What is Linux and how it works? basics

tt4under · *nix forums beginner Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 2

Yeah, I would really like to know that... how diferent is from Windows? or others

mihai · *nix forums addict Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 71

Linux is a free Unix-like operating system originaly developed by Linus Torvalds. At the moment there are allot of developers from all over the world contributing to the development of the Linux kernel and the GNU/Linux operating system.

The system is developed under the GNU Public Licence ( GPL ) which makes it free for everyone to use it , modify it and distribute it. The posibility for eveyone to modify makes it be a heavily developed system .
How is this different from windows , it is different in many ways, first is different because is free and open source, when you buy windows you don't get the source code , for linux the source code is available to download use and modify and even distribute the modified version under the terms of GPL. Othere differences are in the system type itself Linux has a design based on Unix , Windows has evolved from MS DOS, this makes it different in the way it does memory management and handles other system resources/devices. For example in Linux or Unix in general the user can access a device like it would access a file on the system, in windows you would need to comunicate to a driver in order to use a device.
Because of it's design it is also very stable and suitable to use on servers that need stability and high performace.

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