In the early days of Unix, universities used Unix as a vehicle for teaching computer science students about operating systems. When AT&T asserted its proprietary claim to Unix, universities needed a replacement. Andrew Tannenbaum created a Unix-like operating system called MINIX, which became popular as a teaching tool. However, unlike Unix, MINIX was designed primarily as a pedagogical tool and performed relatively poorly. In 1990, Finnish computer science student Linus Torvalds began work on a memory manager for Intel-architecture PCs. At some point he realized that his work could be extended to operate as a Unix kernel. In August 1991, he posted his work-in-progress to the Internet newsgroup comp.os.minix, inviting others to request features to be considered for implementation:
From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system
Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki
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 (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.
It is NOT protable [sic](uses 386 task switching etc), and it
probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.
Torvalds called his operating system kernel Linux, for Linus’s Minix. Unix programmers eagerly offered help in developing Linux. Because Stallman’s GNU project had completed almost all of the components needed for its Unix like operating system except the kernel, Linux and GNU were a natural marriage.In 1994, about three years after Torvalds’s posting, Linux 1.0 was released under the terms of the GPL. Already, Linux had about 100,000 users.
AT PRESENT THE LINUX DEVELOPMENT PROCESS IS GOING LIKE THIS :
