The history of Linux is fairly short, it goes back to 1991 when Linus Torvalds, the founder of it all started on his project- to produce a UNIX clone. Here is what is now a rather famous newsgroup post:

----- Begin post from Linus ------ From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: What would you like to see most in minix? Summary: small poll for my new operating system Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI> Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT Organization: University of Helsinki 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 (torvalds@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 :-(. ----- End post from Linus --------

Well, as it turned out, he was dead wrong, and the idea took off.

Within a year, he had built a very shaky , essentially a preliminary version. The idea of using a public license for the project made it easy for others all over the world to collaborate.

His vision was indeed a far-sighted one and the project inspired many others to join him, and the team grew exponentially in size, and inevitably, so did the project.