On this day in 1991, Linus Torvalds released the first publicly-available version of Linux

[Jan]

33 years of Linux

On 5 October 1991, a young Finnish student named Linus Torvalds publicly released the first few lines of code for a small operating system project he had wanted to call "Freax" — a portmanteau of free, freak, and UNIX.

The 21-year-old Torvalds had begun hacking on the project several months earlier but only revealed that he was working on a "hobby" operating system in a Usenet post on 25 August 1991.

 

[gregmcc]

just a hobby, won’t be big

Sources for this pet project of mine can be found at nic.funet.fi

I miss the days of ftp servers and usenet.

 

[ShaunSA]

Only a millionaire. Clearly his daddy did not own an emerald mine

 

[Brian_G]

The 21-year-old Torvalds had begun hacking on the project several months earlier but only revealed that he was working on a "hobby" operating system in a Usenet post on 25 August 1991.

So tech term has gone from programming to coding to hacking. Nice

 

[FiestaST]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1842595806185947283

 

[Gravedigger]

I remember reading an article or blog post somewhere that one professor had the early Linux source code and gave it to his students, for them to read through and write/add their own drivers, to basically manipulate their code. I think the reason the prof used the earliest version, that it was readable in a couple of thousand lines. The modern Linux kernel is too big for one person...

Not sure how the students were able to run/compile the code, probably through a VM or emulator of some sorts.

 

[Sapphiron]

Only a millionaire. Clearly his daddy did not own an emerald mine

Unlike narcissists, when he had enough money to be comfortable, he focused on being happy.

 

[garyc]

My introduction to Linux was installing Slackware on my PC in the 90s. Here is a 30 minute speedrun on what was involved with such an installation, although I took longer since I had never seen Linux before.

 

[Thorium]

My introduction to Linux was installing Slackware on my PC in the 90s. Here is a 30 minute speedrun on what was involved with such an installation, although I took longer since I had never seen Linux before.

Yes, I recall the DOS boot disk

 

[TheRoDent]

Slackware linux was my first experience too. But we also have to thank Stallmann and the GNU project, and others for bringing Open Source to life.

Going back to my windows desktop now, because that part still sucks.