Computers and Technology October 25, 2005

Q: What Is Linux?

A: Linux is an operating system kernel that behaves and performs similarly to the famous UNIX™ operating system from AT&T Bell Labs. It has all of the features of a modern operating system: true multitasking, threads, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand loading, shared, copy-on-write executables, proper memory management, loadable device driver modules, video frame buffering, and TCP/IP networking.

Most people, however, refer to the operating system kernel, system software, and application software, collectively, as “Linux”, and that convention is used in this FAQ as well.

Linus Torvalds and a loosely knit team of volunteer hackers from across the Internet wrote (and still are writing) Linux from scratch.

The Linux kernel is distributed under the GNU General Public License. (”What Is Linux’s Open-Source License?”)

There is a historical archive of all versions of the Linux kernel at http://ps.cus.umist.ac.uk/~rhw/kernel.versions.html.

See also the Wikipedia articles on the Linux kernel and the Linux operating system.

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