Linus Torvalds Recognizes Linux's 'True' 30th Anniversary Date

While it's been argued that Linux has four different "birthdays," last Friday saw the 30th anniversary of Linux's very, very first release — version 0.01.

That special first release "was never publicly announced, and I only emailed a handful of people in private about the upload," Torvalds remembered on the Linux kernel mailing list. He no longer has copies of those announcement emails, "so there's no real record of that. The only record of the date is in the Linux-0.01 tar-file itself, I suspect." "Alas, the dates in that tar-file are for the last modification dates, not the actual creation of the tar-file," Torvalds wrote, "but it does seem to have happened around 7:30pm (Finnish time), so the exact anniversary was technically a couple of hours ago."

So when the exact moment arrived for its 30th anniversary, Torvalds couldn't resist sharing the moment on the Linux kernel mailing list.

"Just thought I'd mention it, since while unannounced, in many ways this is the true 30th anniversary date of the actual code."

Linux Was A Premie

[BeerFartMoron]

So Linux was a premie. Goes to show how much good parenting, by an entire community, can help one thrive! Cheers!

Cake for everyone.

[Ostracus]

Not a true anniversary unless open-source cake is involved.

Re:

[serafean]

got my flour, sugar, eggs and water. Preheating the compiler now...

Re:Cake for everyone.

[ArchieBunker]

30 different people are going to disagree on the ingredients and all make their own cakes, all tasting the same.

Re: Cake for everyone.

[yo303]

And for some reason some people put systemd on top of the cake.

Re:

[eutychus]

And for some reason some people put systemd on top of the cake.

I'm pretty sure systemd on top of a cake is called fondant.

Re:

[John Allsup]

Only the 5 of those 30 where the baking process completed without error get the same cake. Everybody else gets a mess of cake ingredients to clear up. Or perhaps their oven doesn't have the right kind of fan and autoconf halts with an error.

Re: Cake for everyone.

[Midnight Thunder]

As long as I can make a fork, Iâ(TM)ll happily start with what you have.

Re:

[systemd-anonymousd]

Everyone loves open source cake until Lennart Poettering sticks his dick in it

Re:

[Local ID10T]

The cake is a lie!

Re:

[antdude]

"The cake is a lie."

I was late to the party

[Burdell]

I didn't find out about Linux until the 4th birth date, October 5, 1991. I didn't have hardware that could run it yet though, so I didn't boot Linux for the first time until some time in 1992.

Re:

[John Allsup]

I was very late. I didn't get into Linux until Slackware turned up on a PCW cover CD. I think it was early 1996, so when Linux was about 5 and just about old enough to go to school.

So what's the true date?

[dddux]

What's the true date? 24th September or 17th September? Last Friday was yesterday, technically, but I think you meant 17th?

Re:

[daniel23]

if in doubt why not add another birthday to the list.

Thanks Linus!

[slazzy]

Great work that has helped so many people. Also I feel like Linux helped to make open source software so respected and successful like it is today.

Cloned, not born

[presearch]

Linux was born in Bell Labs in the early 1970s.
Torvalds "created" a clone.
The endless credit he continually claims contains multitudes of other's work.

Re:

[RhettLivingston]

How ridiculous. Why stop there. There is nothing made by humans in existence today that doesn't build on prior work. Unix came from Multics. Virtually everything on a computer comes from modelling something similar in the physical world - or do you really think hierarchical filing systems were new in Multics or even in computers in general?

Re:

[Stormwatch]

I recall Stallman has said he modeled GNU after Unix simply because it was the system he knew best.

What happened to this guy?

[Bu11etmagnet]

From the article: "mild-mannered Finnish graduate student named Linus Benedict Torvalds"

The Linus we have today is sus.