Ari Lemmke Birthday

Finnish computer programmer best known for supervising the development of the world’s first graphical web browser, Erwise. The program was created by four students at the Helsinki University of Technology.

Ari Lemmke also named Linux, the operating system developed by Linus Torvalds. The renaming story goes like this.

During development, Torvalds stored all files on the Finnish University and Research Network’s (Funet) FTP server in a directory called “Freax“. The name was derived from ‘free‘, ‘freak‘ and the ‘x‘ of Unix. Torvalds HAD considered using the name Linux but found it too egoistical. One fine day, Lemmke renamed the directory to Linux without consulting Torvalds, who finally agreed to keep the name. By the way, the term “Linux” is copyrighted in the US by Torvalds to prevent others from making money off his creation.

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