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- Sep 26, 2018
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- SL Rez
- 2002
I just thought that starting up a little series of explanatory posts and other stuff about Linux might be some fun, so here we go!
Let's start with the source of it all, the benevolent dicator for life and master of desaster: Linus Torvalds!
So what exactly is Linux? Linux is an open source software operating system kernel licensed under the General Public License v2 (GPL2) from the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Linux is a so called UNIX clone, meaning that it was written from scratch. The GPL is a so called copyleft license, meaning you are free to do whatever you want to with the source code, but if you change something and use it in your commercial products you must contribute back those code portions.
This is the biggest difference to FreeBSD, which indeed derives from the original AT&T UNIX and has a different license, the BSD license. The BSD license says take so code, do whatever you want with it and if you want to keep your changes - that's perfectly find. You can share them, but you don't have to. So this type of license does more appeal to many companies which want to keep their secret sauce closed.
The other difference is that Linux is just the kernel, while FreeBSD is a kernel plus all utilities in userland. This is why most Linux distributions are using large parts of the GNU project for it, which in the 90s led to a discussion by the FSF which insisted that it should not be just called Linux, but GNU/Linux since Linux heavily relies on it. So if you want to use Linux on your computer then you've got to build your applications around it, while FreeBSD comes already with all bells and whistles included.
That's why distributions in Linux are a thing; a distribution is a package of software built around the Linux kernel so that you are able to use it. There are many distributions around, one of the oldest still maintained is Slackware by Patrick Volkerding, Debian, Redhat and OpenSuSE. Later desktop based and userfriendly distributions like Ubuntu became a thing, which put Linux further into mass usage.
Linux is being used on embedded systems, computers, smartphones and tablets (Android) up to high performance computing. In fact the world of supercomputers nowadays is being ruled by Linux with a market share of over 90%. So in short Linux is everyhwere.
Linux started 1991 as hobby project by then computer sciences student Linus Torvalds to write a MINIX clone on his computer, which he named after himself Linux and soon gained quite much momentum and very fast became big. It was in many companies a "under the hood thing", which replaced Windows servers with shelf parts if budget constraints became a thing to keep the stuff running. Microsoft in 1998 developed a FUD strategy against Linux, because it was seen as serious upcoming competitor. Nowadays Microsoft is one of the biggest contributors to the Linux kernel development, running large parts of their own Azure cloud on Linux, maintaining an own Linux distribution as well and even shipping Windows 10 with a bundled Linux kernel for its Linux subsystem. More so, Microsoft in the last years adopted the source code repository management system git, also developed by Linus Torvalds, for its development purposes and migrated the whole Windows source code repository (size > 300 GB) to it successfully. That's how times are changing...
Linus Torvalds hailed from Finland, but is a member of the Swedish minority living there and nowadays an American citizen. Other well known software projects from him are git, which nowadays has the monopoly on source code repositories, and subsurface, a software to log and plan scuba dives, which he wrote since scuba diving is a big hobby of him.
Let's start with the source of it all, the benevolent dicator for life and master of desaster: Linus Torvalds!
So what exactly is Linux? Linux is an open source software operating system kernel licensed under the General Public License v2 (GPL2) from the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Linux is a so called UNIX clone, meaning that it was written from scratch. The GPL is a so called copyleft license, meaning you are free to do whatever you want to with the source code, but if you change something and use it in your commercial products you must contribute back those code portions.
This is the biggest difference to FreeBSD, which indeed derives from the original AT&T UNIX and has a different license, the BSD license. The BSD license says take so code, do whatever you want with it and if you want to keep your changes - that's perfectly find. You can share them, but you don't have to. So this type of license does more appeal to many companies which want to keep their secret sauce closed.
The other difference is that Linux is just the kernel, while FreeBSD is a kernel plus all utilities in userland. This is why most Linux distributions are using large parts of the GNU project for it, which in the 90s led to a discussion by the FSF which insisted that it should not be just called Linux, but GNU/Linux since Linux heavily relies on it. So if you want to use Linux on your computer then you've got to build your applications around it, while FreeBSD comes already with all bells and whistles included.
That's why distributions in Linux are a thing; a distribution is a package of software built around the Linux kernel so that you are able to use it. There are many distributions around, one of the oldest still maintained is Slackware by Patrick Volkerding, Debian, Redhat and OpenSuSE. Later desktop based and userfriendly distributions like Ubuntu became a thing, which put Linux further into mass usage.
Linux is being used on embedded systems, computers, smartphones and tablets (Android) up to high performance computing. In fact the world of supercomputers nowadays is being ruled by Linux with a market share of over 90%. So in short Linux is everyhwere.
Linux started 1991 as hobby project by then computer sciences student Linus Torvalds to write a MINIX clone on his computer, which he named after himself Linux and soon gained quite much momentum and very fast became big. It was in many companies a "under the hood thing", which replaced Windows servers with shelf parts if budget constraints became a thing to keep the stuff running. Microsoft in 1998 developed a FUD strategy against Linux, because it was seen as serious upcoming competitor. Nowadays Microsoft is one of the biggest contributors to the Linux kernel development, running large parts of their own Azure cloud on Linux, maintaining an own Linux distribution as well and even shipping Windows 10 with a bundled Linux kernel for its Linux subsystem. More so, Microsoft in the last years adopted the source code repository management system git, also developed by Linus Torvalds, for its development purposes and migrated the whole Windows source code repository (size > 300 GB) to it successfully. That's how times are changing...
Linus Torvalds hailed from Finland, but is a member of the Swedish minority living there and nowadays an American citizen. Other well known software projects from him are git, which nowadays has the monopoly on source code repositories, and subsurface, a software to log and plan scuba dives, which he wrote since scuba diving is a big hobby of him.
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As you might remember from a thread I created long ago, I've piddled about with any number of distros. I've learned throughout the process that desktop environment doesn't particularly mean much, though many new users are drawn to this or that one based upon the environment, which is easily changeable.
