The 0.01 sources weren't even executable. They contained only the bare rudiments of the kernel source and assumed that you had access to a Minix machine to compile and experiment with them. Again, this was intended as a hacker's system. After version 0.03, Linus bumped up the version number to 0.10, as more people started to work on the system. Most of the major, free UNIX software packages have been ported to Linux, and commercial software is also available.
More hardware is supported than in the original kernel versions.
Many people have executed benchmarks on 80486 Linux systems and found them comparable with mid-range workstations from Sun Microsystems and Digital Equipment Corporation.