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What is LInux?
Linux
is an operating system, much like Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS. Unlike other mainstream
Operating Systems, Linux is made freely available and is Open Source.
A (very) brief history of Linux
Back in August of 1991, a student from Finland began a post to the comp.os.minix newsgroup with
the words:
Hello everybody out there using minix -
I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a
hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu)
for 386(486) AT clones.
The student was Linus Torvalds, and the “hobby” he spoke of eventually
became what we know today as Linux.
A full-featured POSIX-like (Portable Operating System Interface Unix)
operating system, Linux has been
developed not just by Linus, but by hundreds of programmers
around the world.
This massive, world-wide development effort is largely uncoordinated. Sure, Linus calls the shots
where the kernel is concerned, but Linux is more than just the kernel. There’s no management
infrastructure; a student in Russia gets a new motherboard, and writes a driver to support a neat
feature the motherboard has. A system administrator in Maryland needs backup software, writes it,
and gives it away to anyone that needs it. The right things just seem to happen at the right time.
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Different Linux
Distributions
Different distributions
of Linux exist because
different people all have different opinions
on what is most important. Each distribution
represents the diverse choice of a group
of individuals. As you can see from the
previous Linux Distribution Timeline, each
distro originates from somewhere. Many
distributions have a colourful and interesting
history, most of which can be discovered
from a little reading
on the homepage of the
distro in question.
Most modern day distros spring from ‘core’
distributions, such as Redhat and Debian,
however some distros merge over time, or
diverge where mandates and opinions have
differed.
Below are the major distributions that you
are likely to run across. All have their positive
and negative points, and all have a different
focus.
Debian – A distribution based on Stability.
Debian
pride themselves on testing
each and every package in the OS
with every other package. This
ensures no conflicts, and no issues of
stability. This approach does sometimes
slow progress, with packages in the
Debian
distro being behind current versions. Debian
is a popular server Operating System due to
its stability, and has multiple flavours
designed purely for devices as an integrated
OS
Ubuntu – Designed to be friendly to the
average user, and the best desktop
operating system that it can be.
Ubuntu
is based on Debian, and
has a number of forks, including Kubuntu,
Edubuntu, and Xubuntu. Today, Ubuntu (and
its derivatives) is one of the more popular
Linux Desktop operating system, and is
currently in use on home computers, servers,
business,
education, government, and
charity machines.
SUSE – Incorporating many features and
aspects of Redhat, SUSE was
a popular choice on
Desktops, with its acquisition
by Novell in 2003. Novell quickly used the
OS to launch a counter-offensive against
Microsoft, offering a paid-for support
scheme similar to that of RedHat,
giving
companies an enterprise level OS with
enterprise level support, but with the
flexibility and low implementation and
maintenance costs of Linux. A free home
version of SUSE (OpenSUSE) was released
by
Novell during the acquisition, drawing a
parallel with CentOS / Fedora from Redhat.
In 2006, Novell signed a controversial
agreement with Microsoft to improve
interoperability between Novel SUSE &
Microsoft Windows.
