Linux a computer operating system for the people
The software, and its most widely known distributor Red Hat , has open source coding alowing anyone with the skill to modify it at will.
Northern California business software behemoth Oracle announced last week it was providing support for Linux systems at a deep discount in an unabashed bid to lure customers from Red Hat.
Microsoft and Novell announced an alliance on Thursday to make world-dominating Microsoft software compatible with that of Novell, a seller of Linux-based systems.
The seeds for the Linux operating system were planted in 1983 with the founding of the GNU Project by Richard Stallman, whose stated aim was to build a Unix-like operating system completely from free software.
The name GNU, pronounced similarly to the English word "canoe," was a playful acronym of "GNU’s Not Unix."
"Free software is a matter of liberty, not price," a message on the project’s website stated on Thursday. "To understand the concept, you should think of ‘free’ as in free speech, not as in free beer."
Computer users should be free to run any program for any purpose, see how the software works and be allowed to adapt it as they please, according to GNU. Selling protecting proprietary software has been at the heart of Microsoft’s lucrative global software empire.
The GNU project won devotees among computer lovers irked by Microsoft’s domination of the software market.
GNU built the software framework by 1990 but was having trouble making a "microkernel" that would be the operating system core.
The solution to the problem was created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, a University of Helsinki student who began building the Unix-based operating system as a hobby.
The Linux operating system resulted from his efforts and it was given his first name with the last letter changed to an ‘x’ as a tribute to its kinship with Unix.
Linux, also referred to as GNU/Linux, was freely distributed and championed as an antidote to proprietary operating systems such as Microsoft Windows or Macintosh OS X.
Companies such as Red Hat and Novell crafted packages and systems using Linux and made money from selling systems and technical support to businesses.
Linux won support from technology titans such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett-Packard and is reportedly used by a majority of companies doing business on the Internet.
Linux has been crafted into machines ranging from supercomputers to handheld devices.
GNU made the free operating system available under a General Public License (GPL) that requires modifications and derivations to also be public domain in a "share and share-alike" scenario sometimes referred to as "copyleft."
Torvalds has been publicly quoted as saying that making Linux "was definitely the best thing I ever did."
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