I enjoyed this article by Lars Wirzenius, who has known Linus Torvalds since the 80s.

Thus, mine was the first PC where Linux was ever installed. While this was happening, I was taking a nap, and I recommend this method of installing Linux: napping, while Linus does the hard work.

Alas, early Linux networking code was occasionally a little rough, having been written from scratch. At one point, Linux would send some broken packets that took down all of the Sun machines on the network. As it was difficult to get the Sun kernel fixed, Linux was banned from the university network until its bug was fixed. Not having Usenet access from one's desk is a great motivator.