He wanted to create a UNIX-like kernel so that he could use the same kind of operating
system on his home PC that he used at school. At the time, Linus was using Minix, but he wanted
to go beyond what the Minix standards permitted.
As noted earlier, Linus announced the first public version of the Linux kernel to the comp.os.minix
newsgroup on August 25, 1991, although Linus guesses that the first version didn??™t actually come
out until mid-September of that year.
Although Torvalds stated that Linux was written for the 386 processor and probably wasn??™t portable,
others persisted in encouraging (and contributing to) a more portable approach in the early versions
of Linux. By October 5, Linux 0.02 was released with much of the original assembly code rewritten
in the C programming language, which made it possible to start porting it to other machines.
NOTE
14
Linux First Steps Part I
The Linux kernel was the last??”and the most important??”piece of code that was needed to complete
a whole UNIX-like operating system under the GPL. So, when people started putting together
distributions, the name Linux and not GNU is what stuck. Some distributions such as Debian,
however, refer to themselves as GNU/Linux distributions. (Not including GNU in the title or subtitle
of a Linux operating system is also a matter of much public grumbling of some members of the
GNU Project.
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