Linux (operating system)

Linux

The GNOME desktop on Ubuntu Linux 6.10

Website: http://www.linux.org

Developer: The Open Source community

OS family: Unix-like

Source model: Open source

Latest stable release: Ubuntu 6.10 Mandriva Linux 2007.1 openSUSE 10.2,

Supported platforms: x86, x86-64, ia64, DEC Alpha, Motorola 68k, SUN Sparc, ARM, PowerPC

Kernel type: Monolithic kernel

Default user interface (most distros): GUI

License: GNU General Public License

Working state: Current

Tux the penguin, the Linux mascot

Linux is an operating system remarkable for the community-driven effort which led to its creation. It is also notable for running on the same Intel x86 hardware platform as the Windows and Mac operating system families, for being a very low-cost alternative to Windows, and for having a user experience that is nearly identical to the much older Unix operating system. Its feature set is comparable to the operating systems sold by Microsoft and Apple.

Since its advent in the early 1990's, Linux has become a poster child of the open source movement due to its success in the marketplace, possibly portending a paradigm shift away from proprietary software development.

Linux is open source software, which means it is written and improved upon through a community effort, and it can be obtained and used for free by anyone. Furthermore, numerous companies are able to earn money by offering "supported distributions" of Linux which have certain guarantees in terms of reliability and expected bug fixes, so customers who pay for one of the "supported" versions of Linux (such as Red Hat, or others) can rest assured that someone will help them if a serious problem arises. These specially packaged versions of Linux are called Linux distributions.

Although first developed for the Intel x86 architecture (i386 chip), Linux has since been ported to numerous hardware platforms, including Intel i686, AMD64, SPARC, and Xbox systems. Although it has been very successful in a server environment, Linux has also attained status as a viable desktop platform.

Origins

The origins of Linux are remarkable. The first Linux kernel was written by an upstart college student from Finland in 1991 in defiance of a competing academic effort by a renowned professor of computer architecture. The ensuing debate about what is practical and implementable versus academic theory between Linux' original creator, Linus Torvalds, and Dr. Andrew S. Tanenbaum of Vrije Universiteit, The Netherlands, has been retold repeatedly with amusement and amazement (please see the Monolithic versus Microkernel article for more information).

Linux was named by combining Linus Torvalds's namewith the "x" in Unix. Linus originally intended to call the project "Freax", for Free and Freak, with the "x" denoting that it is Unix-like, but after one of his colleagues named the system's FTP directory after him, the name stuck. Linux is pronounced like Minix.

Linux was not the first attempt to create a free or low-cost alternative to Unix, which throughout the 1980's was becoming more expensive, and the community of programmers particularly yearned for a Unix-like operation system that would run on cheap personal computer hardware. Pre-Linux, only non-free kernels such as Minix were available for use on low-cost computers.

In 1984, The Free Software Foundation, founded by Dr. Richard Stallman, made an attempt to create a free Unix-like operating system, which they called the GNU system (GNU stood for GNU's Not Unix). GNU began building the necessary tools for the system, such as a compiler, debugger, and a text editor. The effort eventually was supposed to produce a kernel to place beneath the tools that they had created, but development of the the GNU kernel was never completed. Thus, in the early 1990's, the GNU developer community received Linux with open arms, and many began to contribute.

From gnu.org: "Variants of the GNU operating system, which use the kernel called Linux, are now widely used; though these systems are often referred to as “Linux”, they are more accurately called GNU/Linux systems." (needs reference)

The GNU community decided to call Linux GNU/Linux, in order to attribute credit to those who worked on the tools that the Linux kernel runs. But Linux creator Linus Torvalds said that "calling Linux in general just 'GNU/Linux' I think is ridiculous.", and the expanded name has not been widely adopted.

Applications running on Linux

The KDE desktop on SUSE Linux 10.1

Aside from the GNU project's applications, Linux is capable of running many applications of all natures, from games and graphic editors to Integrated Development Environments and web servers. Among the most commonly used applications are The GIMP photo editing tool, which is commonly referred to as a free alternative to Photoshop, Firefox, a feature-complete, tabbed web browser, and OpenOffice, which is a free, full-featured alternative to the Microsoft Office suite. The GIMP, Firefox and OpenOffice are all cross-platform as well, meaning they run on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.

Unlike Microsoft Windows NT, Linux itself is not a graphical system. Instead, Linux relies on a graphical layer to output bitmap images. The most common application for this is called X.org, commonly referred to as just X. X.org is a very minimal program that purposely does as little as possible. Users do not normally see it, but the results of its work. X.org serves as a layer between the kernel and the desktop environment or window manager. Window managers, like Openbox or wmii, are only able to manage windows and desktops, while desktop environments, such as GNOME, KDE and Xfce, provide advanced graphical functionality, such as the ability to process text, organize photos or chat online.

See also

• Linux kernel
• Linux distributions
• Linux history

External Links

• Linus' first post presenting Linux
• The Linux Foundation