On this day · archive
A small kernel enters a very large network
Linux kernel 0.01 arrived on the Internet in 1991 as a modest, unfinished release. The network turned that small beginning into an invitation to inspect, modify, and build together.
8
events in todayish file
1991
The first version of the Linux kernel is released to the Internet.
Version 0.01 was small, early, and incomplete. Its durable idea was that others could inspect, use, and help build what came next.
The first version of the Linux kernel, numbered 0.01, was released to the Internet on September 17, 1991. The name “kernel” is appropriately compact: it is the central part of an operating system, the layer that manages hardware and lets other software run.
Version numbers often pretend to be tidy milestones. This one announced something unfinished and available, a beginning defined less by polish than by the possibility of participation.
The Internet changed the scale of that possibility. Code could travel, be examined, modified, and returned. A small release became the seed of a vast collaborative ecosystem.
The full record
8 entries from the day’s archive, filed year by year with a note on what each one leaves behind.
Two bombs explode in Seaside Park, New Jersey, and Manhattan. Thirty-one people are injured in the Manhattan bombing.
Bombings in New Jersey and Manhattan injured 31 people and triggered a regional investigation.
Violence
An audio tape of a private speech by Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány is leaked to the public, in which he confessed that his Hungarian Socialist Party had lied to win the 2006 election, sparking widespread protests across the country.
A leaked admission of electoral deception ignited protests across Hungary.
Politics
The New York Stock Exchange reopens for trading after the September 11 attacks, the longest closure since the Great Depression.
Trading resumed after the exchange’s longest closure since the Great Depression.
Business
George W. Bush, president of the United States, delivers remarks at the Islamic Center of Washington praising Muslim Americans and condemning Islamophobia in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.
The remarks defended Muslim Americans at a moment of acute fear and backlash.
Civic
The first version of the Linux kernel (0.01) is released to the Internet.
An early kernel release began a collaborative software history far larger than version 0.01.
Technology
Vanessa Williams becomes the first black Miss America.
Williams’s selection broke a racial barrier in a prominent national pageant.
Civil rights
After weeks of strikes at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland, the nationwide independent trade union Solidarity is established.
Solidarity transformed weeks of shipyard strikes into an independent national trade union.
Labor
The world's first retractable roof stadium, the Civic Arena, opens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena demonstrated a roof that could open and close over a major public venue.
Architecture