Linux Ideas and History

What is Open Source?

Open source: software and source code available to all The freedom to distribute software and source code The ability to modify and create derived works Integrity of author's code The Free Software Foundation and the Four Freedoms

LINUX HISTORY In 1965 Ken Thompson and Denis Ritchie developed UNIX. Unix was very expensive. So in early 70s big players developed MINIX but this OS was not superb one like UNIX. In 1985 GNU project started this was free s/w movement, means anyone can run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Because of GNU project, GNU utilities were there but Kernel was not present. At this time, in 1991 LINUX TORVALDS Finland graduate student wrote UNIX-like kernel or open source and today Linux kernel + GNU utilities = complete open source Unixlike operating system i.e. LINUX

Distributors of LINUX

1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6)

SUSE Debian Mandrake Caldera Red Hat Ubuntu

Red hat Linux

Home edition, also known as FEDORA New release duration is 6-8 months Commercial edition, also known as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) New release duration is 18-24 months RHEL has 2 flavors 1) Server 2) Client

Features of LINUX
Linux is free i.e. open source Linux is portable to any hardware platform Linux is secure and versatile Linux is scalable The Linux OS and most Linux applications have very short debug-times It is case sensitive Multiuser multi-tasking Supports multi shell Modularity In Linux everything is file.

Windows
Windows is closed source It is not virus free Windows is less secure It is case insensitive Supports single shell

Linux operating system

Linux is open source It is virus free Linux is more secure It is case sensitive Supports multiple shell