That is of course Linux, the hobby project started by Linus Torvals, that has since conquered the world. In the original post Linus was looking for feedback for fellow Minix users. He had been working on his replacement for Minix since April, and was ready to get it out there.
It obviously still took a while before Linux was ready for a proper spotlight, but the cat was out of the bag.
Linux grew into the largest open source project ever seen and the most adopted operating system. Even though originally it was perhaps meant for desktop computers, that is probably the only form of computing it hasn't dominated.
From the tiniest computers, the ones in your fridges and routers, to the largest supercomputers there is no competition. And of course nowadays it is in 2 billion pockets worldwide thanks to Android, Google's mobile OS built on Linux.
There is no other project as important to the open source philosophy as Linux. And the OS practices what they preach, as over 99% of the source code is now by someone else than the original creator.
If you'd like to know some fun fact about Linux and Linus, I suggest you read OMG! Ubuntu!'s post.
Here's once more the first post about Linux on comp.os.minix newsgroup by Linus 27 years ago.
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).
Written by: Matti Robinson @ 27 Aug 2018 6:56
