was started six years ago as a typical programming lark: written to run on a PC with 4 Mbytes of RAM as a free version of the costly commercial Unix operating system. Today, Linux has an installed base conservatively estimated at around 3 million users. And they're not just spotty adolescents playing in their bedrooms: Linux vendors say that most of the top companies in the US have bought the OS - but that few will readily admit to running their multimillion-dollar corporations on code put together by a band of software idealists.