HOW WAS LINUX DEVELOPED ORIGINALLY

š In 1991, while attending the University of Helsinki,  Linus Benedict Torvalds became curious about operating systems and frustrated by the licensing of MINIX, which at the time limited it to educational use only.

š He began to work on his own operating system kernel, which eventually became the Linux kernel.

š Torvalds began the development of the Linux kernel on MINIX and applications written for MINIX were also used on Linux.

š Later, Linux matured and further Linux kernel development took place on Linux systems. 

šGNU applications also replaced all MINIX components, because it was advantageous to use the freely available code from the GNU Project with the fledgling operating system; code licensed under the GNU GPL can be reused in other computer programs as long as they also are released under the same or a compatible license.

š Torvalds initiated a switch from his original licence, which prohibited commercial redistribution, to the GNU GPL.

š Developers worked to integrate GNU components with the Linux kernel, making a fully functional and free operating system.