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'Just a hobby, won't be big': Linus Torvalds introduced Linux 35 years ago - and almost called it Freax

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Why This Matters

Linux's journey from a hobby project to a dominant force in the tech industry highlights the unpredictable potential of open-source development. Its widespread adoption across servers, supercomputers, and mobile devices underscores its critical role in modern technology infrastructure.

Key Takeaways

Screenshots from Linux Foundation YouTube channel / ZDNET

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ZDNET's key takeaways

At the start, Torvalds had no clue how big Linux would become.

Some early developers still work on Linux today.

Torvalds has no intention of ever stopping work on Linux.

In 1991, Unix was an important but secondary x86 operating system. That year, on Aug. 25, a Finnish graduate student named Linus Benedict Torvalds announced on the Usenet group comp.os.minix that he was working on "a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones."

No one knew it, not even Torvalds, but the technology world was about to change forever.

Also: Linux's remarkable journey from one dev's hobby to 40 million lines of code - and counting

Thirty-five years later, Linux rules IT. Almost all major websites, including Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia, run on Linux. The same is true of the cloud. Even on Microsoft's Azure, Linux is the most popular operating system. As for supercomputers, the world's fastest 500 supercomputers run Linux. Thanks to Android, Linux is also the most popular end-user operating system.

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