X Marks the What? How Linux Got Its Name
Quoting: X Marks the What? How Linux Got Its Name —
Linus uploaded version 0.01 of Linux on September 17, 1991, and emailed a few interested parties directly. On October 5, 1991, he emailed the MINIX newsgroup and made it publicly known that a bare-bones, but working version of Linux was available to those who wanted to experiment with it.
Within months, others were contributing to the code. Like small pebbles that build into an avalanche, the world's largest open-source project was underway.
We can’t talk about naming Linux without mentioning GNU. All of Linus Torvalds’ effort was to develop the kernel of an operating system. To flesh it out to a truly functional operating system, the Linux kernel was paired with the GNU utilities.
GNU had the opposite problem. They had all the core Unix-like utilities, but no kernel. GNU advocates say we should call Linux GNU/Linux to acknowledge the massive contribution GNU makes to Linux. They do have a point, but I think that ship’s sailed.