I’m a bit late on this, but something worth sharing!
Via Lxnews: The Linux kernel has recently celebrated its 20th birthday. Linus Torvalds announced the project to the world on 20:57:08 GMT on August 25, 1991:
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 (torva…@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 Linux kernel has turned out to be one of the most significant pieces of open source software ever developed. Over the past two decades, it has grown from a humble hobby project into a global phenomenon that runs on everything from low-cost e-book readers to a majority of the world’s supercomputers. For more in-depth and fascinating look at the history, read further on Ars Technica.
As a full time user of Linux (on my desktop/laptop/servers) since 2007 (and my phone since 2010), I’d like to wish the community a very happy birthday and wish them all the best for the next 20 years!