Datasheet

Linux
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11
LINUX
Linus Torvalds, a Finnish university student, was using Minix, a simple Unix clone written by Vrije
Universiteit (Amsterdam) lecturer Andrew Tanenbaum, but Torvalds was frustrated by its lack of
features and the fact that it did not make full use of the (still relatively new) Intel 80386 processor,
and in particular its “protected mode,” which allows for much better separation between the kernel
and userspace. Relatively quickly, he got a working shell, and then got GCC, the GNU C compiler
(now known as the GNU Compiler Collection, as it has been extended to compile various fl avors of
C, Fortran, Java, and Ada) working. At that stage, the kernel plus shell plus compiler was enough to
be able to “bootstrap” the system — it could be used to build a copy of itself.
TORVALDS’ NEWSGROUP POST
On August 25, 1991, Torvalds posted the following to the MINIX newsgroup
comp.os.minix:
From: [e-mail].fi (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
To: Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system
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 fi le-sytem due to practical rea-
sons) among other things.
I’ve currently ported bash (1.08) an gcc (1.40), and things seem to work. This
implies that i’ll get something practical within a few months, and I’d like to know
what features most people want.
Any suggestions are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them :-)
Linus Torvalds [e-mail].fi
What is interesting is that Torvalds took the GNU project’s inevitable success for granted; it had
been going for eight years, and had basically implemented most of its goals (bar the kernel). Torvalds
also, after initially making the mistake of trying to write his own license (generally inadvisable for
those of us who are not experts in the minutiae of international application of intellectual property
law), licensed the kernel under the GNU GPL (version 2) as a natural license for the project.
In practice, this book is far more about shell scripting with Unix and GNU tools than specifi -
cally about shell scripting under the Linux kernel; in general, the majority of the tools referred to
are GNU tools from the Free Software Foundation:
grep, ls, find, less, sed, awk, bash itself of
course,
diff, basename, and dirname; most of the critical commands for shell scripting on Linux
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