Debian
Fedora
Gentoo Linux
OpenSUSE
Slax
Ubuntu
Linux is a kind of UNIX Operating System. It is one of the few operating systems that are free and open source to public. Technically speaking, the term “Linux” only means the Linux‘s kernel, but in fact, people have been using the word “Linux” to describe the whole Linux Operating System. The name “Linux” is named after the founder Linus Torvalds, who is now the head of the Linux Foundation.
Tux (a penguin character) is the official mascot of the Linux kernel. It was originally created as an entry to the Linux logo competition. The name “Tux” comes from “(T)orvalds (U)ni(X)”, and also because it looks like a penguin wearing a tuxedo. Tux has now become the symbolic icon of Linux and its open source community.
Linux is a clone version of UNIX Operation System. The core of the Linux Operating System, also known as the kernel, was built by Torvalds. At the same time, Richard Stallman, a person who created GNU tools—a project for creating an operating system was missing a kernel to make Stallman’s operating system complete.
A kernel alone does not make an operating system, so together with the GNU tools and the Linux kernel, a new operating system—Linux was born on October 5th, 1991. Soon by means of Internet Network and the strong supports from the computer amateurs all over the world, it has now become the most popular UNIX Operating System.
Linux is an operating system which composed of many different development languages. A very large percentage of the distributions' code is written in either the C (52.86%) or C++ (25.56%) languages. All operating systems have kernels, and in general, most kernels fall into one of three types: monolithic, microkernel, and hybrid. Linux is a monolithic kernel while OS X (Mac) and Windows 7 use hybrid kernels. Monolithic kernels tend to be better at accessing hardware and multitasking because if a program needs to get information from memory or another process running, it has a more direct line to access it and doesn’t have to wait in a queue for processor time.
Linux kernel is modular, which means it allows developers to shed parts of the kernel they don’t need to use. For instance, if a developer wants a version of Linux to run on a cell phone, she can just pull out the pieces that she doesn’t need (e.g. disk drivers or Ethernet devices) and leaving just the optimized kernel to use for the phone.
Modularity also makes the kernel more stable and secure. For example, if one piece of the kernel code happens to fail, the rest of the kernel will not crash, they will still work. Similarly, a virus attack on one part of the kernel might damage only that part of the code, but will not affect the overall security of the whole device.
Over 1,000 developers, from at least 100 different companies, contribute to every kernel release. In the past two years alone, over 3,200 developers from 200 companies have contributed to the kernel, which is just one small piece of a Linux distribution. There are varieties of Linux distributions available: one can download several Linux versions for free, or order CD-versions at a small price. Some common distributions are Debian, Fedora, Gentoo Linux, openSUSE, Ubuntu and Slax.
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