In 1987 the teacher Andrew S. Tanenbaum wrote a university book on the design of OS, in which he proposed a new philosophy: that it was possible to "see" and "touch" the entrails of a real operating system, as part of the student's practical learning. But for obvious problems with the copyright, Tanenbaum could not fall back on any of the existing operating systems at the time, so decided to write a simple, but at the same time complete operating system, and publish the source code in an appendix to your book.
Linus Torvalds
It did not take long for adherents to that system to appear, which adopted the name of Minix and that simulated a system UNIX in large part, and on a personal computer of the time that did not even have a hard disk. One of those followers was Linus Torvalds.
Minix had quite a few limitations in its design, so that Torvalds decided at one point to rewrite it, so that it would use the advanced features of the 80386 processor, which allowed implant virtual memory. In the beginning, that alternative to Minix was capable of very few things, but thanks to the explosion of the phenomenon Internet that took place around that time, hundreds of collaborators appeared all over the world who wrote all kinds of drivers for the new operating system. In this way, this new system, already known as Linux, became the UNIX clone more complete for personal computers. Thanks also to the use of GNU programs, it was endowed Linux numerous applications and development tools without ever having to resort to the software commercial.
And that's how our friends favorite operating system was born!
2 comments, leave yours
Hello. I am a reader of this blog, and with all due respect, I want to say the following:
I believe that the information that you are presenting is ideal, but that there are certain things that are not exactly as you refer to them.
It is true that Minix is what started Torvalds' idea of creating an OS, but certainly its main inspiration is GNU. In fact, in that first historic email, Linus says that he doesn't expect his project to be as big as GNU.
In addition, Linus can start programming his project, thanks to the tools created by the GNU project, which is, together with BSD, the first to create an OS equal to UNIX, but free.
Later, Linux is included as the kernel of the GNU operating system. They are complementary, neither could subsist without the other. GNU is the operating system, which responds to what the user requests and Linux is the kernel, the one that works directly on the hardware. The complete system is called GNU / Linux.
Respectfully.
Greetings.
Thanks for your comment and the clarifications Lucas.
A greeting and thanks for reading!