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

That's it!

[Constantine XVI]

Instead of trying to convince Linus to go to GPL v3, we can just convince him to go back to the original liscence! :)

This kernel is (C) 1991 Linus Torvalds, but all or part of it may be redistributed provided you do the following: - Full source must be available (and free), if not with the distribution then at least on asking for it. - Copyright notices must be intact. (In fact, if you distribute only parts of it you may have to add copyrights, as there aren't (C)'s in all files.) Small partial excerpts may be copied without bothering with copyrights. - You may not distibute this for a fee, not even "handling" costs. Mail me at [email blocked] if you have any questions. 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. These tools aren't in the distribution - ask me (or GNU) for more info.

you insensitive clod

[someone1234]

I didn't know about this (that the first kernel was completely i386 specific) and consider the article interesting.

It's Also a Great Story

[eldavojohn]

Anyone who cares already knows. Anyone who wants to find out, can find out. Well, that's not true, as it turns out, I care but I'm not afraid to admit I didn't know any of these things that Linus felt (having joined the game late, nor have I seen the documentation for the first release). And I don't go around looking at the history of software I use, I simply use the software. I use gcc but I'm not so sure its history would be that interesting to me.

Come on, this is like doing a history of the First World War again, complete with photos of the Arch-Duke. I don't think that's a very good analogy. This wasn't really a history of the Linux kernel, more so a short intro to the attitude of the single point in the beginning. In my opinion, reading through this and scanning the attached documents would be more like if you had given me the first three pages of the Bible. "In the beginning, there was this guy that wasn't very sure anything would come of a project ..." This is a good article because I kind of always thought that Torvalds started Linux knowing it was going to be big. I imagined him sitting down one day and saying, "F this noise, I'm going to write an operating system that works ... and I'll distribute it for free!" ... except in Swedish?

But that's not what happened and I think that's important for people to recognize. This was not unlike Frodo starting off on a quest thinking he wasn't going to get anywhere (though the motivation and implications are not so huge). It's the classic hero-by-accident story and since it's a true story, I love it all the more.

You know, I always thought about writing to Paul Harvey (if he's still alive) and asking him to do a "And that's the rest of the story" on Linus. That would be some classic stuff. Although most the listeners, probably not even sure what Linux is let alone know its creator Linus, would probably think he's suffering from some form of dementia set on by age ...

And it isn't something the is deserving of a place on this website! Are you kidding me? This actually makes me want to start some open source project even though I recognize it will probably go nowhere. Of course this belongs on this site.

5 most important OSS figures

[Anonymous Coward]

This is my list of 5 most important open source software figures in the world.
 
Linus Torvalds - Thanks for giving me Linux when I just couldn't live with Windows (my roots are in MS-DOS world). Computing became fun again when I loaded Suse Linux on my Pentium 200MHz 32MB computer in 1998. It was as much fun as it was back in the late 80s when I run my own BBS on my first PC.
 
Richard Stallman - You opened up my eyes and I was thrilled with your ideology and I found you a charismatic leader. I couldn't believe it when I noticed you actually bothered to reply to my e-mail when I asked you something about X window system.
 
Jordan Hubbard - Cool guy, not nerdy at all, take a look at pictures of him - you would never guess he's one of the world's leading kernel gurus. Thanks for giving us FreeBSD! Very cool OS back then when you were leading the project. You showed us all how one can become one of the world's leading gurus just by self studying hard.
 
Eric Raymond - Your dedication to OSS is amazing and inspiring! Your novel "Cathedral and the bazaar" is nowadays considered a legendary book and it deserves to be. It is just so amazing book! Nobody else could probably describe hackers better than Eric does in his Jargon File.
 
Arpad Gereoffy a.k.a. Arpi - Thanks for giving us MPlayer when there was no decent way to watch videos on Linux in 1999. Microsoft tried to dominate the video format market by introducing Windows only .asf format, but it was in no time MPlayer supported .asf files on Linux. I can still remember what it felt like. It felt amazing - almost better than sex.

So, here are my heroes, how about yours?

uh huh

[thatskinnyguy]

I have a poster in my office with all the lines of code for kernel 0.0.1. It's uber-geek. A must have for most slashdotters!

Re:"Humble beginnings"

[mce]

Well, I was there back then (read my sig) and yet even so I enjoyed the trip down Linux memory lane while going through this article. Sure, this is not top-quality journalism, but if you don't want to read it, then don't.

Slashdot is not anymore what to used to be when I joined (look at my /. id to see what I mean), but even so I still use it as my home page on my home boxen. If there's stuff that I don't want to read, I simply don't.

PS: I happen to be interested in military history as well. So yes, I do still read stuff about WWI, archduke included, even after so many years. In fact, your mentionaing of it just caused me to read what Wikipedia says about Franz Ferdinand.

Re:History of GCC

[gr8_phk]

I use gcc but I'm not so sure its history would be that interesting to me.

I'm no historian, but I think the origin of GCC is very interesting. When RMS started the GNU project, he was not a compiler guy. He had written system tools, but never a compiler. He recognized that any free operating system (GNU in particular) would require a free compiler and that this was a requirement, not an option. So he sat down and wrote the first GCC himself. It wasn't something he wanted to do, but it was fundamental to his vision so he did it anyway. That speaks to his insight, ability, and dedication. Most important was the insight. Imagine where GNU/Linux would be today if it had to rely on commercial compilers. Yep, that's right - it wouldn't exist.

Also, there is much discussion about GCC transitioning to GPLv3 license. Apparently once the 4.3 branch is released, 4.2 will no longer be maintained under GPLv2. I believe this is because the FSF knows the compiler is fundamental and the license change is so important they don't really want patches contributing to the version under the old license.

Ah, the good old days...accounting

[wandazulu]

Because I was a computer-room assistant back in college I got a couple of Unix accounts (that's what they were called) to learn and possibly help the grad students who were doing all the "cool" stuff on them (as opposed to showing a freshman how to print from WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS (F7 baby!)). The problem with the Unix machines (a SunOS and an Ultrix box) was that they both had accounting turned on and so I had $5000 of computer time to use until I had to go back and ask for more, which they actually gave only begrudgingly. I guess some departments really paid some $$$ for access.

Anyway, along comes Linux (not .01 but some very pre-1.0 version) and somebody else put it on a Gateway2000 486 machine) and all of a sudden I had, along with all the other assistants, a Unix-like machine we could call our own, do whatever we want and not worry about screwing up the "real" work being done. So when it came to learning how the Unix-world worked, I learned far more on that early Linux box than either SunOS or Ultrix if only because I didn't have to deal all the accounting stuff.

The funny thing is that I remember feeling that the Linux box responded better than the Sun machine or the VAX in that it seemed to handle more users better (though I suppose on the Linux box we were just mucking about with standard commands instead of doing heavy-duty work).

OT: Look at all the low-id's come out!

[WoTG]

I don't recall ever seeing so many 3 and 4 digit /. IDs post. Kind of an odd feeling in a geeky way.