History
The Linux kernel was, originally, written by Linus Torvalds of the Department
of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki, Finland, with the help
of several volunteer programmers through Usenet.
Linus Torvalds began the development of the kernel as a particular project, inspired
by his interest in Minix, a small UNIX system developed by Andrew S. Tanenbaum.
He was limited to create, in his words, "a better Minix that Minix" ( "a
better Minix than Minix). And after some time to work on the project alone, he
sent the following message to comp.os.minix:
You suspira the good times of the Minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote their
own "device drivers"? [5] You are without a good project in hand and
are willing to work in a SO you can change according to your needs? You are finding
frustrating when everything works in Minix? Enough of the night to bring the
computer programs work? Then this message can be just for you.
As I mentioned a month ago, I am working on a version of an independent SO Minix
for computers similar to AT-386. He is at last coming into the state that could
be used (although it may not be what you're waiting), and I am willing to provide
the source for wide distribution. He is in the version 0.02 ... however I had
success in carrying out bash, gcc, make-gnu, gnu-sed, compression, etc.. it.
Interestingly, the name Linux was created by Ari Lemmke, site administrator ftp.funet.fi
who gave that name to the FTP directory where the Linux kernel was initially
available [6] (Linus had him baptized as "Freax", initially). [lacks
sources?]
On October 5, 1991 Linus Torvalds announced the first "official" release
of the Linux kernel, version 0.02. Since then many developers have responded
to his call, and have helped to make the Linux operating system it is today.
In the beginning was used by programmers or only by those who had knowledge,
used lines of command. Today that has changed, there are several companies that
create the environments graphics, distributions increasingly friendly so that
a person with little knowledge to use Linux. Today Linux is a stable system and
to recognize all the peripherals without the need to install the drivers for
sound, video, modem, network, among others.