Happy Birthday, Linux
LINUX Magazine, Monday, August 25th, 2025
August 25, 1991 marks an important date for Linux and open-source enthusiasts, because that's the day Linus Torvalds posted to the comp.os.minix newsgroup (remember newsgroups?) the following message: 'Hello everyone 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.'
The message continued with, "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)."
The first release, version 0.01, was officially released in September of the same year and included just over 10 thousand lines of code. In comparison, the current Linux kernel has surpassed over 40 million lines of code.