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Comments and suggestions concerning this book should be mailed to gmourani@videotron.ca © Copyright 1999-2000 Gerhard Mourani and Open Network Architecture ® 14 Introduction to Linux What is Linux? Linux is an operating system that was first created at the University of Helsinki in Finland by a young student named Linus Torvalds. At this time the student was working on a UNIX system that was running on an expensive platform. Because of his low budget and his need to work at home, he decides to create a copy of UNIX system and was able to run it on a less expensive platform like a IBM PC. He began his work in 1991 when he released version 0.02 and worked steadily until 1994 when version 1.0 of the Linux Kernel was released. The current full-featured version at this time is 2.2.X (released January 25, 1999), and development continues. The Linux operating system is developed under the GNU General Public License (also  known as GNU GPL) and its source code is freely available to everyone who will download it via the Internet. The CD-ROM version of Linux is also available in many stores, and companies that provide it will charge you for it cost. 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 because you can install it on multiple computers without paying more. Some good reasons to use Linux There are no royalty or licensing fees and the source code can be modified to fit your needs. The results can be selling for profit, but original authors retain copyright and you must provide the source to your modifications. Because it comes with source code to the kernel and it’s quite portable. Linux runs on many CPUs and platforms than any other computer operating system. The recent direction of the software and hardware industry is to push consumers to purchase faster computers with more system memory and hard drive storage. Linux system is not affected by those industries orientation because of it capacity to run on any kind of computers, like aging x486-based computers with limited amounts of RAM. Linux is a true multitasking operating system similar to his brother UNIX. It uses sophisticated, state-of-the-art memory management to control all system processes. That means that if the program crashes you can kill it and continue working with confidence. Another benefit is that Linux is practically immunized against from all kinds of virus that we find in other operating system. Until now, we have found only two viruses that were effective on Linux system. Let's dispel some of the fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Linux It's a toy operating system. Fortune 500 companies, governments, and consumers more and more use Linux as a cost- effective computing solution. It have been used and still used by big companies like IBM, Amtrak, NASA, and other more. There's no support. Every Linux distribution comes with more than 12,000 pages of documentation. Commercial Linux distributions such as Red Hat Linux, Caldera, SuSE, and OpenLinux offer initial support for