Just 15 years ago Linus Torvalds, a Finnish computer student, posted this message to an Internet discussion group,
“I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since April, and is starting to get ready…” (Linus Torvalds, August 25, 1991)
Fast forward to 2006. Torvalds is now working in Portland, OR for the Open Source Development Labs promoting Linux as an enterprise operating system used all over the world. His children, who attend a public school in Portland, will be using a computer lab this fall where the Windows machines are gone, having been replaced with thin-clients running Linux. All of Portland’s middle schools and many of its elementary and high schools have Linux workstations. Portland schools are not alone in their use of Linux. It’s happening all over the world.
