|
LINUX
A MEANS TO WORLD LIBERATION
Ten
years ago a Finnish graduate student named Linus Torvalds announced
on a Usenet newsgroup that he had begun working on a small Unix-like
operating system for the Intel 80386 processor platform. "Just
a hobby", he wrote.
Today
that operating system, Linux, runs on everything from very small
mobile and embedded devices to mainframes. And IBM, the world's
largest computer company, has pledged to invest $1 billion in it.
Not
bad for a hobby.
Torvalds released Linux under the GNU General Public License (GPL)
created by Richard Stallman. In 1984 Stallman, disappointed that
computer manufacturers had begun charging for software, had founded
the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and created the GPL. The license
requires that a program's source code be open and freely available,
and that any software based on other code released under the GPL
also be freely available.
Many people may be surprised to discover that Linux has been around
for so long, since only the dramatic rise of the commercial Internet
in the late 1990s has brought it to the forefront. In fact, Linux
is just one of many open-source programs that have been around for
many years. Others include Apache, Bind, and Sendmail, as well as
the BSD TCP/IP code. A popular argument in favor of open-source,
put forth by Eric Raymond in his seminal work The Cathedral and
the Bazaar, is that the software is of high quality because? Given
enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.?
In some circles, the definition of operating system is a topic guaranteed
to start a flame war.
To many Microsoft Windows users it refers to a single application
that includes a lot of the software they use to interact directly
with their computer. To a Linux user, however, the term is a catchall
for many different, small, independent yet interconnected pieces
of software. This
concept permeates Linux and, in a larger sense, all versions of
Unix: smallish, discrete, replaceable components interacting to
provide an overall service.
While this idea has the advantage of flexibility and robustness
(Linux advocates scoff at the need to reboot an OS after installing
software), it also makes managing the software harder for the average
user.
At the heart of any Unix operating system, including Linux, is the
kernel , which talks directly to the hardware, manages the system's
memory, and schedules when each process can execute. It is the operating
system's accountant, traffic cop, and bouncer all rolled into one.
|
+ News
& Updates
