Groklaw: The Daemon, the GNU & the Penguin–Ch. 19

“Linus was born into the Swedish minority of Finland (about 5%
of the 5,000,000 Finns). Linus was a ‘math guy’ throughout his
schooling. Early on, he ‘inherited’ a Commodore VIC-20 (released in
June 1980) from his grandfather; in 1987 he spent his savings on a
Sinclair QL (released in January 1984, the ‘Quantum Leap,’ with a
Motorola 68008 running at 7.5MHz and 128kB of RAM, was intended for
the small business and the serious hobbyist). It ran Q-DOS. And it
was what got Linus involved…”

Complete
Story