Torvalds, Linus Benedict (1991-10-5), news:comp.os.minix, contribution: Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT, publisher: Google Groups, announcing Linux version 0.02.
“
Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote their own device drivers?
[...]
I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows), and I've already got minix.
— Linus Torvalds
What It Means
This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote their own device drivers?
[...]
I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows), and I've already got minix." in the context of "Torvalds, Linus Benedict (1991-10-5), news:comp.os.minix, contribution: Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT, publisher: Google Groups, announcing Linux version 0.02." to mean that wisdom is timeless.
Source: Wikiquote: "Linus Torvalds" (Quotes, 1990s, 1991–94)
The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
About Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds (born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish-American computer programmer, best known as the creator of the Linux kernel.
About Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds (born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish-American computer programmer, best known as the creator of the Linux kernel.
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