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Linux is an operating system
that was initially created as a hobby by a young student,
Linus Torvalds, at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
Linus had an interest in Minix, a small UNIX system, and
decided to develop a system that exceeded the Minix
standards. He began his work in 1991 when he released
version 0.02 and worked steadily until 1994 when version 1.0
of the Linux Kernel was released. The current full-featured
version is 2.4 (released January 2001) and development
continues.
Linux is developed under the
GNU General
Public License and its source code is freely available
to everyone. This however, doesn't mean that Linux and its
assorted distributions
are free -- companies and developers may charge money for it
as long as the source code remains available. Linux may be
used for a wide variety of purposes including networking,
software development, and as an end-user platform. Linux is
often considered an excellent, low-cost alternative to other
more expensive operating systems.
Due to the very nature of
Linux's functionality and availability, it has become quite
popular worldwide and a vast number of software programmers
have taken Linux's source code and adapted it to meet their
individual needs. At this time, there are dozens of ongoing projects
for porting Linux to various hardware configurations and
purposes.
Linux has an official
mascot, the Linux
Penguin, which was selected by Linus Torvalds to
represent the image he associates
with the operating system he created.
Although many variations of
the word Linux exist, it is most often pronounced with a
short " i " and with the first syllable stressed,
as in LIH-nucks.
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General Linux Resources on
the Web
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