What is Linux?

Linux is an Operating system, just like Windows and macOS. It is one of the most popular Operating systems in the world. It is the best known and most used open-source Operating system.

In fact, Linux is a kernel, not an operating system. For example, Android is built on top of the Linux Kernel. As the Linux kernel is open-source, the source code of the Linux kernel is available in public to view and edit as required.

Why Linux?

All the fastest supercomputers in the world run on Linux. 96.3% of the top 1 million web servers run on Linux. 86% of all smartphones (Android) are powered by Linux.

Linux is one of the most loved operating systems as per StackOverflow insights.

In the cloud and DevOps world, many new tools are developed and used in Linux environments. Many tools were first developed and released in the Linux environment the lately supported windows and other operating systems. for Example Docker, Docker was first developed and released in the Linux Operating system then due to the rise in popularity of docker they were released for Windows and other operating systems.

Important components of Linux

1. Boot Loader: It is a software that manages the boot process of our computer
2. Kernel: It is actually called Linux. It is the core of the system that manages CPU, Memory, and peripheral devices. It is the lowest level of the operating system.
3. init system: It is a subsystem that bootstraps the system and controls daemons.
4. Daemons: daemons are the background services that run printing, scheduling, etc.,
5. Graphical Server: It is also called an X Server. This is the subsystem that displays graphics on our monitor.
6. Desktop Environment: There are two environments available they are Server and Desktop environments. Generally, the server environment has only a Command Line Interface (CLI) whereas the Desktop environment has Graphical User Interface (GUI). In Desktop Environments we have GNOME, Mate, Xfce, KDE, and many more these environments are installed based on the Operating system development requirements. Each Desktop Environment has some built-in applications.
7. Applications: There are few built-in applications installed in the operating system and there are many thousands of applications available to install.

Advantages of using Linux

1. Open Source
2. High Security
3. High Stability
4. Free
5. Customization

Evolution of Linux

• 1969: Birth of C and Unix Operating system
• 1970: Growth of Unix Operating system and Opensource collaboration
• 1980: Organizations developed their own Unix Operating system
• Late 1980's: Birth of free software movement GNU (GNU's Not Unix)
• 1991: Linus Torvalds announced Linux
• 1992: Linux became opensource
• 1993: Slackware Linux released
• 1997: The GNOME project is born
• 1998: KDE 1.0 released
• 2002: Red Hat Enterprise Linux released