Linus Torvalds

Story of Mr. Linus Torvalds

Linus Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland, on December 28, 1969. At the age of 10, Linus began working on computer programming, using his grandfather's computer, the Commodore VIC-20. Computing became his hobby. In 1988 Linus was accepted as a student at the University of Helsinki, Finland. In 1990, Linus started his first C programming class. In 1991, Linus bought his first PC, and he was not satisfied with the operating system on his computer.

At that time, his computer was using MS-DOS (Disk Operation System, an operating system made by Microsoft), but Linus was more inclined to use the UNIX operating system, like the one used on his university's computer. Finally, he decided to create a PC-usable version of UNIX. Months of hard work resulted in the forerunner of the operating system known as Linux, which eight years later was developed into what many observers say was a threat to the giant Microsoft known for its Windows operating system. As soon as Linus succeeded in creating a crude version of Linux, he posted a message on the internet to introduce his new system to other PC users.

Linus made the software free to download, and, as was common with fellow software developers at the time, he released the source code, which meant that anyone with knowledge of computer programming could modify Linux to suit their own purposes. Linux soon had a lot of enthusiastic supporters, because they could have access to the source code, and were able to help Linus improve and perfect the software. Operating Linux requires considerable technical savvy, because operating it is not as easy as using the more popular operating systems, such as Windows, Apple Computer's Mac, or IBM's OS/2. However, because the volunteer developers praise themselves for the quality of their hard work, Linux has become well-known for its advantages as an efficient system and rarely crashes. Linux got its heyday in the late 1990s when competitors from Microsoft started developing the operating system seriously. Netscape communications company, Corel, Oracle, Intel and other companies announced that they plan to support Linux as an inexpensive alternative to Windows.

Read more about the creator of Linux on his Wikipedia