LINUX HISTORY
Here are some early document events in the history of Linux.
At some point, I may construct
a timeline of the significant events (I have newsgroup discussions
and announcements of many events).
Linux 1991
Linux was a fairly active entity on the internet in 1991, when
most of the activities revolved around kernel and file systems. Back then,
there was no WWW -- users interacted via the Linux newsgroup (which
had no spamming and little flames back then), and email. Binaries (especially the
kernel) were so small that they were sometimes posted directly to the
newsgroup as UUENCODE files. Here is an archive of the Linux newsgroup from 1991.
You will notice
that Linus was very interactive, as well as Ted Ts'o (I believe he was
the person who created this archive file).
1991 Linux Activists
Linux 1992
Here is an archive capture of the newsgroup from 1992.
1992 Linux Activists
Also in 1992, a publishing company named JANA was the first to create
CD-ROM captures of the mit and newsgroup archives and sell them. These
were labeled "Expo Edition CD-ROM NEWS" (when they had a label). It is
from these CDs that I have extracted these archive files.
Personal Linux Histories
Here are most likely the first postings of some well known (to me) people in
the Linux community. The people are listed roughtly in the order that they
began to appear on the network. By March 1993, all of these people were frequent posters
to the newsgroups and there are a large number within the archives. One of the
more entertaining things to look for is the old tag lines in their signatures and
their old email addresses.
Linus
This 11/6/91 posting is the first I have from
Linus. Obviously these aren't his first, but it must be darn close.
Ted 'Tim' Ts'o
Ted is probably the oldest poster next to Linus. His
postings go all the way back to the first 1991 postings I have in the archive. This 11/7/91 entry
is his first posting claiming that he just heard about Linux and is creating the Linux 0.10 archives on tsx-11.mit.edu.
Alan Cox
THIS this is the first post I have by Alan, made
on 7/17/92. HERE are a few more.
Bryce Copland
HERE is Bryce's first newsgroup posting from 10/2/92, and
possible his first use of Linux, Bryce was
also handling the Network FAQ (which was his 2nd posting).
Stephen Tweedie
Stephen was a very frequent poster.
This 10/12/92 entry is the first postings I
have on record from Stephen. HERE are a few more. He
was hacking everything! He and I had several interactions on the newsgroup.
Erik Troan
This 2/8/93 posting is the earliest post from Erik I could find (it's followed
by an interesting post from Linus).
His next postings were later that same month, and
contain a reponse from Ted. Other early posts also included his
mentioning that this new thing called Windows NT will be coming out soon
(PROVING that Linux is older than NT), and his responding to the suggested creation
of the first Linux magazine. There's also an interaction between Erik and Ted in there.
Keith Barrett
I personally became involved in studying Linux in late 1992,
and eventually took the
plunge installing TAMU on March 27, 1993.
The kernel release was .99pl3 in the popular distributions SLS 1.01 and TAMU.
Slackware was also out, but SLS was still more popular. The .99pl5 kernel was
just about making the rounds I believe.
HERE are some of my posts concerning problems when I
quickly switched to the SLS release,
HERE is my first posting to the newsgroup, and
interestingly the
first person to respond to my post was Ted Ts'o. I was asking about SCSI tape
drives and eventually did some driver testing and got listed in the
SLS and Slackware "Hardware Compatibility" document.
HERE is posting where I suggested a breakup of the
Linux newsgroups, immediately followed by Stephen Tweedie proclaiming his support.
I also was THE FIRST PERSON to suggest that Linux have a mascot!. Look at the end of
this posting. Where's my royalities?