Aug 25 (when Linux was announced) is the 4th Saturday. Should there be a Linux party? :) Some people were asking about Linux's birthday. Linus posted this: ... To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Linus Benedict Torvalds) Subject: Birthday (was Re: Uptime found. Thanks to all) Date: 31 Jul 92 22:15:20 GMT In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Duperval Laurent) writes: > >P.S. BTW, noone answered yet: when is Linux's birthday? Let's have a >party! I couldn't for the life of me remember when it all happened, and I don't keep a diary, so I can't give you any exact dates for when linux "was born". But I did start to wonder, so I started ftp'ing around for archives of the comp.os.minix group (where I announced it), and this is what I came up with (with some editing). This is just a sentimental journey into some of the first posts concerning linux, so you can happily press 'n' now if you actually thought you'd get anything technical. > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Linus Benedict Torvalds) > Newsgroups: comp.os.minix > Subject: Gcc-1.40 and a posix-question > Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: 3 Jul 91 10:00:50 GMT > > Hello netlanders, > > Due to a project I'm working on (in minix), I'm interested in the posix > standard definition. Could somebody please point me to a (preferably) > machine-readable format of the latest posix rules? Ftp-sites would be > nice. The project was obviously linux, so by July 3rd I had started to think about actual user-level things: some of the device drivers were ready, and the harddisk actually worked. Not too much else. > As an aside for all using gcc on minix - [ deleted ] Just a success-report on porting gcc-1.40 to minix using the 1.37 version made by Alan W Black & co. > Linus Torvalds [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > PS. Could someone please try to finger me from overseas, as I've > installed a "changing .plan" (made by your's truly), and I'm not certain > it works from outside? It should report a new .plan every time. So I was clueless - had just learned about named pipes. Sue me. This part of the post got a lot more response than the actual POSIX query, but the query did lure out arl from the woodwork, and we mailed around for a bit, resulting in the Linux subdirectory on nic.funet.fi. Then, almost two months later, I actually had something working: I made sources for version 0.01 available on nic sometimes around this time. 0.01 sources weren't actually runnable: they were just a token gesture to arl who had probably started to despair about ever getting anything. This next post must have been from just a couple of weeks before that release. > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (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: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > 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 ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) > > 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 :-(. Judging from the post, 0.01 wasn't actually out yet, but it's close. I'd guess the first version went out in the middle of September -91. I got some responses to this (most by mail, which I haven't saved), and I even got a few mails asking to be beta-testers for linux. After that just a few general answers to quesions on the net.
