What’s Linux?

Linux is a free and open source operating system, that is causing a revolution in the Computing World. It was originally created by Linus Torvalds with the assistance of developers called “community”.

Linux is the most popular and widely used open source operating system software. Linux is software that resides underneath of all the other software programs on a computer, receiving requests from various computer programs and processing those requests on the computers hardware.

Linux functionality is quite similar to UNIX, The ‘Kernel’ is a software program which functions as the heart of the Linux operating system that performs functionality of providing access to the hardware to communicate with the software.

Why use Linux?

Linux is one of the most successful open source projects that is publicly available for everyone. There are several strong use-case on why using Linux be it for business, web-application, embedded devices, research projects, and educational purposes. Here we try to outline some of the benefits of using Linux.

#1. It’s Free.

Linux is an open-source that allows anybody to contribute, modify, optimise, and improve the source code. It’s available for free and are no registration fees, no user fees, free updates, and the source code for your system is publicly available free for lifetime.

#2. Strong Security.

Linux is the most secured operating system software that exist today.

Linux has various flavour of Operating system some of the most popular operating system softwares are such as- Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, Arch Linux, etc., All these softwares are updated regularly and with such improving ecosystem it practically less chances of having broken softwares or bugs.

Linux community believes every uses has privilege to their own application programs, and data. When an application/user program is installed and configured by administrator, the user won’t be able to change the program other than using it. Every program thats been executed on Linux would need password authorization from the user/admin this way Linux becomes less probable that any virus or malware to execute.

#3. It’s Portable!

Since Linux is a open source and provides a free extensive documentation the Linux kernel can be used to customise for any Hardware to work for any device, which is currently been run over most of the computers and embedded devices. All this is achievable for free!

#4. Great debug support.

Linux has been developed and tested by over thousands of users all over the they are mostly free of errors and bugs and even if they are any the fixes for these are usually much quicker and provides a free community based support for any bugs for any hardware.

#5. Scalability.

Linux servers purpose for almost all the purpose, from a small micro controller with few MBs of Memory to perform simple single tasks and can scale-up to handle several tasks in server environment with greater reliability and stability with several CPU cores and to handle huge bandwidth consuming applications. Linux can fit in everywhere!

#6. Performance & Reliability.

All of the Linux Operating Systems comes with a dedicated package update support which enhances the over all reliability of the software programs running on the Operating system. Constantly checking for updates/upgrades would also ensures to remove broken packages thus by resulting is eliminating any software errors, The Linux OS does provide the support for 64 Bit, which provides auto-updates of latest disk drivers there by increasing the over all system performances.

Linux Characteristics:

What has made Linux so popular to scale from mobile devices to powering 90% of world’s super computer? Here are the key characteristics of Linux.

• Multitasking: Ability to handle multiple tasks across single / multiple processors
• Multi-user: Have got users with different level of privileges for secured access
• Protected Memory: Clear distinction called ‘user-space’ and ‘kernel’ space thereby having protected memory access. This makes Linux Super secure comparing with other operating systems
• Hierarchical File System: Well organized file system that handles various types of files. This also makes handling various inputs very simple