In 1991, a Finnish university student named Linus Torvalds wrote a simple program that displayed alternating letters "A" and "B" on a computer screen. This humble beginning would eventually grow into Linux - the operating system that now powers billions of devices worldwide, from smartphones to supercomputers.
The story begins at the University of Helsinki, where Torvalds purchased his first PC with a 386 CPU and 4MB of RAM. After mastering the Prince of Persia video game, he began experimenting with assembly language programming. His initial multitasking demonstration showing streams of As and Bs marked Linux's unofficial birth.
Over the following months, Torvalds expanded the system's capabilities, adding keyboard drivers, serial port support, and file permissions. In August 1991, he made a modest announcement on an online forum: "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu)." The project, initially called Freax, was renamed to Linux when it was first uploaded to an FTP server.
A key turning point came in early 1992 when Torvalds adopted the GNU GPL license, making Linux truly open-source. That same year brought the integration of the X11 system, enabling graphical interfaces. The first Linux distribution, Softlanding Linux System (SLS), emerged, later inspiring the creation of Slackware and Debian.
By 1994, Linux had reached version 1.0, celebrated with a public release event covered by Finnish media. The system could now compile itself, run multiple programs, and handle networking - though early network code occasionally caused interesting problems, like temporarily taking down Sun machines on university networks.
The project gained momentum through the mid-1990s as it was ported to different computer architectures. A major shift occurred when IBM invested heavily in Linux development, and the term "open source" entered common usage.
Today, Linux's reach extends far beyond its creator's initial expectations. The operating system runs on devices across every continent, powers the majority of the world's smartphones through Android, operates in space stations, and even functions on Mars rovers.
From two alternating letters on a screen to the backbone of modern computing infrastructure, Linux's journey represents one of computing history's most remarkable success stories. As we look back from 2023, it's clear that Torvalds' early prediction about Linux not becoming "big and professional" couldn't have been more wonderfully wrong.