Re-reading my “One Year of Blog” post reminded me of another anniversary that I’d forgotten: I’ve now been using Linux for over 12 years. I started in mid-August 1992, with Linux 0.97. It’s grown a bit since then; 0.97’s tar.gz file was around 288 kB, while Linux 2.6.8 is over 44 MB. That’s a factor of 154 growth in 12 years, or a compounded rate of around 50% per year. At that rate, the compressed kernel source will be too big to fit onto a CD by 2011.