 Background Information"My name is Linus, and I am your god."Source:Linus Torvalds at the Linux Expo, Durham, North Carolina, 1998. Linux is the name of an operating system and kernel (the very core of the OS). It was written by a student studying at the University of Helsinki in his spare time, his name: Linus Benedict Torvalds. He based it on Minix, a kernel and OS developed by Andrew Tanenbaum. The first version of the Linux kernel was released in September 1991, under the name Freax (Free, Freak , Unix based). Luckily the owner of the ftp server renamed the folder to Linux, and the name has stuck. In reality Linux is so much more than an operating system, it is a way of life! Unlike the operating systems Windows and Mac OS, Linux is completely open source. That means that all of its underlying source code is available to the public and anyone can use, modify and redistribute it. Anything you don't like about your operating system, you change it! This makes Linux incredibly versatile. There are over 300 hundred different distributions or distroes. A Linux distribution is a collection if you will of software and of course the kernel. Many of these make installation of Linux a piece of cake, and now you no longer need to be a geek to get things up and running as most things work out of the box. The time of Bill Gates has passed, all hail Linus Torvald!  |