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| Home >> Resources | Support >> SHEX >> SHEX (share experience) on OS, Software, Systems & Notebooks >> |
SHEX: What is Linux?by Craigweb (07/31/02) Copyright (c) Directron.com.We have SHEX (share experience) posts in Directron.com Help Desk Forum. We now have compiled them into this new section on Directron.com. We hope more people will write such pieces to benefit the entire PC community. Copying the contents for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited without Directron.com's written consent. However, you are welcome to distribute these computer support tips free to your friends and associates as long as it's not for commercial purposes and you acknowledge the source. You are permitted and encouraged to create links to this page from your own web site. Shex: What is Linux? Linux is a free Unix-style operating system, that was originally created by Linus Torvalds. Linux was created as a hobby, by Linus, while he was a student at the University of Helsinki, in Finland. It is now maintained by Linus Torvalds, thousands of companies, and other developers around the world. The first version, version 0.02 was released in 1991. It was worked on steadily until 1994, when version 1.0 was released. The current stable version is 2.4. It was released January 2001. Developed under the GNU General Public License, the source code for Linux is freely available to everyone. The GPL allows you to change the code as you please. You can then sell, or give away the program without royalties. You can even keep the GPL'ed programs, and never let any one else use them. The main rule requires that anyone whom you give or sell a program to, must also be able to get the code for it, and have the same rights you do. The term free in this form, is used as in freedom not as in cost. Open source software is another name often used for free software. Open source software is not exactly the same thing, as free software. The two differ in that open source refers to the fact that the code is available, not that you have the freedom to use that code in any way that suits you. A wide range of programs are available under the GPL. Everything from operating systems, to games, to word processing applications, and even the program that this paper was written on; AbiWord. It is estimated that there are eighteen million Linux users world wide. Without a central organization behind Linux, it is hard to count the exact number of users. The location with the second most Linux users per population is, Antarctica home of a Linux-using researcher and Tux the Penguin. Faroe Islands is in first place with 61 users of a population of 46K. The official mascot of Linux is the Linux Penguin named Tux. On the subject of licenses... Reply by Jacob The GPL is actually more restrictive than people think. First, any program distributed with the GPL as licensing MUST include a copy of the GPL, any variations on that program also MUST be licensed with GPL, and with any programs that fall under the GPL, even inherited, you MUST distribute full source code upon request. There are, however, some people who have gotten around this by making non-OSI licensed libraries and dlls with more proprietary data in them and having their GPL program call those symbols from the library. You also cannot put a patent on anything derived from a GPL source, which stops a lot of developers from using it for code which they may want to copyright in the future and stop distributing sourcecode for, beyond initial construction. For these reasons, they developed another license very similar to the GPL, called LGPL (Lesser GNU Library Public License) which grants you all the rights that the GPL denied, but that only covers libraries, not binaries. There are a few other OSI approved licenses which follow the GPL closely with a few modifications as well, the Apache Software License and Mozilla Public License come to mind. A list of all the Open Source Initiative (OSI) accepted licenses can be found here. Reply by thespian Ahhh...It's my turn to be the picky guy again. Craigweb's description of Linux is what most people mean when they say the word, but it is missing an important detail. Linux is not an operating system. It is an operating system kernel. The kernel is the central piece of the operating system that handles scheduling, program execution, memory and device management. In order to get a complete operating system, most everyone adds a whole bunch of tools from the GNU project. GNU is an acronym for GNU's not Unix. (yes they know this is a recursive definition since it uses GNU. They're weird that way.) It was started back in 1984 at MIT. The plan was to develop a completely free Uniz-style operating system. The GNU project was plugging along when Linus's kernel came into being. Luckily, the GNU people were developing a C compiler called GCC. It was an open-architecture C compiler that was easily portable to a variety of platforms. Once they got the compiler running for Linux, the applications were easy to compile. To complete a Linux system, all of the system utilities and programs are typically GNU developed. (They don't have to be--some of the people developing custom systems either build their own or don't use any at all.) This pretty much true for every major distribution. In fact the word "distribution" generally refers to a set of the Linux kernel and the GNU utilities that are supplied as a functioning system. For these reasons, most distributions should be referred to as GNU/Linux. Linux And, as always, you can post a question on the Directron Help Desk! (by122204) |
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