From the IEEE Computer Society:
Linus Torvalds Named Recipient of the 2014 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer AwardLinus Torvalds, the principal force behind development of the Linux kernel and overseer of open source development for the Linux operating system, has been named the 2014 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Computer Pioneer Award.
Torvalds, a native of Helsinki, Finland, began working on the Linux kernel in 1991. An avid computer programmer, he authored many gaming applications in his early years. He did his early work on an Intel 386 CPU, using Minix, an Unix-inspired operating system created by Andrew Tanenbaum for use as a teaching tool. After Torvalds formed a team of volunteers to work on the Linux kernel, V1.0 was released in the spring of 1994.
I remember Minix very well and played around with Linux when it first came out. Windows 3.1 had been out for a year and had not gained the market saturation that it has now. There were several competing desktop solutions - DesqView, GEM and several ports of the X Windows system.