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The Linux Movement

GNU LogoLinux is a Unix-like computer Operating System created by Linus Torvalds as hobby project while he was studying computer science at the University of Helsinki. Linux was initially created to explore the intricacies of the 386 platform that was prevalent back in 1991 while providing Linus and other students with a UNIX like operating system similar to what they used in school. Originally based on the MINIX OS written by Andrew Tenenbaum, Linux is not an exact clone of UNIX but might be considered a kindred operating system. Since then the operating system has been ported to numerous architectures such as the DEC ALPHA, ARM, Intel xScale, AMD x86-64, IBM Power PC and Power V, Sun Niagara CPU's and many more.

Linux has widespread user support and has moved from a computer science hobbyist/hacker OS in the 1990's to being widely used in business situations and being the dominate OS in supercomputing applications. For the common Linux user the numbers are hard to determine since there is no central authority but the estimates place the average Linux user at between 46.9 million to 20.1 million(ref1, ref2) and that's not counting the literally, billions of people who use Linux on embedded devices and on the Internet without knowing that Linux is the OS behind what they're doing.

Linux has several key characteristics that make it so popular:

  • It's Free - Although it is sold by vendors, Linux may be downloaded off the Internet for free(DistroWatch.com, the best download links). Linux is normally found bundled together with a preselected assortment of open source software and desktop environment, these distributions often vary widely in what the end users Linux experience is.
  • It's Rock-Solid - For those of you accustomed to rebooting your Windows machine several times a day due to crashes or slowdowns, you are in for a surprise. Full memory protection, completely fair process schedulers, a file system in user space and many other features make Linux very stable. Linux boxes are known to count average up-times in hundreds of days to several years.
  • It's Open - You can see the full source code for Linux. You can modify it, chew it, hack it, and write it on the wall. It's all yours. Now that's freedom!
  • It's Considerate - Got an old Pentium II laying around? Run Linux on it! Linux makes excellent use of hardware. Linux can be installed as a second OS on another system or installed in less than 50mb of disk space(see Damn Small Linux). It also runs blazingly fast on modern Intel Core 2's and AMD 64's (no need to upgrade to Windows Vista.
  • It's Flexible -Linux can be whatever you need it to be. Need a media server to hold and serve out all your movies, songs and recorded TV shows, Linux can do that(Linux MCE). Need a web server to host your own domain and reliably and securely get your website on the Internet, Linux can do that(CentOS). Need a solid desktop development environment with plenty of programming languages supported and good tools to aid in development, Linux can do that(openSuSE). Just need a web browser and a good word processor in a simple to use desktop, Linux can do that too(Ubuntu).