Linus Torvalds announced the arrival of the Linux kernel in 1991 to comp.os.minix with the news that "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like GNU) for 386(486) AT clones."

Though GNU/Linux is now ubiquitous within the enterprise it is easy to forget that much of the innovation and inspiration behind free software still comes from communities of individuals for whom GNU/Linux is "just a hobby". The contributions of these communities are as important to the popularisation and development of GNU/Linux as the developers employed by IBM or Red Hat.

The best ideas are just as likely to spring from the users and developers of Debian, Gentoo, Arch or PCLinuxOS, who are contributing for fun, to 'scratch an itch', or just because they can - as they are from the better known and better publicised distributions and sponsors.

The informality of the free software model, and its ability to allow participants to find their own level, encourages innovation and the spread of ideas. Community led distributions are just as important to the success of GNU/Linux as Ubuntu or SUSE or Red Hat.

I love to package

PCLinuxOS is a community driven distribution of GNU/Linux, which began in 2003 with the objective of creating a Linux that was radically simple, "worked out of the box, looked fabulous and didn't require a technical degree from college to get it working."