What is Linux?

Linux is inspired by the Unix operating system which first appeared
in 1969, and has been in continous use and development ever since.
Many of the design conventions behind Unix also exist in Linux and
are central to understanding the basics of the system.

Unix was primarily oriented towards the command line interface,
and that legacy is carried on in Linux. Thus, the graphical user
interface with its windows, icons and menus are built on top of a
basic command line interface. Furthermore, this means that the
Linux filesystem is structured to be easily manageable andaccessible
from the command line.

The Linux kernel, pronounced 'lee-nucks' is the heart of the operating
system. A kernel is an important part of any operating system,
providing the communication bridge between hardware and software.

Linux was brought to life in 1991 by a Finnish student named
Linus Torvalds. At the time, it would run only on i386 systems, and
was essentially an independently created clone of the UNIX kernel,
intended to take advantage of the then-new i386 architecture.

Nowadays, thanks to a substantial amount of development effort by
people all around the world, Linux runs on virtually every modern
architecture.

The Linux kernel has gained an ideological importance as well as a
technical one.There is an entire community of people who believe
in the ideals of free software and spend their time helping to make
open source technology as good as it can be.

People in this community gave rise to initiatives such as Ubuntu,
standards committees that shape the development of the Internet,
organizations like the Mozilla Foundation,responsible for creating
Mozilla Firefox, and countless other software projects from whichyou've
certainly benefited in the past.

The spirit of open source, commonly attributed to Linux, is influencing
software developers and users everywhere to drive communities with
common goals.