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WhatIsLinux

What Is Linux?

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A free Operating System

Linux is a free operting system written by Linus Torvalds back in 1991. Linux is a Unix version. The name, Linux, is short for: Linus Torvalds Unix .

There are other free operating systems. What makes Linux so special? Well, Linux was the first one that was distributed and developed with the help of many different people spreaded all over the world.

Linus Torvalds wanted to write an operating system, that would be available for anyone.

In the beginning, Linux was nothing more than the kernel, the GNU C compiler and some command line tools. But with the help of many others all over the world, Linus managed to add more and more features to his operating system.

Today, Linux comes with a graphic desktop like KDE or Gnome, KOffice, which is the KDE version of Office, developer tools etc.

Box Linux vers. ISO Linux

There are 2 versions of Linux distributions available. The so called Box versions and what I call ISO distributions.

Box versions are usually commercial Linux distributions like SuSE, Mandrake or Red Hat.

ISO distributions of Linux are Debian, Knoppix, FreeBSD, Slackware etc.

I call them ISO because most of these distros offer ISO CD images for download.



last edited (June 3, 2004) by athomas, Number of views: 2494, Current Rev: 1

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