A Historical Look At The First Linux Kernel

LinuxFan writes "KernelTrap has a fascinating article about the first Linux kernel, version 0.01, complete with source code and photos of Linus Torvalds as a young man attending the University of Helsinki. Torvalds originally planned to call the kernel "Freax," and in his first announcement noted, "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." He also stressed that the kernel was very much tied to the i386 processor, "simply, I'd say that porting is impossible." Humble beginnings."

Comments

Note the mention of GNU

[DrXym]

Yup, GNU Mach was well into development BEFORE Linux was even written. This is an example why open source projects are more effective when they're driven by pragmatism and not politics.

Re:Note the mention of GNU

[sayfawa]

Maybe if the GNU folks had only been working on a kernel instead of also doing the hundreds of other programs as well, they would have made more headway with HURD. And if Linus had been trying to do a whole OS and not just the kernel, Linux the kernel would still be early in development.

The mention of GNU should merely point out how important the GNU is in GNU/Linux. As Linus said in the post: Sadly, a kernel by itself gets you nowhere. To get a working system you need a shell, compilers, a library etc. These are separate parts and may be under a stricter (or even looser) copyright. Most of the tools used with linux are GNU software and are under the GNU copyleft.

Re:Note the mention of GNU

[Just Some Guy]

This is an example why open source projects are more effective when they're driven by pragmatism and not politics.

The problem is that politics is interested in you even if you're not interested in it. The pragmatic approach involves taking politics into account even if you're personally bored to tears by the subject.

Re:How would one build this?

[squiggleslash]

It got quiet a bit of interest, but was hampered by two major issues initially.

First, it wasn't free software. It was shared source, you could obtain the source after buying a copy and share that source with others who had also bought a copy, but you couldn't just modify it and pass on your modifications to anyone who wanted. That extra step of "Receiver must already have a license" was an issue, and reduced the number of experimenters and tinkerers drastically. GNU/Linux has achieved much of its popularity through the ability of virtually anyone who has a copy to pass on that copy to others, with freely downloadable LiveCDs and other ways to be exposed to it with little commitment on your part.

The other was that it was (usually, at least in x86) 16 bit. Applications generally ran in 64k memory spaces (albeit different spaces for code and data.) This severely limited the available functionality.

Linus, in part, wrote the first Linux kernel to try to overcome the second issue. By using Linux + the GNU toolchain instead of Minix, you had a full blown 32 bit operating system. Things like the X11 Windowing System suddenly became possible. His eventual adoption of the GPL also gave Linux users the freedom needed to ensure they could build a much bigger community around that kernel than Minix was able to achieve.

Today, Minix version 3 is available as free software, and in 32 bit form, but it happened too late to stop the GNU/Linux juggernaut from rolling right over it.