ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

[ban-all-sheds]

Well, almost - I'm 1 day out, as I forgot to press Submit yesterday, and I've just re-found this window lurking. Chiz chiz chiz.

Just pretend.

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY - AUG 25th

• Ivan the Terrible, Leonard Bernstein, Sean Connery, Elvis Costello & Claudia Schiffer were born.
• William Herschel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stan Kenton and Truman Capote died.
• Capt. Matthew Webb swam The Channel, Amelia Earhart completed her transatlantic flight, Paris was liberated from the Nazis and Carl Lewis ran 100m in 9.86 seconds.

And 13 years ago, the following was posted to the comp.os.minix newsgroup:

[code:1] 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, andI'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 . [/code:1]

 

[AdamW]

I've always like Mr Torvaldes (and not just because he pronounces Linux the same way as me, thus allowing me to win an argument back at uni!).

It's pretty funny to read "nope, won't be portable, professional like. Probably a bit rubbish really", when we know the impact Linux has had 13 years on! Obviously a humble man.

I still don't like using Linux myself, though. But I do live in a Linux household, my DVD player runs it.

 

[murraysnudge]

Carl Lewis ran 100m in 9.86 seconds.

.....but was it with or without? We'll never know.

 

[ZenStalinist]

He mentions that it won't be a big system like GNU, but Linux is a GNU operating system. Maybe the original plans were different?