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82-595: QFS is software that runs on a cluster of hundreds or thousands of commodity Linux servers and allows other software layers to interact with them as if they were one giant hard drive. It has three components: In a cluster of hundreds or thousands of machines, the odds are low that all will be running and reachable at any given moment, so fault tolerance is the central design challenge. QFS meets it with Reed–Solomon error correction . The form of Reed–Solomon encoding used in QFS stores redundant data in nine places and can reconstruct

164-546: A VIC-20 at the age of 11 in 1981. He started programming for it in BASIC , then later by directly accessing the 6502 CPU in machine code (he did not utilize assembly language ). He then purchased a Sinclair QL , which he modified extensively, especially its operating system. "Because it was so hard to get software for it in Finland", he wrote his own assembler and editor "(in addition to Pac-Man graphics libraries)" for

246-472: A high-level language implementation of Unix made its porting to different computer platforms easier. Due to an earlier antitrust case forbidding it from entering the computer business, AT&T licensed the operating system's source code as a trade secret to anyone who asked. As a result, Unix grew quickly and became widely adopted by academic institutions and businesses. In 1984, AT&T divested itself of its regional operating companies , and

328-424: A minimalist functionality, while more elaborate window managers such as FVWM , Enlightenment , or Window Maker provide more features such as a built-in taskbar and themes , but are still lightweight when compared to desktop environments. Desktop environments include window managers as part of their standard installations, such as Mutter (GNOME), KWin (KDE), or Xfwm (xfce), although users may choose to use

410-516: A solution stack such as LAMP . The source code of Linux may be used, modified, and distributed commercially or non-commercially by anyone under the terms of its respective licenses, such as the GNU General Public License (GPL). The license means creating novel distributions is permitted by anyone and is easier than it would be for an operating system such as MacOS or Microsoft Windows . The Linux kernel, for example,

492-601: A United States citizen and registered to vote in the United States . As of that year, he was unaffiliated with any U.S. political party, saying, "I have way too much personal pride to want to be associated with any of them, quite frankly." Linus developed an interest in scuba diving in the early 2000s and has achieved numerous certifications, leading him to create the Subsurface project. University of Helsinki has named an auditorium after Torvalds and his computer

574-470: A competing OS, agrees that "Linux wasn't designed, it evolved", but considers this to be a limitation, proposing that some features, especially those related to security, cannot be evolved into, "this is not a biological system at the end of the day, it's a software system." A Linux-based system is a modular Unix-like operating system, deriving much of its basic design from principles established in Unix during

656-974: A different window manager if preferred. Wayland is a display server protocol intended as a replacement for the X11 protocol; as of 2022 , it has received relatively wide adoption. Unlike X11, Wayland does not need an external window manager and compositing manager. Therefore, a Wayland compositor takes the role of the display server, window manager, and compositing manager. Weston is the reference implementation of Wayland, while GNOME's Mutter and KDE's KWin are being ported to Wayland as standalone display servers. Enlightenment has already been successfully ported since version 19. Additionally, many window managers have been made for Wayland, such as Sway or Hyprland, as well as other graphical utilities such as Waybar or Rofi. Linux currently has two modern kernel-userspace APIs for handling video input devices: V4L2 API for video streams and radio, and DVB API for digital TV reception. Due to

738-579: A fixed memory footprint , and uses direct input and output (I/O). QFS evolved from the Kosmos File System (KFS), an open source project started by Kosmix in 2005. Quantcast adopted KFS in 2007, built its own improvements on it over the next several years, and released QFS 1.0 as an open source project in September, 2012. Linux This is an accepted version of this page Linux ( / ˈ l ɪ n ʊ k s / , LIN -uuks )

820-445: A major project contributor. Subsurface is software for logging and planning scuba dives , which Torvalds began developing in late 2011. It is free and open-source software distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2. Dirk Hohndel became its head maintainer in late 2012. Linus Torvalds is married to Tove Torvalds (née Monni), a six-time Finnish national karate champion, whom he met in late 1993. He

902-404: A place in server installations such as the popular LAMP application stack. The use of Linux distributions in home and enterprise desktops has been growing. Linux distributions have also become popular in the netbook market, with many devices shipping with customized Linux distributions installed, and Google releasing their own ChromeOS designed for netbooks. Linux's greatest success in

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984-502: A popular CLI shell. The graphical user interface (or GUI) used by most Linux systems is built on top of an implementation of the X Window System . More recently, the Linux community has sought to advance to Wayland as the new display server protocol, in place of X11. Many other open-source software projects contribute to Linux systems. Installed components of a Linux system include the following: The user interface , also known as

1066-807: A position at the company in California, where he worked from February 1997 to June 2003. He then moved to the Open Source Development Labs , which has since merged with the Free Standards Group to become the Linux Foundation , under whose auspices he continues to work. In June 2004, Torvalds and his family moved to Dunthorpe, Oregon to be closer to the OSDL's headquarters in Beaverton . From 1997 to 1999, he

1148-435: A series of questions critical of his conduct. Following the release of Linux 4.19 on 22 October 2018, Torvalds returned to maintaining the kernel. In 2024, Russian developers were excluded from the list of Linux kernel maintainers. Torvalds commented: "I'm Finnish. Did you think I'd be supporting Russian aggression?" Initially, Torvalds wanted to call the kernel he developed Freax (a combination of "free", "freak", and

1230-481: A significant business around Linux distributions. The free software licenses , on which the various software packages of a distribution built on the Linux kernel are based, explicitly accommodate and encourage commercialization; the relationship between a Linux distribution as a whole and individual vendors may be seen as symbiotic . One common business model of commercial suppliers is charging for support, especially for business users. A number of companies also offer

1312-493: A specialized business version of their distribution, which adds proprietary support packages and tools to administer higher numbers of installations or to simplify administrative tasks. Another business model is to give away the software to sell hardware. This used to be the norm in the computer industry, with operating systems such as CP/M , Apple DOS , and versions of the classic Mac OS before 7.6 freely copyable (but not modifiable). As computer hardware standardized throughout

1394-972: A system's software from one central location. A distribution is largely driven by its developer and user communities. Some vendors develop and fund their distributions on a volunteer basis, Debian being a well-known example. Others maintain a community version of their commercial distributions, as Red Hat does with Fedora , and SUSE does with openSUSE . In many cities and regions, local associations known as Linux User Groups (LUGs) seek to promote their preferred distribution and by extension free software. They hold meetings and provide free demonstrations, training, technical support, and operating system installation to new users. Many Internet communities also provide support to Linux users and developers. Most distributions and free software / open-source projects have IRC chatrooms or newsgroups . Online forums are another means of support, with notable examples being Unix & Linux Stack Exchange , LinuxQuestions.org and

1476-402: A user may interact with the application; however, certain extensions of the X Window System are not capable of working over the network. Several X display servers exist, with the reference implementation, X.Org Server , being the most popular. Server distributions might provide a command-line interface for developers and administrators, but provide a custom interface for end-users, designed for

1558-453: A vast body of work and may include both kernel modules and user applications and libraries. Linux vendors and communities combine and distribute the kernel, GNU components, and non-GNU components, with additional package management software in the form of Linux distributions. Many developers of open-source software agree that the Linux kernel was not designed but rather evolved through natural selection . Torvalds considers that although

1640-564: Is a Finnish and American software engineer who is the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel . He also created the distributed version control system Git . He was honored, along with Shinya Yamanaka , with the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize by the Technology Academy Finland "in recognition of his creation of a new open source operating system for computers leading to the widely used Linux kernel ". He

1722-503: Is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel , an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds . Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution (distro), which includes the kernel and supporting system software and libraries — many of which are provided by the GNU Project — to create a complete operating system. Many Linux distributions use

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1804-417: Is a penguin nicknamed Tux , which has been widely adopted by the Linux community as the Linux kernel's mascot. Although Torvalds believes " open source is the only right way to do software", he also has said that he uses the "best tool for the job", even if that includes proprietary software . He was criticized for his use and alleged advocacy of the proprietary BitKeeper software for version control in

1886-671: Is actually a kind of legal binding between the state and the state religion ." In "Linus the Liberator", a story about the March LinuxWorld Conference, Torvalds says: "There are like two golden rules in life. One is 'Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.' For some reason, people associate this with Christianity. I'm not a Christian. I'm agnostic. The other rule is 'Be proud of what you do. ' " In 2004, Torvalds moved with his family from Silicon Valley to Portland, Oregon . In 2010, Torvalds became

1968-488: Is also the recipient of the 2014 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award and the 2018 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award . Torvalds was born in Helsinki , Finland, on 28 December 1969, the son of journalists Anna and Nils Torvalds , the grandson of statistician Leo Törnqvist and of poet Ole Torvalds , and the great-grandson of journalist and soldier Toivo Karanko . His parents were campus radicals at

2050-534: Is known for vocally disagreeing with other developers on the Linux kernel mailing list . Calling himself a "really unpleasant person", he explained, "I'd like to be a nice person and curse less and encourage people to grow rather than telling them they are idiots. I'm sorry—I tried, it's just not in me." His attitude, which he considers necessary for making his points clear, has drawn criticism from Intel programmer Sage Sharp and systemd developer Lennart Poettering , among others. On Sunday, 16 September 2018,

2132-569: Is licensed under the GPLv2, with an exception for system calls that allows code that calls the kernel via system calls not to be licensed under the GPL. Because of the dominance of Linux-based Android on smartphones , Linux, including Android, has the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems as of May 2022 . Linux is, as of March 2024 , used by around 4 percent of desktop computers . The Chromebook , which runs

2214-538: Is now mostly merging code written by others, with little programming. He retains the highest authority to decide which new code is incorporated into the standard Linux kernel. Torvalds holds the Linux trademark and monitors its use, chiefly through the Linux Mark Institute . On 3 April 2005, Torvalds began development on Git, version control software that later became widely used. On 26 July 2005, he turned over Git's maintenance to Junio Hamano,

2296-667: Is on display at the Department of Computer Science. Time magazine has recognized Torvalds multiple times: InfoWorld presented him with the 2000 Award for Industry Achievement. In 2005, Torvalds appeared as one of "the best managers" in a survey by BusinessWeek . In 2006, Business 2.0 magazine named him one of "10 people who don't matter" because the growth of Linux has shrunk Torvalds's individual impact. In summer 2004, viewers of YLE (the Finnish Broadcasting Company) placed Torvalds 16th in

2378-403: Is that the Linux kernel and other components are free and open-source software. Linux is not the only such operating system, although it is by far the most widely used. Some free and open-source software licenses are based on the principle of copyleft , a kind of reciprocity: any work derived from a copyleft piece of software must also be copyleft itself. The most common free software license,

2460-594: Is the Bourne-Again Shell (bash), originally developed for the GNU Project, other shells such as Zsh are also used. Most low-level Linux components, including various parts of the userland , use the CLI exclusively. The CLI is particularly suited for automation of repetitive or delayed tasks and provides very simple inter-process communication . On desktop systems, the most popular user interfaces are

2542-475: Is typically built into the firmware and is highly tailored to the system. This includes routers , automation controls, smart home devices , video game consoles , televisions (Samsung and LG smart TVs ), automobiles (Tesla, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, and Toyota), and spacecraft ( Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon crew capsule, and the Ingenuity Mars helicopter). The Unix operating system

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2624-415: Is used on a wide variety of devices including PCs, workstations , mainframes and embedded systems . Linux is the predominant operating system for servers and is also used on all of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers . When combined with Android , which is Linux-based and designed for smartphones , they have the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems . The Linux kernel

2706-497: The Free Software Foundation and wrote the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) in 1989. By the early 1990s, many of the programs required in an operating system (such as libraries, compilers , text editors , a command-line shell , and a windowing system ) were completed, although low-level elements such as device drivers , daemons , and the kernel , called GNU Hurd , were stalled and incomplete. Minix

2788-761: The GNU toolchain , which includes the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and the GNU Build System . Amongst others, GCC provides compilers for Ada , C , C++ , Go and Fortran . Many programming languages have a cross-platform reference implementation that supports Linux, for example PHP , Perl , Ruby , Python , Java , Go , Rust and Haskell . First released in 2003, the LLVM project provides an alternative cross-platform open-source compiler for many languages. Proprietary compilers for Linux include

2870-473: The GUI shells , packaged together with extensive Desktop environments , such as KDE Plasma , GNOME , MATE , Cinnamon , LXDE , Pantheon , and Xfce , though a variety of additional user interfaces exist. Most popular user interfaces are based on the X Window System, often simply called "X". It provides network transparency and permits a graphical application running on one system to be displayed on another where

2952-900: The Intel C++ Compiler , Sun Studio , and IBM XL C/C++ Compiler . BASIC is available in procedural form from QB64 , PureBasic , Yabasic , GLBasic , Basic4GL , XBasic , wxBasic , SdlBasic , and Basic-256 , as well as object oriented through Gambas , FreeBASIC , B4X, Basic for Qt , Phoenix Object Basic, NS Basic , ProvideX, Chipmunk Basic , RapidQ and Xojo . Pascal is implemented through GNU Pascal , Free Pascal , and Virtual Pascal , as well as graphically via Lazarus , PascalABC.NET , or Delphi using FireMonkey (previously through Borland Kylix ). Linus Torvalds Linus Benedict Torvalds ( / ˈ l iː n ə s ˈ t ɔːr v ɔː l d z / LEE -nəs TOR -vawldz , Finland Swedish: [ˈliːnʉs ˈtuːrvɑlds] ; born 28 December 1969)

3034-830: The University of Helsinki in the 1960s. His family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. He was named after Linus Pauling , the Nobel Prize–winning American chemist, although in the book Rebel Code : Linux and the Open Source Revolution , he is quoted as saying, "I think I was named equally for Linus the Peanuts cartoon character", noting that this made him "half Nobel Prize–winning chemist and half blanket-carrying cartoon character". His interest in computers began with

3116-476: The shell , is either a command-line interface (CLI), a graphical user interface (GUI), or controls attached to the associated hardware, which is common for embedded systems. For desktop systems, the default user interface is usually graphical, although the CLI is commonly available through terminal emulator windows or on a separate virtual console . CLI shells are text-based user interfaces, which use text for both input and output. The dominant shell used in Linux

3198-550: The 11-month officer training program to fulfill the mandatory military service of Finland . He gained the rank of second lieutenant , with the role of an artillery observer . The first Linux prototypes were publicly released on the Internet in late 1991 from an FTP server at his university. Version 1.0 was released on 14 March 1994. Torvalds first encountered the GNU Project in fall of 1991 when another Swedish-speaking computer science student, Lars Wirzenius, took him to

3280-399: The 1970s and 1980s. Such a system uses a monolithic kernel , the Linux kernel, which handles process control, networking, access to the peripherals , and file systems . Device drivers are either integrated directly with the kernel or added as modules that are loaded while the system is running. The GNU userland is a key part of most systems based on the Linux kernel, with Android being

3362-454: The 1980s, it became more difficult for hardware manufacturers to profit from this tactic, as the OS would run on any manufacturer's computer that shared the same architecture. Most programming languages support Linux either directly or through third-party community based ports . The original development tools used for building both Linux applications and operating system programs are found within

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3444-674: The GNU General Public License (GPL), is a form of copyleft and is used for the Linux kernel and many of the components from the GNU Project. Linux-based distributions are intended by developers for interoperability with other operating systems and established computing standards. Linux systems adhere to POSIX, SUS , LSB , ISO , and ANSI standards where possible, although to date only one Linux distribution has been POSIX.1 certified, Linux-FT. Free software projects, although developed through collaboration , are often produced independently of each other. The fact that

3526-585: The Linux kernel Code of Conflict was suddenly replaced by a new Code of Conduct based on the Contributor Covenant . Shortly thereafter, in the release notes for Linux 4.19-rc4, Torvalds apologized for his behavior, calling his personal attacks of the past "unprofessional and uncalled for" and announced a period of "time off" to "get some assistance on how to understand people's emotions and respond appropriately". It soon transpired that these events followed The New Yorker approaching Torvalds with

3608-464: The Linux kernel, key components that make up a distribution may include a display server (windowing system) , a package manager , a bootloader and the Bash shell . Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free and open-source software collaboration. While originally developed for x86 based personal computers , it has since been ported to more platforms than any other operating system, and

3690-650: The Linux kernel-based ChromeOS , dominates the US K–12 education market and represents nearly 20 percent of sub-$ 300 notebook sales in the US. Linux is the leading operating system on servers (over 96.4% of the top one million web servers' operating systems are Linux), leads other big iron systems such as mainframe computers , and is used on all of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers (as of November 2017 , having gradually displaced all competitors). Linux also runs on embedded systems , i.e., devices whose operating system

3772-613: The Linux kernel. On July 3, 1991, to implement Unix system calls , Linus Torvalds attempted unsuccessfully to obtain a digital copy of the POSIX standards documentation with a request to the comp.os.minix newsgroup . After not finding the POSIX documentation, Torvalds initially resorted to determining system calls from SunOS documentation owned by the university for use in operating its Sun Microsystems server. He also learned some system calls from Tanenbaum's Minix text. Torvalds began

3854-1020: The Linux kernel. He subsequently wrote a free-software replacement for it called Git . In 2008, Torvalds stated that he used the Fedora Linux distribution because it had fairly good support for the PowerPC processor architecture, which he favored at the time. He confirmed this in a 2012 interview. Torvalds abandoned GNOME for a while after the release of GNOME 3.0 , saying, "The developers have apparently decided that it's 'too complicated' to actually do real work on your desktop, and have decided to make it really annoying to do". He then switched to Xfce . In 2013, Torvalds resumed using GNOME, noting that "they have extensions now that are still much too hard to find; but with extensions you can make your desktop look almost as good as it used to look two years ago". The Linux Foundation currently sponsors Torvalds so he can work full-time on improving Linux. Torvalds

3936-500: The QL, and a few games. He wrote a Pac-Man clone, Cool Man . Torvalds attended the University of Helsinki from 1988 to 1996, graduating with a master's degree in computer science from the NODES research group. His textbooks while there included Programming the 80386 by John H. Crawford and Patrick P. Gelsinger , SYBEX , 1987 ISBN   0895883813 , and The Design of

4018-473: The UNIX Operating System by Maurice J. Bach, Prentice-Hall , 1986 ISBN   0-13-201799-7 . He bought computer science professor Andrew Tanenbaum 's book Operating Systems: Design and Implementation , in which Tanenbaum describes MINIX , an educational stripped-down version of Unix . In 1990, Torvalds resumed his university studies, and was exposed to Unix for the first time in

4100-482: The University of Technology to listen to free software guru Richard Stallman 's speech. Torvalds would ultimately switch his original license (which forbade commercial use) to Stallman's GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) for his Linux kernel after complaints of distributors being unable to recoup their costs due to a non-commercial clause. After a visit to Transmeta in late 1996, Torvalds accepted

4182-415: The beginning, it was rather casually hacked on by huge numbers of volunteers coordinating only through the Internet. Quality was maintained not by rigid standards or autocracy but by the naively simple strategy of releasing every week and getting feedback from hundreds of users within days, creating a sort of rapid Darwinian selection on the mutations introduced by developers." Bryan Cantrill , an engineer of

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4264-447: The complexity and diversity of different devices, and due to the large number of formats and standards handled by those APIs, this infrastructure needs to evolve to better fit other devices. Also, a good userspace device library is the key to the success of having userspace applications to be able to work with all formats supported by those devices. The primary difference between Linux and many other popular contemporary operating systems

4346-498: The consumer market is perhaps the mobile device market, with Android being the dominant operating system on smartphones and very popular on tablets and, more recently, on wearables . Linux gaming is also on the rise with Valve showing its support for Linux and rolling out SteamOS , its own gaming-oriented Linux distribution, which was later implemented in their Steam Deck platform. Linux distributions have also gained popularity with various local and national governments, such as

4428-467: The design of Unix served as a scaffolding, "Linux grew with a lot of mutations – and because the mutations were less than random, they were faster and more directed than alpha-particles in DNA ." Eric S. Raymond considers Linux's revolutionary aspects to be social, not technical: before Linux, complex software was designed carefully by small groups, but "Linux evolved in a completely different way. From nearly

4510-450: The development of 386BSD , from which NetBSD , OpenBSD and FreeBSD descended, predated that of Linux. Linus Torvalds has stated on separate occasions that if the GNU kernel or 386BSD had been available at the time (1991), he probably would not have created Linux. While attending the University of Helsinki in the fall of 1990, Torvalds enrolled in a Unix course. The course used a MicroVAX minicomputer running Ultrix , and one of

4592-532: The development of the Linux kernel on Minix and applications written for Minix were also used on Linux. Later, Linux matured and further Linux kernel development took place on Linux systems. GNU applications also replaced all Minix components, because it was advantageous to use the freely available code from the GNU Project with the fledgling operating system; code licensed under the GNU GPL can be reused in other computer programs as long as they also are released under

4674-476: The development of the components of the system and free software. An analysis of the Linux kernel in 2017 showed that well over 85% of the code was developed by programmers who are being paid for their work, leaving about 8.2% to unpaid developers and 4.1% unclassified. Some of the major corporations that provide contributions include Intel , Samsung , Google , AMD , Oracle , and Facebook . Several corporations, notably Red Hat, Canonical , and SUSE have built

4756-545: The excuse to say, 'Oh, nature was just created,' and so the act of creation is seen to be something miraculous. I appreciate the fact that, 'Wow, it's incredible that something like this could have happened in the first place. ' " He later added that while in Europe religion is mostly a personal issue, in the United States it has become very politicized. When discussing the issue of church and state separation , he said, "Yeah, it's kind of ironic that in many European countries, there

4838-559: The federal government of Brazil . Linus Torvalds is the lead maintainer for the Linux kernel and guides its development, while Greg Kroah-Hartman is the lead maintainer for the stable branch. Zoë Kooyman is the executive director of the Free Software Foundation, which in turn supports the GNU components. Finally, individuals and corporations develop third-party non-GNU components. These third-party components comprise

4920-434: The file from any six of these stripes. When it writes a file, it by default stripes it across nine physically different machines — six holding the data, three holding parity information. Any three of those can become unavailable. If any six remain readable, QFS can reconstruct the original data. The result is fault tolerance at a cost of a 50% expansion of data. QFS is written in the programming language C++ , operates within

5002-471: The first version of the Linux kernel on the Internet . Like GNU and 386BSD, Linux did not have any Unix code and therefore avoided any current legal issues . Desktop Linux distributions include a windowing system such as X11 or Wayland and a desktop environment such as GNOME , KDE Plasma or Xfce . Distributions intended for servers may not have a graphical user interface at all or include

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5084-506: The form of a DEC MicroVAX running ULTRIX . His MSc thesis was titled Linux : A Portable Operating System . On 5 January 1991 he purchased an Intel 80386 -based IBM PC clone before receiving his MINIX copy, which in turn enabled him to begin work on Linux. His academic career was interrupted after his first year of study when he joined the Finnish Navy Nyland Brigade in the summer of 1989, selecting

5166-480: The letter X to indicate that it was a Unix-like system), but his friend Ari Lemmke , who administered the FTP server where the kernel was first hosted, named Torvalds' directory linux . As of 2006, approximately 2% of the Linux kernel was written by Torvalds himself. Despite the thousands who have contributed to it, his percentage is still one of the largest. However, he said in 2012 that his own personal contribution

5248-516: The mid-1990s in the supercomputing community, where organizations such as NASA started to replace their increasingly expensive machines with clusters of inexpensive commodity computers running Linux. Commercial use began when Dell and IBM , followed by Hewlett-Packard , started offering Linux support to escape Microsoft 's monopoly in the desktop operating system market. Today, Linux systems are used throughout computing, from embedded systems to virtually all supercomputers , and have secured

5330-441: The notable exception. The GNU C library , an implementation of the C standard library , works as a wrapper for the system calls of the Linux kernel necessary to the kernel-userspace interface, the toolchain is a broad collection of programming tools vital to Linux development (including the compilers used to build the Linux kernel itself), and the coreutils implement many basic Unix tools . The GNU Project also develops Bash ,

5412-501: The operating system to their specific needs. Distributions are maintained by individuals, loose-knit teams, volunteer organizations, and commercial entities. A distribution is responsible for the default configuration of the installed Linux kernel, general system security, and more generally integration of the different software packages into a coherent whole. Distributions typically use a package manager such as apt , yum , zypper , pacman or portage to install, remove, and update all of

5494-455: The required texts was Operating Systems: Design and Implementation by Andrew S. Tanenbaum . This textbook included a copy of Tanenbaum's Minix operating system. It was with this course that Torvalds first became exposed to Unix. In 1991, he became curious about operating systems. Frustrated by the licensing of Minix, which at the time limited it to educational use only, he began to work on his operating system kernel, which eventually became

5576-412: The same or a compatible license. Torvalds initiated a switch from his original license, which prohibited commercial redistribution, to the GNU GPL. Developers worked to integrate GNU components with the Linux kernel, creating a fully functional and free operating system. Linus Torvalds had wanted to call his invention " Freax ", a portmanteau of "free", "freak", and "x" (as an allusion to Unix). During

5658-441: The software licenses explicitly permit redistribution, however, provides a basis for larger-scale projects that collect the software produced by stand-alone projects and make it available all at once in the form of a Linux distribution. Many Linux distributions manage a remote collection of system software and application software packages available for download and installation through a network connection. This allows users to adapt

5740-481: The start of his work on the system, some of the project's makefiles included the name "Freax" for about half a year. Initially, Torvalds considered the name "Linux" but dismissed it as too egotistical. To facilitate development, the files were uploaded to the FTP server ( ftp.funet.fi ) of FUNET in September 1991. Ari Lemmke, Torvalds' coworker at the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) who

5822-471: The use case of the system. This custom interface is accessed through a client that resides on another system, not necessarily Linux-based. Several types of window managers exist for X11, including tiling , dynamic , stacking , and compositing . Window managers provide means to control the placement and appearance of individual application windows, and interact with the X Window System. Simpler X window managers such as dwm , ratpoison , or i3wm provide

5904-559: The various distribution-specific support and community forums, such as ones for Ubuntu , Fedora, Arch Linux , Gentoo , etc. Linux distributions host mailing lists ; commonly there will be a specific topic such as usage or development for a given list. There are several technology websites with a Linux focus. Print magazines on Linux often bundle cover disks that carry software or even complete Linux distributions. Although Linux distributions are generally available without charge, several large corporations sell, support, and contribute to

5986-511: The word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses and recommends the name " GNU/Linux " to emphasize the use and importance of GNU software in many distributions, causing some controversy . Thousands of distributions exist, many based directly or indirectly on other distributions; popular Linux distributions include Debian , Fedora Linux , Arch Linux , and Ubuntu , while commercial distributions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise . Other than

6068-429: The word "Linux" should be pronounced, he included an audio guide with the kernel source code. However, in this recording, he pronounces Linux as /ˈlinʊks/ ( LEEN -uuks ) with a short but close front unrounded vowel , instead of a near-close near-front unrounded vowel as in his newsgroup post. The adoption of Linux in production environments, rather than being used only by hobbyists, started to take off first in

6150-445: Was conceived and implemented in 1969, at AT&T 's Bell Labs , in the United States by Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie , Douglas McIlroy , and Joe Ossanna . First released in 1971, Unix was written entirely in assembly language , as was common practice at the time. In 1973, in a key pioneering approach, it was rewritten in the C programming language by Dennis Ritchie (except for some hardware and I/O routines). The availability of

6232-498: Was created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum , a computer science professor, and released in 1987 as a minimal Unix-like operating system targeted at students and others who wanted to learn operating system principles. Although the complete source code of Minix was freely available, the licensing terms prevented it from being free software until the licensing changed in April 2000. Although not released until 1992, due to legal complications ,

6314-510: Was designed by Linus Torvalds , following the lack of a working kernel for GNU , a Unix -compatible operating system made entirely of free software that had been undergoing development since 1983 by Richard Stallman . While a separate working Unix-compatible system called Minix was later released, its license was not entirely free at the time. The first entirely free Unix for personal computers, 386BSD , did not appear until 1992, by which time Torvalds had already built and publicly released

6396-582: Was involved in 86open , helping select the standard binary format for Linux and Unix . In 1999, he was named by the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the world's top 100 innovators under age 35. In 1999, Red Hat and VA Linux , both leading developers of Linux-based software, presented Torvalds with stock options in gratitude for his creation. That year both companies went public and Torvalds's share value briefly shot up to about US$ 20 million. His personal mascot

6478-459: Was later originally developed, it represented the first successful commercial attempt at distributing a primarily single-user microcomputer that ran a Unix operating system. With Unix increasingly "locked in" as a proprietary product, the GNU Project , started in 1983 by Richard Stallman , had the goal of creating a "complete Unix-compatible software system" composed entirely of free software . Work began in 1984. Later, in 1985, Stallman started

6560-513: Was one of the volunteer administrators for the FTP server at the time, did not think that "Freax" was a good name, so he named the project "Linux" on the server without consulting Torvalds. Later, however, Torvalds consented to "Linux". According to a newsgroup post by Torvalds, the word "Linux" should be pronounced ( / ˈ l ɪ n ʊ k s / LIN -uuks ) with a short 'i' as in 'print' and 'u' as in 'put'. To further demonstrate how

6642-518: Was released from its obligation not to enter the computer business; freed of that obligation, Bell Labs began selling Unix as a proprietary product, where users were not legally allowed to modify it. Onyx Systems began selling early microcomputer-based Unix workstations in 1980. Later, Sun Microsystems , founded as a spin-off of a student project at Stanford University , also began selling Unix-based desktop workstations in 1982. While Sun workstations did not use commodity PC hardware, for which Linux

6724-628: Was running introductory computer laboratory exercises for students and instructed the course attendees to send him an e-mail as a test, to which Tove responded with an e-mail asking for a date. They were later married and have three daughters, two of whom were born in the United States. The Linux kernel's reboot system call accepts their dates of birth (written in hexadecimal) as magic values . Torvalds has described himself as "completely a-religious — atheist ", adding, "I find that people seem to think religion brings morals and appreciation of nature. I actually think it detracts from both. It gives people

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