Linux Administration - About Linux - History Of Linux Tutorial

In 1991, Linus Torvalds a student at the university of Helsinki, Finland, thought to have a freely available academic version of Unix started writing its own code. Later this project became the Linux kernel. He wrote this program specially for his own PC as he wanted to use Unix 386 Intel computer but couldn't afford it. He did it on MINIX using GNU C compiler. GNU C compiler is still the main choice to compile Linux code but other compilers are also used like Intel C compiler.

He started it just for fun but ended up with such a large project. Firstly he wanted to name it as 'Freax' but later it became 'Linux'.

He published the Linux kernel under his own license and was restricted to use as commercially. Linux uses most of its tools from GNU software and are under GNU copyright. In 1992, he released the kernel under GNU General Public License.