linuxaccra.com

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"In the early Nineties, computer science students such as Linus were increasingly taught using toy operating systems built around microkernels, such as Minix, a creation of Professor Andrew Tannenbaum at VU University Amsterdam. Minix had been created to allow students to study and improve a real operating system that was nonetheless not so overly complicated that it could not be understood over the course of a few semesters’ worth of study. Unlike Andrew Tannenbaum, Linus did not subscribe to the same philosophy that drove much of the popularity of Minix, but he did use it, since it was essentially the only practical open source alternative available. This was another reason why Linux came about, as a means to have a more conventional UNIX-like operating system whose source code was freely available and which supported the kinds of hardware available to students (rather than the higher-end kind typically required for traditional UNIX)."