I knew Andrew S. Tanenbaum wrote MINIX, the simple UNIX-like operating system that (among other things, I'm sure) inspired Linus Torvalds to write Linux. I know this because I took a course on Operating Systems where we used a book written by Tanenbaum.
What I didn't know, however, was that Tanenbaum and Torvalds had a debate back in 1992 about MINIX vs Linux, or more precisely, micro kernels vs monolithic kernels. I learned a lot while reading it and I recommend anyone interested in operating systems to at least skim through it. I found out about it from Tanenbaum's response to Ken Brown about the claim that Torvalds didn't write Linux.
Posted by djst at May 25, 2004 12:27 AMHave you been living in a cave, or what? ;-)
Posted by: alfons at May 25, 2004 1:44 AMNo, but not all of my knowledge in life is about operating systems. I didn't even know what Linux was back in 1992. Maybe you're older than me.
Posted by: David Tenser at May 25, 2004 2:03 AMIf you get a chance it might be worth reading "Just for fun" a book about Linus and co-written by him. It's quite readable and contains Linus' point of view about that debate (and much more).
Posted by: Jon at May 25, 2004 12:05 PM