20 years ago today, Linux was released

Posted by Charbax – August 26, 2011

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.

  • Anonymous

    You do know Android got ejected out of the Linux in Kernel 2.633
    1.14. Android removed from the Linux kernelRecommended article: Android and the Linux kernel communityGoogle doesn’t seem to have interest in improving the Android drivers to have minimum quality standards which could allow to merge them in the main Linux tree and share them with the rest of community. Of course, that’s totally legal, but it’s sad that a project that is doing so much to bring open source to the masses has become an example of how not to interact with an open source community.LINKs: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Linux-Kernel-2-6-33-No-Longer-Supports-Android-135930.shtmlhttp://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_33andhttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/03/android_driver_code_deleted_from_linux_kernel/

  • http://ARMdevices.net/ Charbax

    That link is from February 2010, haven’t they fixed that stuff about feeding their improvements back to kernel since then?

  • Maventwo

    Another interesting thing about Linus Thorvalds is that his grandfather (his mothers father) was Finlands first professor in Mathematics, which you can read in the book Just for Fun written by David Diamond together with Linus Thorvalds.

  • Maventwo

    Isn´t the development of MeeGo OS more open than the developing of Android OS?
    MeeGo OS develops mostly through the community behind MeeGo but Android OS is msotly developet by the company behind Android that Google aquired.

  • http://ARMdevices.net/ Charbax

    Everyone wants to use Android and nobody cares about meego. Not really directly comparable. And also, how can one know if Nokia and Intel didn’t develop big parts of meego behind their own closed doors, experimenting different designs secretly before selectively releasing stuff later to that community. I don’t think meego gives you a direct access to see in real-time everything that goes on at Intel’s R&D offices, same thing.

  • Tactilofan

    I think the Linux Desktop Question cannot be solve without the help of device constructors. If there were more official printer drivers for instance, I think Linux would already be more adopted.

  • Maventwo

    Just like your argument “how can one know if Nokia and Intel didn´t develop big parts of MeeGo behind their own closed doors” are South korean state and industry afraid of when it comes to the development of Android now when Googles have decided to aquire Motorola Mobility.

    See, here from The Korean Herald:
    http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20110822000719

  • Anonymous

    face it. android is a fork. It is still forked. Google has not contributed anything back to the upstream.

    BTW, Meego is more open than android

  • Maventwo

    Mozilla Foundation have recently announced that they shall develop an OS for Smartphones and tablet pc based on theirs Layout Gecko and Mozilla Foundation want also that webAPI shall be implemented in all kinds of web browsers where probably Googles initiative webRTC will be the telfony program type of the webAPI shell.

  • Maventwo

    The Singapore based company FusionGarage have developed Grid-OS based on Android OS.

    Grid 4 is made for Smartphones and Grid 10 is made for tablet pc.
    See, what GridOS looks like on:
    http://www.fusiongarage.com/

  • Maventwo

    Yes, Linux is too problematic for many users, for example sound in Ubuntu.

    My friend Yrjo (Yrjo and the o with two dots up as we have in Sweden and Finnish spelling) who lives in Jaffna in Sri Lanka who nowadays use Ubuntu can´t hear anything throw Ubuntu OS, even if ALSA and JACK files are for sound install, my friend Yrjo still can´t hear anything on his laptop with Ubuntu.

    Ordinary computer users that is not fond of doing a lot of installations on their computer will rather use Microsoft Windows than Linux distro untill it will be much easier to install files for such things like sound.

  • Fabio Fumi

    thanks Charbax for reminding us this birthday