On August 26th 1991, Linus Torvalds released Linux in the comp.os.minix newsgroup:
Hello everybody out there using minix –
I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing
since april, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat
(same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons)
among other things).
I’ve currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work.
This implies that I’ll get something practical within a few months, and
I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions
are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them 🙂
Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS. Yes – it’s free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.
It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that’s all I have :-(.
The creation of Linux was possible thanks to the Socialist system in Finland that provides free unlimited University education to its students, where Linus Torvalds was able to mess around with his own personal ideas for 8 and a half years for free:
Some talk by Linus Torvalds about Linux 10 years ago on the Charlie Rose TV show:
While Linux totally dominates in your smart phone (Android), in your TV/set-top-box, in the worlds servers that host all websites, in powering Government and Industry infrastructure, I believe that with Chrome OS and OLPC we are also soon likely to see Linux dominate for the home and enterprise desktop/laptop OS ecosystem.
