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PCLinuxOS Magazine on Kernel Turning 35 This Month
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PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ Happy 35th Birthday, Linux!
Thirty-five years ago, on August 25, the computing landscape changed. Forever. The date is easy for me to remember. Linux and I share the same birthday.
Enrolled in the University of Helsinki, a young Linus Torvalds had gotten his hands on a 386 computer – state of the art in its day. It was Intel’s first 32-bit processor, and he wanted to be able to unlock its potential. There was a Unix operating system available for free, but only for educational purposes. It was called Minix. Its creator would not allow its source code to be altered, and largely ignored user requests for features. Minix featured, among other things, a modular kernel, in the belief that it would be easier to maintain. Unfortunately, it was only a 16 bit design, and its creator was reluctant to make a 32 bit version. All other Unix systems available for the new 32-bit platform were prohibitively expensive for regular, individual users.
Thus, Linus Torvalds set out to make his own free kernel. At first, he built Linux on a computer running Minix, but ensured that Linux was free of proprietary Minix code. The rest of the story has been told and retold over the years, and is easily found on the internet.
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PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ Linux Birthday Trivia & Fun Facts
Here are some interesting facts and tidbits about our favorite operating system, certain to tickle the curiosity of even the most casual Linux user.
The original name wasn’t what we know today. Linux had been previously considered and rejected by Linus Torvalds as possibly being seen as too egotistical. The original name was to be Freax, formed by the words free and freak (the latter an homage to the name applied to computer nerds of the day), with the “x” alluding to Unix.
The name change from Freax to Linux came about when Ari Lemmke, a coworker of Linus Torvalds at the Helsinki University of Technology and a volunteer administrator of the FTP server, didn’t think “Freax” was a good name. So, without consulting Torvalds, he changed the name of the project to “Linux” on the server. Linus later consented to the name change.