20 years of Linux
When Linus Torvalds released Linux 0.01 on the internet 20 years ago, his idea of a free Unix clone to which anyone could contribute touched a creativenerve in people. Today, it would be impossible to imagine an IT world without Linux.
It has been twenty years since Linus Torvalds programmed the first few lines of what would become the Linux kernel. An IT student at the time, Torvalds wasn't yet thinking of an operating system, he just wanted to explore the capabilities of his PC's 386 processor. Eventually, his memory management, process switching and I/O experiments developed into something that resembled a rudimentary operating system kernel.
As he was using Andrew Tanenbaum's educational, Unix-like Minix operating system at home and knew Unix from his university course, it was clear to Torvalds that his own operating system should be Unix-like. He therefore asked about the POSIX standard, which defines the Unix system interfaces, in the Minix newsgroup in July 1991. On 25 August 1991, Torvalds added another posting in which he first mentioned that he was working on an operating system for 386 processors ("just a hobby, won't be big and professional like GNU") and asked the Minix community to suggest any features that they would like to see.
