In April 1991,Linus Torvalds, then 21 years old, started working on some simple ideas for an operating system. Then, on 25 August 1991, Torvalds posted tocomp.os.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).[6] | ” |
After the post, many people made code for the project. By September 1991, Linux version 0.01 was released. It had 10,239 lines of code. In October 1991, Linux version 0.02 was released.[7]
The newsgroupalt.os.linux was started, and on January 19, 1992, the first post to alt.os.linux was made.[8] On March 31, 1992, alt.os.linux becamecomp.os.linux.[9]
TheX Window System was soon moved to Linux. In March 1992, Linux version 0.95 was the first to be capable of running X. This large version number jump (from 0.1x to 0.9x) was because of a feeling that a version 1.0 with no major missing parts would be released soon.
On March 14, 1994, Linux 1.0.0 was released, with 176,250 lines of code. In March 1995, Linux 1.2.0 was released (310,950 lines of code).
Linus decided, on May 9, 1996, to adoptTux the penguin as themascot for Linux.
Version 2 of Linux, released on June 9, 1996, was a landmark. Strong development continued:
- January 25, 1999 - Linux 2.2.0 was released (1,800,847 lines of code).
- December 18, 1999 -IBM mainframe patches for 2.2.13 were published, allowing Linux to be used on enterprise-class machines.
- January 4, 2001 - Linux 2.4.0 was released (3,377,902 lines of code).
- December 17, 2003 - Linux 2.6.0 was released (5,929,913 lines of code).
- April 16, 2008 - Linux 2.6.25 was released (9,232,484 lines of code).[10]
- May 31, 2019 - Linux 5.1.6 was released.
Currently a new kernel version is released in every 2 3/4 months.[11]
