Happy 26th birthday Linux!
Yes, it’s that time of the year once again, the day which most open-source enthusiasts consider to be the famous kernel’s formal founding.
It was on this day 26 years ago that a plucky Fin named Linus Torvalds punched out a small announcement about his ‘hobby’ operating system and shared it with the Minix newsgroup.
It’s remarkable how modest the notice reads:
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-sytem due to practical reasons)among other things.
I’ve currently ported bash (1.08) an 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 want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them :-)
Linux Has Other Birthdays, Too
Also Read: Why Linux 4.12 was the biggest release ever
Not everyone considers today to be the birthday. Rather like Her Majesty the Queen, Linux has several birthdays.
The first source release of what would become Linux didn’t arrive until a month after the initial post above (September 17, 1991), while a call for contributors to get involved only went out on October 5, 1991.
And the first version 1.0 release? Well that came on March 14, 1994.
26 years on Linux is practically the beating heart of modern computing, powering everything form smartphones to space robots, supercomputers to web servers.
Help celebrate this special occasion by sharing how you first discovered Linux in the comments … Alternatively bring cake, I don’t mind which.