'Just a hobby, won't be big': Linus Torvalds introduced Linux 35 years ago - and almost called it Freax

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. At the start, Torvalds had no clue how big Linux would become. Some early developers still work on Linux today. Torvalds has no intention of ever stopping work on Linux. In 1991, Unix was an important but secondary x86 operating system. That year, on Aug. 25, a Finnish graduate student named Linus Benedict Torvalds announced on the Usenet group comp.os.minix that he was working on "a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." No one knew it, not even Torvalds, but the technology world was about to change forever. Thirty-five years later, Linux rules IT. Almost all major websites, including Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia, run on Linux. The same is true of the cloud. Even on Microsoft's Azure, Linux is the most popular operating system. As for supercomputers, the world's fastest 500 supercomputers run Linux. Thanks to Android, Linux is also the most popular end-user operating system. Not bad for a hobby operating system. Torvalds and I have talked about Linux and its history, and he's both pleased and bemused by Linux's rise. But as for the operating system's birthday,…