It was 15 years ago today that Linus made his first Usenet posting, to the comp.os.minix newsgroup. This is how it began:


  Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
From: torva...@cc.helsinki.fi
Date: 29 Mar 91 15:19:30 GMT
Local: Fri, Mar 29 1991 9:19 am
Subject: gcc on minix-386 doesn't optimize?


    Hello everybody,
    I've had minix for a week now, and have upgraded to 386-minix (nice), and duly downloaded gcc for minix. Yes, it works - but ... optimizing isn't working, giving an error message of "floating point stack exceeded" or something. Is this normal? 
....

https://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/browse_thread/thread/d939bf395eb8256a/d072fd3a7d407591?hl=en&pli=1






For on Sunday, 25 August, 1991, he made another posting to the comp.os.minix newsgroup:





Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
From: torva...@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
Local: Sun, Aug 25 1991 2:57 pm
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?


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).

I've currently ported bash(1.08) and 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 would want.  Any suggestions
are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)

                Linus (torva...@kruuna.helsinki.fi)

PS.  Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.
It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(. 

https://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/browse_thread/thread/76536d1fb451ac60/b813d52cbc5a044b?hl=en





The hobby, of course, was Linux, and this was its official announcement to the world.




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