1) He had the chutzpah to just sit down and write a straightforward kernel for the 386, with no intentions of pedagogy (minix), research (mach), or circlejerkery (hurd).
2) He pioneered the distributed development model in the late 90s that made it possible for Linux to bloom.
3) He sat down and advanced the state of free version control a decade over the course of a weekend.
His initial writing of Linux is the least important of the three, if he hadn't done it someone else would have. The remarkable thing is how he kept it going.
Many people prefer Hg over Git, though I prefer Git, and it was written before Git.
I'd agree that Linus helped "advance the state of free version control", but certainly not by a decade when compared to other pre existing free version control systems.
1) He had the chutzpah to just sit down and write a straightforward kernel for the 386, with no intentions of pedagogy (minix), research (mach), or circlejerkery (hurd).
2) He pioneered the distributed development model in the late 90s that made it possible for Linux to bloom.
3) He sat down and advanced the state of free version control a decade over the course of a weekend.
His initial writing of Linux is the least important of the three, if he hadn't done it someone else would have. The remarkable thing is how he kept it going.