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
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,
Just a success-report on porting gcc-1.40 to minix using the 1.37
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
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.
[ editors note: linux has in fact gotten more portable with newer
versions: there was a lot more assembly in the early versions. Not that
Well, obviously something worked on my machine: I doubt I had yet gotten
gcc to compile itself under linux (or I would have been too proud of it
not to mention it). Still before any release-date.
Then, October 5th, I seem to have released 0.02. As I already
mentioned, 0.01 didn't actuall...
