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Linux

Linux is quite possibly the most important achievement of free software since Emacs. It has developed into the operating system for businesses, education, and personal productivity. Linux is no longer just for UNIX wizards who sit for hours in front of the glowing console (although we assure you that quite a number of users fall into this category).

Linux (pronounced with a short i, as in LIH-nucks) is a clone of the UNIX operating system that runs on Intel 80386 and 80486 computers. It supports a wide range of software, from to X Windows to the GNU C/C++ compiler to TCP/IP. It's a versatile, bona fide implementation of UNIX, freely distributed by the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Linux can turn any 386 or 486 PC into a workstation. It will give you the full power of UNIX at your fingertips. Businesses are installing Linux on entire networks of machines, using the operating system to manage financial and hospital records, a distributed user computing environment, telecommunications, and more. Universities worldwide are using Linux for teaching courses on operating systems programming and design. And, of course, computing enthusiasts everywhere are using Linux at home, for programming, productivity, and all-around hacking.

What makes Linux so different is that it is a free implementation of UNIX. It was and still is developed by a group of volunteers, primarily on the Internet, exchanging code, reporting bugs, and fixing problems in an open-ended environment. Anyone is welcome to join in the Linux development effort: all it takes is interest in hacking a free UNIX clone and some kind of programming know-how. The book that you hold in your hands is your tour guide.

Linux is a freely distributable, fully 32 bit, pre-emptive multitasking operating system and as such is vastly superior to its commercial competitors, such as the hugely popular Windows 95/NT. It's a UNIX clone with its origins in Andy Tanenbaum's academic Minix system, but borrows no code from it. Linux was born out of the desire of Finnish computer science student Linus Torvalds to create a better Minix, and in doing so gain intimate knowledge of the PC architecture. In 1991, Linus posted a message to Usenet, in which he asked for interested parties to contribute to his effort. The rest, as they say, is history.

To this day, Linux continues to be developed by the Internet community. There are no production deadlines or commercial objectives to compromise the quality of Linux. Its developers have but one goal: to produce the best Linux they can. To this end, the entire source code of Linux is freely available and distributable for anyone to add to and improve. If you don't like the way something works, you fix it. It's that simple. Really.

Since its humble beginnings in 1991, Linux has gone from strength to strength. Thanks to the Free Software Foundation's GNU Project, Linux has been expanded from just a kernel to a huge suite of mostly POSIX compliant applications and utilities. Linux has the commercial Unices running scared, since no commercial product, no matter how many people the controlling company employs, can compete with a system designed and developed by thousands of talented and motivated programmers, many of whom are themselves professional software developers.

Linux was developed by Linus Torvalds and other programmers in 1991 while Linus was a student a the University of Helsinki. Linus wanted a desktop version of UNIX which ran on modest hardware and didn't cost so much. He began writing the code based on minix and then released it to the public so that it could be improved upon. Other programmers in the spirit of GNU worked together to develop what we now take for granted, a derivative of UNIX designed to be fast, small, and reliable and most importantly free.

At the heart of Linux is the kernel which basically runs the show. It controls for instance how much time to allot a process and tries to balance this with all of the rest the processes that are running. The current stable kernel is 2.2.14 although the various vendors now ship anything from 2.2.7 to 2.2.12. This of course is only part of the operating system which includes XWindows and any other programs or processes that are running.

Linux is unique because it does what a Microsoft operating system does not. It offers a stable free system that allows you to peek under the hood and see how it works. It also runs on more hardware architectures then any other operating system (X86, Alpha, Sparc, PPC, StrongArm, and many others). A Linux machine can act as a general business desktop with office suites, a graphical workstation, a gaming system, or its traditional role of a stable high powered server. Increasingly, Linux/Apache is the web server combo of choice.

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