“We’ll be posting the original interviews here on the Linux
Journal web site for the next several weeks. So sit back and enjoy
a few words from some of the folks who helped make Linux
possible!”
“Linux Journal: How did you first learn about Linux? What were
you doing in your own life at the time? (age, student, occupation,
etc.)”
“Lars Wirzenius: Linus showed me a program that had two threads
that wrote A’s and B’s, respectively, to the screen. That was the
beginning; it evolved into something more interesting later.”
“I was Linus’s friend and fellow student at the University of
Helsinki in 1991, when Linux started, so it was natural to follow
things closely from the beginning. See
http://www.iki.fi/liw/texts/index.html#linux-anecdotes for some
more information.”
“LJ: What attracted you to it, compared to FreeBSD, proprietary
UNIX systems or lucrative areas such as Windows? What made you want
to help with development?”
“Lars: FreeBSD didn’t exist then. 386BSD did, but it wouldn’t
have worked on my computer, since it required a 387 co-processor. I
used SCO Xenix from fall 1991 to spring or summer of 1992, until
Linux matured enough to be a usable environment for writing
code.”
“Windows wasn’t interesting in 1991 and 1992, since it didn’t
offer memory protection, and that was necessary since it made for a
much nicer programming environment.”