I recently had the opportunity to interview Andrew S. Tanenbaum, creator of the extremely secure Unix-like operating sytem MINIX 3. Andrew is also the author of Operating Systems Design and Implementation, the must-have book on programming and designing operating systems, and the man whose work inspired Linus Torvalds to create Linux.

I saw an article the other day, repeating the mistaken view that there was Minix code in an early version of Linux. I knew that was not true, because for one thing Linus told us it was not true years ago. And Andrew Tanenbaum confirmed that Linus didn't use any Minix code, as did Eric Raymond.

Andrew Tanenbaum: «...A microkernel is much better engineered and is more modular and easier to understand. Monolithic kernels are still too big and unreliable. My metric is the TV set. The system should run for 10 years with a total of zero failures for 99.9% of the users...»

Computer science veteran Andrew Tanenbaum presented the third version of his Minix operating system at the FOSDEM 2010 conference on February 6-7 in Brussels, Belgium.

Linux Pro Magazine met the author of numerous standard works in informatics and the most famous Linux critic at the Fosdem in Brussels.

Linux (pronunced: /ˈlɪnʊks/, lin-uks) is an operating system that was initially created as a hobby by a young student, Linus Torvalds, at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Linus had an interest in Minix, a small UNIX system, and decided to develop a system that exceeded the Minix standards. He began his work in 1991 when he released version 0.02 and worked steadily until 1994 when version 1.0 of the Linux Kernel was released.

With the power of ten men, Linus reacted swiftly. Rather than cry about it like a little bitch, he created his own source control system called git. In a self-deprecating style that only a developer on Linus's level could pull off, Linus said, "I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First Linux, now git.”

Linus reflects on 18 years of working on Linux, the developer ecosystem and his goal for Linux on the desktop.

While Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux, has a wide and well established fan-base, fewer people are aware of the wider organisation that supports his vital kernel development work.