The History and Evolution of Linux

Linux is used in a significant portion of modern digital infrastructure—from web servers to mobile phones and from personal computers to supercomputers. But how and why did it start? That is what we will answer in this lesson.

In 1991, a Finnish computer science student named Linus Torvalds decided to create a new, free operating system. Linus wrote a legendary message on the comp.os.minix newsgroup announcing his project and asking for help, which you can see below:

On Monday, August 26, 1991 at 2:12:08 AM UTC-4, Linus Benedict Torvalds wrote:

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 (torv...@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 :-(.

Linus Torvalds

This project was initially intended as a personal endeavor to improve upon the existing MINIX operating system. Linus then released the source code under the GNU (pronounced "guh-noo.") General Public License, allowing other developers to modify and distribute the software freely, giving birth to what we now know as the Linux k…