It look him months to write 'OPEN' system calls. Linus wanted to improve Minix and wanted to understand to build a POSIX standard so that it would be used widely. A single sec delay is permissible in word processing application but not in a game Unix was first used to write games because in games the performance matters a lot. Since there was no standard, there was no single UNIX version which became widely popular. Unix is a set of system calls and functionality is built upon using the system calls.

He starts playing around with Minix, the OS developed by Andrew S Tanenbaum.Linus starts off with a terminal emulation program ,looking at some of the ways in which UNIX system calls were designed and coded.Ī little diversion here : UNIX ,by the way is a robust O/S but there was no single standard O/S. In the process he starts reading a book titled – OS-Design and Implementation by Andrew S Tanenbaum.This book changes his life for ever. He starts experimenting with VIC 20 and them moves on to buy Sinclair QL.After playing around with it for sometime,he gets sick of it as the OS is a read only OS and there is no memory protection. VIC 20, the first device which Linus gets exposed to, fascinates him a lot. He vainly attempts to be a part of finnish army but fails. Through out his school years, he is looked upon as a nerd(this was when being a nerd was not cool).He was the guy who was good at math,physics but not with girls or sports. Thus linus favorite activity at a very young age was writing BASIC programs, though he didn’t have a clue about their meaning. Linus torvalds was born in Finland where at a very young age gets introduced to computers when his grandfather, a professor in statistics,asks young linus to type in a lot of BASIC programs which he reads out loudly. This book is written in a remarkably witty manner at the same time explaining the business philosophy behind open source. The reason for the popularity of the OS has more to do with the way in which it was created, OPEN SOURCE.A new term was coined, thanks to Linux and subsequently influenced the IT software industry like never before. Just for Fun is an autobiography of Linus torvalds, the creator of Linux, a successful operating system.

Just for Fun by Linus Torvalds