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It’s August 25th were I sit so grab a bottle of champagne or bake a cake because it is time to celebrate Linux, which now turns 29 years old since Linus Torvalds announced it to the world. Happy 29th birthday, Linux!
Twentynine years ago, on August 25th, 1991, 21-year-old Finnish student Linus Benedict Torvalds made his now-famous announcement on the comp.os.minix news group, saying that he’s working on a free operating system for 386(486) AT clones, just as a hobby.
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
PS. Yes – it’s free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that’s all I have :-(.
Well, 29 years later, it turns out Linux is no longer “just a hobby” and it is actually everywhere around us. Even if you don’t use Linux, you’re still using Linux. But if you use Linux, even better!
Linux powers almost every smart thing around us, from Android smartphones, Wi-Fi routers, smart fridges and big screen TVs to airplanes, satellites and the giant Google search engine.
The whole Internet is powered by Linux. 99.9% of the websites you are visiting daily are sitting on a Linux-powered server, including 9to5Linux, of course. Linux even powers 100% of the world’s top 500 supercomputers.
But I won’t bother you with these geeky facts because it’s celebration time. And, for that, here’s a video (courtesy of the Linux Foundation) for those of you who want to know how Linux is built and who uses Linux.
Not everyone in the Linux community is celebrating Linux’s birthday on August 25th, as some believe we should celebrate it on October 5th, when the first public release was made, but Linus Torvalds thinks both of them are valid.
So whether you’re celebrating it today or on October 5th, here’s to Linux! Happy 29th birthday, Linux!
Last updated 4 years ago
