What is Linux?

Linux is a free Unix-type operating system originally created by Linus Torvalds developed under the GNU General Public License and the source code of which is freely available to every one.

History

• GNU Project started in 1984 to create “free” UNIX clone.

• LINUX kernel created by Finnish college student, Linus Torvalds in 1991.

LINUS TORVALDS

Free, Libre, Open Source Software (FLOSS)

What can you do? Freedom to use Freedom to examine Freedom to redistribute Freedom to modify

What can't you do? Deny these freedoms to anyone else

Why use Linux?

Reliability Scalability Flexibility Security Price

The Unix 'onion'

Linux kernel + GNU applications = complete, free, UNIX-like OS

Desktop applications

Word processing (OpenOffice, Koffice) Programming (C, C++, Perl, Python,

Java, PHP) Graphics (GIMP) Web browsers (Mozilla, Konquerer) Email (Evolution, Mozilla, KMail) Audio (amarok) Games (MAME)

Linux Distributions ( Flavours )

RedHat/Fedora Market leader. Licensing changes mean this

is a less obvious choice than before. SuSE

Well-equiped. Recently acquired by Novell. Mandrake

Friendly, slick. Debian

Non-commercial, community-maintained. Tricky but powerful

The command line

Linux

VS

Windows

Flavors

WINDOWS

Windows 95

Windows 98

Windows Me

Windows XP

Windows 2000

Windows 2003

LINUX

Suse

Fedora

Redhat

Debian

Ubuntu

Knoppix

Slackware

Lycoris

Linspire (Lindows)

Graphical User Interface (GUI)

Text Mode Interface

The DOS Prompt

The BASH Shell

Clustering

For the Enterprise…

End the monopoly…