History of Linux
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This is by no means a complete history of Linux and is very much a work in progress. However, it’s a very extensive combination of information from usenet posts and Linux authority sites. I would very much like to make it as complete as possible so if you would like to contribute information to this page please let me know. |
| 1971 | Bell Labs releases the first Unix operating system. |
| 1985 | Richard Stallman releases his GNU (aka “GNU is Not Unix”) Manifesto thus starting the open source revolution. He wanted to create an open-source version of Unix. Stallman’s Free Software Foundation eventually created the GNU General Public License (GPL) which is basically an anti-copyright also referred to as a “copyleft”. |
| 1987 | Andy Tanenbaum created MINIX, a small, highly portable Unix clone created for educational/academic purposes. |
| 03 Jul 1991 | Linus Torvalds (born 28 Dec 1969), a University of Helsinki (Finland) computer science student, announced he was working on a project “(in MINIX)” and was asking for the latest POSIX rules in the comp.os.minix newsgroup. |
| 25 Aug 1991 | Linus tells comp.os.minix that he has been brewing a free Unix-like operating system, since April of 1991, “just as a hobby” for 386/486 AT clone PCs. He asked the newsgroup what people liked or disliked about MINIX. He reiterates the fact that it is completely free of MINIX code. He also mentions that it probably won’t support anything but AT-hard disk drives. |
| Mid Sep 1991 | This is when Linus thinks that Linux (or freax as Linus wanted to call it, Linux was “too egotistical”) version 0.01’s source code was released. It wasn’t an independent OS due to the fact that it still needed MINIX to compile. Here are the release notes. |
| 05 Oct 1991 | Linus makes the sources for version 0.02 of his OS available on an FTP server for the world to see and use. The directory on the FTP server was /pub/OS/Linux. Ari Lemke actually hated the name freax and created the Linux directory instead. Linus “did not put up much of a fight”. He explains that the OS is for “hackers by a hacker”. |
| 21 Oct 1991 | Linus plugs his project as a kernel for hackers. He essentially says that if you’re not a programmer then hold off on trying to use Linux. At this point, Linux is still not an independent OS yet, you still need MINIX to compile it. |
| Mid to Late Oct 1991 | Linux 0.03 is available. |
| 31 Oct 1991 | Linus touts Linux after some great words of encouragement from other comp.os.minix readers. Linux is still not yet an independent OS. |
| NOTE: | The next numbered version of Linux (0.10) is released sometime between 31 Oct 1991 and 19 Dec 1991. |
| 19 Dec 1991 | Linus posts about the status of Linux stating that it was still in beta but had made it up to version 0.11. This version was stated to be a standalone operating system and had floppy disk support. |
| Before Christmas 1991 | Linus released Linux version 0.11+VM for people trying to compile Linux with 2 MB of RAM. He said this version was, “available only to a small number of people that wanted to test it out: I’m still surprised it worked as well as it did.” |
| 05 Jan 1992 | Linux 0.12 is released (as a beta). The copyright was rewritten to coincide more with the GNU “copyleft”. Prior to this version Linus “didn’t allow any money at all to change hands due to linux”. Linus also states that this release worked quite well and it was the version that “made it” and that “linux started to spread a lot faster”. This version included paging and job control. |
| 09 Jan 1992 | Linus posts the Linux 0.11 Information Sheet. The sheet describes Linux as a “freely distributable UNIX clone”. Also, says that Linux has been written from scratch and that complete source code is available via anonymous FTP. Hardware requirements were:
The information sheet also states that various people are working on numerous, much needed pieces of Linux 1.0. |
| 13 Jan 1992 | Someone asks if anyone is actually running Linux and for “an opinion on its merits vis-a-vis 386-Minix?” The same person doubts a reliable operating system could be written in such a short time from scratch and notes that it took Andy Tanenbaum years and a staff to create MINIX. Linus states that “Linux is a viable alternative to MINIX-386″ also saying that “There are bugs, and reliable’ might be too strong a word for linux still, but most things are easier to do under linux than under minix.” |
| 16 Jan 1992 | Linus advises that init/login functions work but aren’t quite in the OS yet. This means that users were always logged in as root. |
| 20 Jan 1992 | When asked if Linux will be ported to Apple Macintosh Linus says that he wrote Linux to learn Intel’s 386 architecture and that there was a very small chance that it would be ported. He then tells comp.os.minix that follow-ups on Linux should be at alt.os.linux. |
| 29 Jan 1992 | In comp.os.minix Andy Tanenbaum (the creator of MINIX) starts the thread “Linux is obsolete”. He states that Linux is “… a giant step back into the 1970s” because it is a monolithic kernel and not a microkernel (like MINIX). Tanenbaum compares the use of a monolithic kernel to “… taking an existing, working C program and rewriting it in BASIC.” He also says that building an OS for one specific hardware architecture is a “gross error” saying that tying Linux directly to the 80×86 architecture is “Not the way to go”. Tanenbaum also says, “Don’t get me wrong, I am not unhappy with LINUX. It will get all the people who want to turn MINIX in BSD UNIX off my back. But in all honesty, I would suggest that people who want a **MODERN** “free” OS look around for a microkernel-based, portable OS, like maybe GNU or something like that.” |
| NOTE: | Read the entire thread. |
| 29 Jan 1992 | Linus fires back at Tanenbaum saying that one of his biggest gripe about MINIX is that it’s not free. Linus also states that even as a hobby project “Linux still beats the pants off MINIX in almost all areas”. He also says that if the GNU kernel had been ready in Spring of 1991 that work on Linux never would have started. |
| 30 Jan 1992 | Tanenbaum says, “An explicit design goal was to make it run on cheap hardware so students could afford it.” Tanenbaum also says, “Making software free, but only for folks with enough money to buy first class hardware is an interesting concept.” Tanenbaum also stated that “five years from now everyone will be running GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5″. He also comments, “A multithreaded file system is only a performance hack. When there is only one job active, the normal case on a small PC, it buys you nothing and adds complexity to the code. On machines fast enough to support multiple users, you probably have enough buffer cache to insure a hit cache hit rate, in which case multithreading also buys you nothing. It is only a win when there are multiple processes actually doing real disk I/O. Whether it is worth making the system more complicated for this case is at least debatable.” As if to insult Linus, Tanenbaum says that if Linus were a student of his he would not give Linus a high grade for designing a monolithic kernel designed to run specifically on a 386 in 1991. Tanenbaum makes his point: “My point is that writing a new operating system that is closely tied to any particular piece of hardware, specially a weird one like the Intel line, is basically wrong. An OS itself should be easily portable to new hardware platforms.” |
| 31 Jan 1992 | Linus replies to Tanenbaum saying that Tanenbaum’s goal of designing MINIX to run on cheap hardware, “All right: a real technical point, and one that made some of my comments inexcusable.” Linus also says that the portability of MINIX is one of its flaws (making it able to run on machines that weren’t even really designed to run Unix) and that its portability could be rewritten as it “doesn’t use any features” that separates one architecture from another. Linus refers to MS-DOS as “MS-DOG” (not sure if that was intentional or a mistake, but funny nonetheless) and restates that Linux is “portable” because he “decided to go for a fairly well thought out and tested OS: Unix”. Linus also says that the Linux kernel is a tiny part of a complete OS and it could easily be ported to another architecture. |
| NOTE: | Linus did apologize for flaming Tanenbaum shortly after the back and forth banter finished. Dates from the newsgroup conflict as it appears that the apology was issued (which included changing the name of the thread) before the flaming was done. The “Linux is obsolete” thread is available here. |
| 3 Feb 1992 | In a separate thread, Tanenbaum questions whether or not Linus will allow Linux to truly become “free” for someone else to modify (”ruin it”) and sell. |
| 6 Feb 1992 | Linus replies to Tanenbaum saying he won’t try and keep control over Linux and that the only control he has is due to the fact he knows Linux best. He also says that he “cannot fully support all the features that will have to be added” to the OS. He also states that the copyright of Linux forbids others from making money off of it and not distributing the source code. |
| 07 Mar 1992 | Linux 0.95 is released. This is the next numbered version of Linux after 0.12. The sudden jump in numbering scheme was due to a number of significant features being added that brought it closer to an official release. Its release is followed by several bug fixes. |
| 23 Mar 1992 | Linux 0.95a is released. |
| Apr 1992 | comp.os.linux is created. |
| 04 Apr 1992 | Linus posts the Linux 0.95a Information Sheet. |
| 23 Apr 1992 | Linus details how Linux is pronounced. He also mentions that at first he intended the OS to be called freax but the person who created the directory on the FTP server that freax was first served out on called it /pub/OS/Linux and the name stuck. |
| 29 Apr 1992 | After someone mentioned that X windows does work on Linux but it’s not ready for the masses yet Linus says that he’s a part of the masses as well and has not seen X work on Linux either. He also states that things are slowly coming along to allow X to work but that it will take some time. |
| 04 May 1992 | Linus comments that version 0.96 of Linux will be out “next week”. The two most significant things about this release were that it supported SCSI drives and X11r5 had been ported over. |
| 22 May 1992 | Linux 0.96a is released. This release’s major advance was in hard drive performance. |
| 30 Jun 1992 | Linus comments on someone’s concern about a potential lack of coordination and quality control in a project such as Linux. He says that there will be issues due to the fact he can’t test every single bug or because he can’t see every single error and that he sometimes doesn’t have the energy or the time to work on Linux. When someone thinks that there is no way Linus can check every patch sent to him Linus responds saying that he actually does thoroughly check a vast majority of the patches he implements in Linux. |
| 03 Jul 1992 | Linus discusses numerous sources that helped him build Linux. Linus also mentions, “… unix is a very simple OS really: I first came in contact with it 2 years ago when I did the “C-kieli ja unix ohjelmointiymp{rist|” course in the fall of -90. By early -91 I had bought a PC, and linux v0.01 was ready in August -91.” |
| 31 Jul 1992 | Linus tries to give a history of Linux. This is often used as a complete history of Linux but at this point it is entirely too old. I would highly recommend reading it. |
| 01 Aug 1992 | Linus announces the release of Linux version 0.97. |
| 20 Aug 1992 | In the thread “Paying off Linus’ PC (was: Linux Standards)” on comp.os.linux, Linus says that Linux isn’t about money and donating money to Linus does not mean you’ll get better service. He doesn’t shoot down the idea of getting money “as a token of appreciation”. |
| 21 Sep 1992 | Linus says that Linux “is a Unix-like OS for the 386″ and that “it’s freely re-distributable under the GNU copyleft”. |
| 29 Sep 1992 | Linus announces the release of Linux 0.98. This release was mainly a series of bug fixes and patches but did include limited support for TCP/IP. |
| 25 Oct 1992 | Linus comments on the future of Linux saying that the development stages will probably continue going how they were (people submit changes to Linus; Linus releases a new Linux version accordingly). He also states that he can take negative criticism on his work. |
| 04 Nov 1992 | Linus says that other people selling Linux is not anything to get upset about and that, “It’s really a compliment.” |
| 13 Dec 1992 | Linux version 0.99 is released. |
| 20 Dec 1992 | Linus says that “the whole point of Linux isn’t that it’s free” he also says that “the point with Linux is that I didn’t have a good OS on my machine … so I wrote one”. |
| 20 Jan 1993 | Linus says that he is not bothered by people selling Linux and making money off it. He also says “I don’t actually want to be personally associated with any of the packages: I’m busy enough as it is keeping up the kernel, and I don’t want to be bothered with user-level details any more than I have to”. He also states that as long as the “copyleft” is abided by then he has no problem with people selling Linux. |
| 28 Apr 1993 | Someone asks (in comp.os.linux) what the reference machine for Linux is. Linus responds with the following specs (note that these are specs for the 28th of April 1993, not what Linux was originally built on):
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| Mar 1994 | Linux 1.0 released. |
| 13 Mar 1993 | Linus states that making money off of GPL’ed software is perfectly acceptable because the people doing it usually add support for that software. He asks people to not complain about commercial use of Linux. |
2 Comments
Raul Trujillo
January 7th, 2005
at 5:01pm
Hello and greetings
My name is Raul Trujillo, i live in mexico and i would like to promote linux in the provinces of mexico.
Are there some basic steps i should take in order to promote linux in my city?
Is there any support or sponsor i should know?
How can i sing on as a Distribuitor and Consultant?
Thanks a lot for ur time.
Best Regards
Our Life
January 10th, 2005
at 4:02am
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