1.2.2.4 The Linux kernel By the early 1990s, the FSF had obtained or written all the major components of the GNU operating system except for one: the kernel. About that time, Linus Torvalds, a Finnish computer science student, began work on a kernel for a Unix-like system. Linus had been working with Minix, a Unix-like operating system written by Andrew Tannenbaum primarily for pedagogical use. Linus was disappointed by the performance of the Minix kernel and believed that he could do better. He shared his preliminary work with others on Internet newsgroups. Soon, programmers around the world were working together to extend and improve his kernel, which he called Linux (for Linuss Minix). As Table 1.2 shows, Linux grew rapidly. Within three years of its October 5, 1991 initial release, Linux was released as production software; version 1.0 was released in March of 1994. However, as early as 1992, Linux had been integrated with other GNU software to produce a fully functional operating system, which took as its name the name of its kernel.
Posted on: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 07:26:45 +0000
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