Today in 1991, Linus Torvalds, a 21-year-old computer science student at the University of Helsinki, posted a message to comp.os.minix with the subject line “What would you like to see most in minix?”
With this message, Torvald announced that he is developing a free operating system:
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 :-)
The operating system’s first version will be released on a Finnish server nic.funet.fi as source code free to all as version 0.01 in mid-September. The operating system will receive the name “Linux” from the server’s administrator, Ari Lemmke.