在 1991 年 4月,芬兰的赫尔辛基大学年仅 21 岁的学生 Linus Torvalds 开始做一个他自己的操作系统。在 24 年前的今天,即 1991年8月25日,他在 usenet 的 comp.os.minix 新闻组中发布了 Linux 的第一个公告,宣布了 Linux 的诞生。以下是当年 Torvalds 写的邮件:
     - From: torv...@klaava .Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds) 
- Newsgroups: comp.os.minix 
- Subject: What would you like to see most in minix? 
- Summary: small poll for my new operating system 
- Keywords: 386, preferences 
- Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava .Helsinki.FI> 
- Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT 
- Organization: University of Helsinki 
- Lines: 20 
-   
-   
- Hello everybody out there using minix - 
-   
- I‘m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won‘t be big and 
- professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing 
- since april, and is starting to get ready. I‘d like any feedback on 
- things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat 
- (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) 
- among other things). 
-   
- I‘ve currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. 
- This implies that I‘ll get something practical within a few months, and 
- I‘d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions 
- are welcome, but I won‘t promise I‘ll implement them :-) 
-   
- Linus (torv...@kruuna.helsinki.fi) 
-   
- PS. Yes - it‘s free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. 
- It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never 
- will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that‘s all I have :-(. 
在该年的九月, Linux Kernel 0.01 发布到了芬兰大学和研究网(FUNET) 上的一个 FTP 服务器(ftp.funet.fi)。当时仅有 10239 行代码。到了十月,又发布了 0.02。