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Linus Benedict Torvalds was born December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland.
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In 1987, Torvalds bought his first computer, which was a Sinclair QL. Torvalds began to create programs in BASIC and assembly language.
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Torvalds went to the University of Helsinki (1988-1996) and received a master's degree in Computer Science.
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Torvalds announces on the MINIX newsgroup that he is working on an operating system based on MINIX and UNIX.
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Linux version 0.02, the first official version, was released with the ability to run the bash shell and the GCC compiler.
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In 1994 Torvalds added the ext2 filesystem which replaced the ext filesystem and yielded a large increase in speed and improved network capability.
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Linux version 2.0 is released, which was a major update to Linux. Added support for more processors, which could expand the user base, and the Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) feature.
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Linux becomes more popular, with 3 million users in 1997, and 7 million by 1999.
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Torvalds accepted a job in California with the Transmeta Corporation developing commercial software.
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Linus suddenly becomes a millionaire when Red Hat and VA Linux provide him with stock options as they release Linux-based software packages to large enterprises.
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In 1999, MIT Technology Review chose Torvalds as one of the 100 top innovators under 35.
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IBM chooses to support Linux by committing a billion dollars to Linux research, development, and promotion in 2001.
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In 2004, Torvalds moves to Portland to work on Linux at the recently founded Open Source Development Labs (OSDL).
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In 2010, Richard Stallman criticized Torvalds for the naming of Linux. Linux incorporates many of the GNU tools created by Richard Stallman and Stallman believes that Linux should be called GNU/Linux to give the GNU the recognition it deserves.
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In 2020, Linux has reached millions of lines of code, surprisingly only 2% of which were written by Linus Torvalds. Though Linux is not often used by average users, it is a common option for supercomputers, due to being lightweight and reliable.
