The Name

At first Torvalds used "Freax" as the name for Linux. A portmanteau from "freek", "free" and "x" an allusion to Unix. But later he uploaded his file to a ftp server at the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) in September 1991. Ari Lemmke, the person who was responsible for the servers thought that "Freax" was not a very good name and he him self renamed the project as "Linux" with out the knowledge of Torvalds. But at first Torvalds protested but later he also accepted the renaming and it became generally accepted all over the world.