| LINUX's History (written by Linus on July 31 1992) |
| 1 | LINUX's History Note: The following text was written by Linus on July 31 1992. It is a collection of various artifacts from the period in which Linux first began to take shape. This is just a sentimental journey into some of the first posts concerning linux, so you can happily press 'n' now if you actually thought you'd get anything technical. From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Gcc-1.40 and a posix-question Message-ID: Date: 3 Jul 91 10:00:50 GMT Hello netlanders, Due to a project I'm working on (in minix), I'm interested in the posix standard definition. |
| 2 | Could somebody please point me to a (preferably) machine-readable format of the latest posix rules? Ftp-sites would be nice. The project was obviously linux, so by July 3rd I had started to think about actual user-level things: some of the device drivers were ready, and the harddisk actually worked. Not too much else. As an aside for all using gcc on minix - deleted Just a success-report on porting gcc-1.40 to minix using the 1.37 version made by Alan W Black & co. |
| 3 | Linus Torvalds torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi PS. Could someone please try to finger me from overseas, as I've installed a "changing .plan" (made by your's truly), and I'm not certain it works from outside? It should report a new .plan every time. So I was clueless - had just learned about named pipes. Sue me. This part of the post got a lot more response than the actual POSIX query, but the query did lure out arl from the woodwork, and we mailed around for a bit, resulting in the Linux subdirectory on nic.funet.fi. |
| 4 | Then, almost two months later, I actually had something working: I made sources for version 0.01 available on nic sometimes around this time. 0.01 sources weren't actually runnable: they were just a token gesture to arl who had probably started to despair about ever getting anything. This next post must have been from just a couple of weeks before that release. From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: What would you like to see most in minix? |
| 5 | Summary: small poll for my new operating system Message-ID: 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 likedislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things). |
| 6 | 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 :-(. Judging from the post, 0.01 wasn't actually out yet, but it's close. I'd guess the first version went out in the middle of September -91. |
| 7 | I got some responses to this (most by mail, which I haven't saved), and I even got a few mails asking to be beta-testers for linux. After that just a few general answers to quesions on the net: From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: What would you like to see most in minix? Summary: yes - it's nonportable Message-ID: Date: 26 Aug 91 11:06:02 GMT Organization: University of Helsinki In article jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala) writes: >> re: my post about my new OS > >Tell us more! Does it need a MMU? |
| 8 | Yes, it needs a MMU (sorry everybody), and it specifically needs a 386486 MMU (see later). > >>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) > >How much of it is in C? What difficulties will there be in porting? >Nobody will believe you about non-portability ;-), and I for one would >like to port it to my Amiga (Mach needs a MMU and Minix is not free). |
| 9 | Simply, I'd say that porting is impossible. It's mostly in C, but most people wouldn't call what I write C. It uses every conceivable feature of the 386 I could find, as it was also a project to teach me about the 386. As already mentioned, it uses a MMU, for both paging (not to disk yet) and segmentation. It's the segmentation that makes it REALLY 386 dependent (every task has a 64Mb segment for code & data - max 64 tasks in 4Gb. Anybody who needs more than 64Mbtask - tough cookies). |
| 10 | It also uses every feature of gcc I could find, specifically the __asm__ directive, so that I wouldn't need so much assembly language objects. Some of my "C"-files (specifically mm.c) are almost as much assembler as C. It would be "interesting" even to port it to another compiler (though why anybody would want to use anything other than gcc is a mystery). Note: linux has in fact gotten more portable with newer versions: there was a lot more assembly in the early versions. |
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