Linux Entered the World 30 Years Ago Today

On August 25, 1991 Linus Torvalds released Linux to the world with his post on comp.os.minix. Today marks the 30 year anniversary.

  From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
  Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
  Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
  Summary: small poll for my new operating system
  Message-ID:
  Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
  Organization: University of Helsinki


  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 protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
  will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.

It’s amazing to reflect on the impact this post has on modern computing. I owe my entire career to Linus, if he didn’t create Linux I may not have entered the systems engineering field. The world would not be reading this message I wrote in markdown, checked into a git repository, rsynced to a Debian server, and rendered on an nginx web server, to be displayed by people running open protocol web browsers.

Keep merging patches captain!