Techspirit March 2014 Volume 1 | Page 4

March 2014 Linux is a computer operating system which is free and is under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. Linux is a UNIX-like operating system that is available as an alternative to commercial operating systems such as Windows, UNIX, or Macintosh OS. Because Linux is open source software so users have access to the source code and are allowed to use, modify, or redistribute the codes. The name Linux is pronounced LINN-ucks in English. The original version of Linux was not developed as a commercial product. The Finnish software engineer Linus Torvalds wrote the first version of Linux while he was a second-year student of computer science at the University of Helsinki in Finland. He released it to a public Internet forum in 1991. Other software engineers worldwide subsequently adopted Linux as a programming challenge. With thousands of minds focused on improving the software, Linux rapidly became a fast, reliable, and widespread operating system. What perhaps endeared Linux most to so many people who volunteered their efforts was the fact that the basic Linux operating system was, is and continues to be free. The Power of Linux Websites running on Linux Google Facebook YouTube Yahoo Blogger Wikipedia Twitter Android operating system is based on the Linux kernel and there are more than 1.5 million android activations daily Most Popular Linux Distributions Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a Linux distribution developed by Red Hat and targeted toward the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86, x86-64, Itanium, PowerPC and IBM System z, and desktop versions for x86 and x86-64. Latest Stable Release: 6.5, 5.10 / November 21, 2013 Linux Mint is a Linux distribution for desktop computers. Linux Mint is aimed at being a "modern, elegant and comfortable operating system which is both powerful and easy to use." Mint provides full out-of-the-box multimedia support by including some proprietary software such as Java and Adobe Flash. Mint's motto is "from freedom came elegance". Latest Stable Release: Linux Mint 16 ("Petra") / November 30, 2013 Linus Torvalds Linux is Free and produced collaboratively by thousands of developers around the world. Weekly patches are sent to the Linux organization by developers which is tested and included in the next release if passed Linux is easy to modify as per the requirement of the system, thus CPU utilization can be customized as per processes which are essential by discarding the services which are not required by the machine Fedora Core, is an RPM-based, general purpose collection of software, including an operating system based on the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project & owned by Red Hat. Latest Stable Release: 20 (Heisenbug) , December 17, 2013 Ubuntu is the most popular desktop Linux distribution. Ubuntu comes installed with a wide range of software includes LibreOffice, Firefox, Empathy, Transmission, and several lightweight games (such as Sudoku and chess). Additional software that is not installed by default (such as Evolution and Synaptic) can be downloaded and installed using the Ubuntu Software Center. Latest Stable Release: 13.10 Saucy Salamander / 17 October 2013 Debian GNU/Linux is one of the most popular Linux distributions for personal and Internet server machine. Debian is seen as a solid Linux, and as a consequence has been used as a base for other Linux distributions. Techspirit | 4