Linus Torvalds Created Linux on September 17, 1991, for These Reasons
“Linux was developed on September 17, 1991, by a Finnish student named Linus Torvalds. It is a free open-source kernel that can be combined with other software for it to become a usable OS. His motivation for creating Linux was because Unix at the time was powerful but too expensive, and MINIX, which was a free alternative, was too limiting and restrictive, which is why he created a solution of his own. If he wanted it to be free, he had to release it under the GPL (General Public License), so anyone could freely modify and distribute it. As a result, this led to hundreds of different Linux distros since anyone could revamp the kernel and create something entirely on their own.”
Summary
Linux was first publicly released on September 17 1991 by Finnish student Linus Torvalds, though development began earlier. It is a free, open‑source kernel that can be combined with other software to form a full operating system. Torvalds created it because commercial Unix was costly and MINIX was too limited, and he later re‑released it under the GPL, enabling anyone to modify and distribute it, which led to the creation of hundreds of Linux distributions.
Sources 60 searched
- History of Linux
The very first release of Linux was announced by Linus Torvalds on August 25, 1991, on the Usenet group comp.os.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 ...
- Linus Torvalds - Lemelson-MIT Program
Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux Operating System, was born December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland. His grandfather had a Commodore VIC-20 that he had the opportunity to work with; by age ten he was already dabbling in programming. He enrolled at the University of Helsinki in 1989, and ...
- History of Linux - Wikipedia
By the early 1990s, there was almost enough available software to create a full operating system. However, the GNU kernel, called Hurd, had issues with its design and project management, and progress slowed significantly after the development of Linux. In 1985, Intel released the 80386, the ...
- Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate - Wikipedia
Furthermore, he mentioned how he developed Linux specifically for the Intel 80386 because it was partly intended as a learning exercise for Torvalds himself; while he conceded that this made the kernel itself less portable than MINIX, he asserted that this was an acceptable design principle, as it made the application programming interface simpler and more portable. For this reason, he stated, "linux is more portable than minix." Following Linus' reply, Tanenbaum argued that the limitations of MINIX relate to him being a professor, stating the requirement for the system to be able to run on the rather limited hardware of the average student, which he noted was an Intel 8088-based computer, sometimes even without a hard drive.
- Linus Torvalds - Wikipedia
In 1990, Torvalds resumed his university studies, and was exposed to Unix for the first time in the form of a DEC MicroVAX running ULTRIX. Later, he bought computer science professor Andrew Tanenbaum's book Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, in which Tanenbaum describes MINIX, an educational stripped-down version of Unix.
- GNU/Linux FAQ - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
Linus Torvalds was partly influenced by a speech about GNU in Finland in 1990. It's possible that even without this influence he might have written a Unix-like kernel, but it probably would not have been free software. Linux became free in 1992 when Linus rereleased it under the GNU GPL.
- Appendix A - The Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate
FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds) writes: >You use this [being a professor] as an excuse for the limitations of minix? The limitations of MINIX relate at least partly to my being a professor: An explicit design goal was to make it run on cheap hardware so students could afford it.
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