What is Linux?
Linux runs the World, period.
If you are fairly familiar with the technology world I bet that at some point in time you would have heard the word Linux. Linux is gigantic! If you are seeing this word for the very first time you may have no idea about how big it is or what it does but believe me, you are already dependent on it. The android phones which you use is an active example of it! So without much palaver let us get right to it.
When I say that “Linux runs the entire World”, I mean it. This is the 21st century, the whole world practically runs on the Internet and Linux is what runs the Internet. So Linux is an operating system like Windows or Mac but to be more specific it is a kernel (the nucleus of an OS). This operating system runs servers, stock exchanges, satellites, your phones, your computers and almost everything that does not run Windows!
Newbies might think “Okay so Linux is an OS I’ve not heard of, that is huge… what’s the big deal, what’s all this fuss about then?” right?
The “big deal” is that Linux does not belong to anybody, it is open source. So who maintains it in such a tip-top condition? The answer is WE! Linux is maintained and taken cared by a huge group of dedicated users and developers who do it all for FREE. Since the code is open source, anyone can see it, understand it, and modify it. Linux is like an organism always evolving. Anyone and everyone can use the kernel, but to be able to add your code to the kernel, your patch (patch: edits made to the actual Linux kernel) should be approved by a group of moderators. So that again is a different thing.
Now how did it all begin? So there was this Finnish guy called Linus Torvalds who felt that the Unix kernel written by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie had quite a few fallacies. So Torvalds started working on repairing Unix and improvise an already amazing thing into something better. He wanted to create a free OS and a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious version of Unix and thus he began his work on writing the Linux kernel.
The most astonishing fact about Linux is that its FREE. After it became popular it just exploded reaching all parts of the technological tree and formed the roots of the current world of Internet. Suddenly everyone was using Linux. From scientists to learners, from colleges to research facilities, from schools to households. Everywhere.
This is an image of the number of OSes that are based on the Linus kernel.
This picture is not readable even if you zoom it.
And this image is almost comparable to the image of the big bang. [2]
By the way the penguin that we see along with Linux is called TUX the official Linux mascot. TUX is an abbreviation for Torvalds’ Unix.
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