Linux is an open source computer operating system, initially developed on and for Intel x86-based personal computers. It has been subsequently ported to an astoundingly long list of other hardware platforms, from tiny embedded appliances to the world's largest supercomputers.
Linux History
Linus Torvalds was a student in Helsinki, Finland, in 1991, when he started a project: writing his own operating system kernel. He also collected together and/or developed the other essential ingredients required to construct an entire operating system with his kernel at the center. It wasn't long before this became known as the Linux kernel.
In 1992, Linux was re-licensed using the General Public License (GPL) by GNU (a project of the Free Software Foundation or FSF, which promotes freely available software), which made it possible to build a worldwide community of developers. By combining the kernel with other system components from the GNU project, numerous other developers created complete systems called Linux distributions in the mid-90’s.
More About Linux History
The Linux distributions created in the mid-90s provided the basis for fully free (in the sense of freedom, not zero cost) computing and became a driving force in the open source software movement. In 1998, major companies like IBM and Oracle announced their support for the Linux platform and began major development efforts as well.
Today, Linux powers more than half of the servers on the Internet, the majority of smartphones (via the Android system, which is built on top of Linux), more than 90 percent of the public cloud workload, and all of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
Linux Philosophy
Linux borrows heavily from the well-established UNIX operating system. It was written to be a free and open source system to be used in place of UNIX, which at the time was designed for computers much more powerful than PCs and was quite expensive. Files are stored in a hierarchical filesystem, with the top node of the system being the root or simply "/". Whenever possible, Linux makes its components available via files or objects that look like files. Processes, devices, and network sockets are all represented by file-like objects, and can often be worked with using the same utilities used for regular files. Linux is a fully multitasking (i.e. multiple threads of execution are performed simultaneously), multiuser operating system, with built-in networking and service processes known as daemons in the UNIX world.
Top comments (1)
Summarising Linux is always a challenge and I think you've done it very well here. It seems a little remiss to overlook that the GNU project had already assembled most of the support components well before the vital achievement by Linus to make his kernel.
Having both sides of the kernel vs "userland" under the GPL allowed the distributions to be formed - indeed independently of both Linus and GNU as that's what the freedom grant enabled.
The much quoted "Unix philosophy" is perhaps more about the userland tooling than the kernel, but is also applicable to the BSD lineage, so clearly not a specifically Linux thing.