JaypeeOnline

Do you use Linux or other Linux-based operating systems and distributions like Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat, Gentoo, openSUSE, etc.? I’ve been using Ubuntu the past few years and I love it. Aside from being free & open source and a very good alternative operating system for Windows, I like how it is fast and virtually free from computer viruses.

We have Linux today, thanks to a Swedish software engineer named Linus Torvalds. Most Linux users already know this but for the sake of those who don’t, it was first released twenty years ago, on August 25, 1991. It was on that day that Linus Torvalds shared the operating system he was working on as a hobby for Minix (a UNIX Operating System) users on the UseNet newsgroup ‘comp.os.minix‘ and as the saying goes – the rest is history.

Hello everybody out there using 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 get ready. I’d like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).

I’ve currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I’ll get something practical within a few months, and I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them :-)

Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)

PS. Yes – it’s free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that’s all I have :-(.

—Linus Torvalds

To celebrate this milestone, the Linux Foundation has created and released this infographic that shows how Linux has developed and spread through the years.

Thank you Linus Torvalds and Belated Happy 20th Birthday Linux!

[via AJ Batac/OMG Ubuntu]