LINUX - The basis

OS Linux
Last Change : Apr 22 2010

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Linux was created in the early 90's by Linus Torvald.
It is a modular UNIX-like operating system initially designed for the 386(and 486) processors. Although in the first time it was not portable, it now runs on multiple platforms including embeded and mobile devices.
You can read the initial Linux announcement made by Linus Torvalds on the comp.os.minix news group.

After the first functional versions were released, Linux was developed all around the world by an important community of developers with the Open Source concept and under the GPL license to help its diffusion.

One should be aware that the word "linux" can be used either to designate a kernel (Linux kernel) or an operating system (Linux distribution).
The Linux kernel is the core of the Linux operational system and a linux distribution, a set of specific settings like startup and configuration files or the packages management system associated with the Linux kernel. logo linux The only common point between all the Linux distributions is the Linux kernel.

Here is a non exhaustive list of the main Linux distributions:
SuSE, Mandriva (the former Mandrake), Red Hat, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware.

More informations are available for the Debian and Ubuntu distributions in our website.

The particularity with the Debian distribution is the fact that it is developed by a non-profit organization.

What is the market share of Linux compared to the other operating systems?
To answer this question, we have to separate the results into two categories: the server market and the desktop market.

Linux does quite well with a 25% share of the server market, which is worse than 60% share of the Microsoft Windows Server series but still much better than Novell or Unix systems.
The popularity of Linux in the server world is mainly due to the apache web server that runs very efficiently on a Linux OS

The desktop world is dominated by Microsoft Windows and its 95% of the market share with the rest divided up between Linux and MacOS. .