Linux is an operating system that was initially created as a hobby by a young student, Linus Torvalds, at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Linus had an interest in Minix, a small UNIX system, and decided to develop a system that exceeded the Minix standards. He began his work in 1991 when he released version 0.02 and worked steadily until 1994 when version 10 of the Linux Kernel was released The current full featured version is 24 (released January 2001) and development continues
Linux is developed under the GNU (General Public License) and its source code is freely available to everyone. This however, doesn't mean that Linux and its assorted distributions are free and developers may charge money for it as long as the source code remains available. Linux may be used for a wide variety of purposes including networking, software development, and as an end-user platform. Linux is often considered an excellent, low-cost alternative to other more expensive operating systems
Due to the very nature of Linux's functionality and availability, it has become quite popular worldwide and a vast number of software programmers have taken Linux's source code and adapted it to meet their individual needs. At this time, there are dozens of ongoing projects for porting Linux to various hardware configurations and purposes
Linux has an official mascot, the Linux Penguin which was selected by Linus Torvalds to represent the image he associates with the operating system he created Linux is a reliable, secure operating system In addition to being cost- effective, it is constantly being updated and refined with the latest technologies As Linux gains greater acceptance throughout the computing industry, more and more companies are supporting Linux via both application and hardware compatibility
Features of Linux
1) Linux is Network-friendly
Since a team of programmers developed Linux over the Internet, its networking features were given high priority Linux is capable of acting as client and/or server to any of the popular operating systems in use today, and is quite capable of being used to run Internet Service Providers
Linux supports most of the major protocols, and quite a few of the minor ones Support for Internet. Novell, Windows, and Appletalk networking have been part of the Linux kernel for some time now. With support for Simple Network
Management Protocol and other services (such as Domain Name Service). Linux also well suited to serving large networks
2) Linux is a Multi-user
Linux is an implementation of the UNIX design philosophy, which mean that it is a multi user system from the word "go" This has numerous advantages, even for a system where only one or two people will be using it. Security, which is necessary for protection of sensitive information, is built into Linux at selectable levels. More importantly, the system is designed to multi task. Whether one user is running several programs or several users are running one program, Linux is capable of managing the traffic
3) Linux is Open
Linux is open That means that for the entire base system, which includes the kernel, the GNU tools, and all the basic utilities, we as programmers and users have access to the source code as well as the right to modify it
4) Linux is "Free"
Linux consumer is free to modify the system and do anything he or she wishes with it
Information Management consists of two main modules,
1) File system 2) Device driver
No comments:
Post a Comment