The NewsDemon Blog

It might have been in late August 1991 that Linus Torvalds posted on the USENET newsgroup comp.os.minix about a new operating system he was developing, but it was October 5th, 1991 that Linux version 0.02, the official version of the kernel was announced and released.

Today, the Linux kernel celebrates its 19th birthday. In those nineteen years, Linux has seen an abundance of changes and improvements. As one of the first operating systems that relied on the online community to support it, it has been responsible for over 50 different versions since then.

Linus Torvalds was the originator of Linux and the initial leader of the community. As a USENET enthusiast and realizing the importance newsgroups had, he used the USENET as the first destination to announce the release of the first Linux kernel.

The open source Linux kernel was then improved upon by the USENET community as it still is today, alongside other online communities. In its now available 2.6.32-rc3 recent release, Linux demonstrates the innovation and improvement it has made throughout time due to its community contributed resources.

USENET itself celebrates its own 30th birthday this year as well. As a hub for online communities to share, develop and exchange, USENET has been an intricate part of the birth and the subsequent life that has made Linux available to this day as well as a host of other technologies in its time.