Linux

Who develops Linux? Linux is written by thousands of devlopers who donate their time to writing computer programs. They then return it to the general public for use with out charge. There are two parts to Linux. The first part is called the kernel. Microsoft Windows also has a kernel. The kernel is the first thing that loads before the Windows logo shows on the screen. Basically the kernel initalizes the hardware at the lowest level. Two people are in charge of maintaining the Linux kernel. There are two versions of the Linux kernel, and one is for testing, and the other is for general public use. Linus Torvalds wrote the very first Linux kernel using gnu.org's compiler. Linus Torvalds maintains the development version. All development versions have an odd number for the minor version such as 2.5.x. That is the current development series. Andrew Morton maintains the stable version of the kernel. These stable kernels are noted by the even minor version number such as 2.4.x or 2.6.x. 2.6.x is the latest stable kernel series.

Lately there has been rumors about Linux couldn't have written Linux in 9 months. It is true, because he didn't write the entire operating system. He only wrote the kernel, and all of the other utilities had been developed by Richard Stallman, others. Linux didn't come about on one man's effort. Many people worked on it before it ever became available. When Linus released the first kernel Richard Stallman had finally found a kernel to support the gnu.org project, and hence a complete open source operating system was born.

There is another myth that Linus borrowed source code from Minix. Linus devoloped the first kernel on Minix, but he never directly used any of Minix's source code. He borrowed a couple of ideas, and wrote his complete kernel which by all means was very featureless, and didn't even have support for english keyboards, or english at all. Not only that it required the same hardware the Linus worked on to work. The original kernel is still hosted at www.kernel.org. There is a big difference from using an idea, and directly using source code.

Today there are thousands of programs that run on the Linux operating system even including a few select Microsoft Windows programs. There are two desktops that are the most popular, and about half use KDE, and the other half use Gnome. Both have applications for office, gaming, and networking.