At first
It was 1991 and cruel agony of the Cold War was coming to an end gradually. It was announced an atmosphere of peace and tranquility in sight. In the field of computers there was a bright future ahead, as powerful hardware pushed the limits of computers beyond general expectations.
But still something was missing. Nothing more than operating systems, where it seems there appeared a huge vacuum.
On the one hand, DOS still ruled his vast empire of personal computers. Gates bought from a Seattle hacker for $ 50,000, the operating system slipped all over the world by virtue of clever marketing strategies. PC users had no choice. Apple Macs were better, but the astronomical prices that nobody could afford them, remained a distant horizon.
Ceala camp was devoted to computer Unixworld. But Unix was more expensive. Seeking higher earnings, sales of Unix is quite expensive valued as ensure that small PC users stayed away from him. Unix source code, once taught in universities, was now guarded with care and was not officially published. To the frustration of PC users worldwide software market big players failed to provide an effective solution to this problem.
A solution seemed to appear as MINIX. It was written from scratch by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, a Dutch professor who wanted to teach his students the inner workings of a real operating system. Was designed to run on Intel 8086 microprocessors, which filled the world market.
As operating system, MINIX was not extraordinary. But have the advantage that source code was available. Anyone who happened to hand on the book “Operating Systems” by Tanenbaum have available the 12 000 of code written in C and assembly language. For the first time, an aspiring programmer or hacker could read the source code of the operating system, which until then software vendors jealously were keeping them. A great author, Tanenbaum captivated the minds of the best minds of cybernetics with elaborate and realistic discussion of art to create an operating system. Computer science students around the world rushed to buy the book and read the codes to understand how the system works from their own computer.
Among them there was Linus Torvalds.
A new “baby” on the horizon
Right in 1991, Linus Benedict Torvalds was a second year student in computer science at Helsinki University and a hacker himself. “I was a Finnish about 21 years, with sand-colored hair and soft voice, who liked to play with computer power and the limits to which the system can be pushed.” But what was lacking was an operating system to meet the demands of professionals. MINIX was good, but it was still a simple operating system for students, designed as a teaching tool rather than as one for the industry.
At that time, programmers worldwide were inspired by the GNU project Richard Stallman, a software movement designed to produce quality software. Revered as a hero in the kingdom computers, Stallman began his extraordinary career in the famed Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, and the first half of the ’70s created eMac publisher. In începututul ’80s, commercial software companies lured many of the brightest programmers in AI laboratories and negotiating strict secrecy as to protect their secrets.
But Stallman had a different vision. His idea was that, unlike other products, the software should not be restrictions against copying or modification in order to improve and increase efficiency programs. In his famous 1983 manifesto declaring beginning the GNU project he started a movement to create and distribute software that corresponded to his philosophy (The random name GNU is a recursive acronym which now means “GNU is Not Unix”) . But in order to fulfill his dream of eventually creating a free operating system, had to create first gear. So since 1984, Stallman started writing the GNU C Compiler (GCC), an amazing fact for an individual program. With its legendary technical magic, he only exceeded the entire group of programmers from companies producing software, GCC’s writing, considered one of the most efficient and robust compilers ever created.
Till the maturity in 1991, the GNU project had created a lot of tools. Multaşteptatul Gnu C compiler was ready, but there was still no operating system and was not expected to appear in the next few years.
That was too much for a delay from Linus.
On August 25, 1991, history message was sent by Linus MINIX group …….
From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you most like to see in MINIX?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system
MessageID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541 @ klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: August 25, 1991 20:57:08 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki
Hi all users of minix -
Work (for free) at an operating system (just a hobby, will not be big and professional like gnu) for 386 hard drives (486) AT. Cloceşte thing in April, and begin reading. I would like any information about what they like / dislike in minix people as my OS resembles it in some way (the settlement of the files (due to practical reasons) among other things) I recently imported bash (1.08) and gcc (1.40) and things seem to work. This means that to get something practical within a few months, and I want to know what features would interest you more on most people. Any suggestion is welcome, but not a promise to take account of them :-).
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