Elizabeth Tourtelot

Chapter 5 Assignment

22259

10/13/09

Linux, the widely known operating system, started out as a hobby of a young university student named Linus Torvalds and grew. Linus was interested in Minix, which is a small UNIX system, and while at the University of Helsinki in Finland Linus he decided to develop a system that exceeded the Minix standards. He began his work in 1991, releasing version 0.02, and then worked steadily until 1994, when he released version 1.0 of the Linux Kernel. The kernel, which is the heart of every Linux systems, is developed and released under the GNU General Public License and has a source code that is free and available to everyone. This kernel is the base of which a Linux operating system is developed and now hundreds of companies and organizations and even individuals have released their own versions of operating systems based on the Linux kernel.

The numerous versions of Linux- developed by other companies, organizations, and individuals- are called distributions; one can find many distributions of Linux on the internet, that are easily installed, configured, and used. One example of a Linux distribution is Hard Hat Linux which is built from “100% pure Linux components” and is maintained and distributed as an open source tool kit. The developer of Hard Hat Linux is MontaVista Software, Inc. which ships both source and easy-to-use pre-built binary packages on the same media. The MontaVista Software Hard Hat Linux provides Linux kernel ports, device drivers, middleware, and development tools to streamline your development effort. Another example of a Linux distribution is Slackware Linux, developed by The Slackware Linux Project to provide excellent performance on high-end systems, including support for symmetric multi-processing (up to 16 processors), PCI, and special code optimizations for the 486, Pentium, and Pentium Pro, and AMD Athon.

Linux has been adopted worldwide primarily as a server platform and its use as a home and office desktop operating system is also on the rise. But Linux distributions are also becoming more popular and not only can someone buy Linux distributions but they can also download them off the internet and then burn them onto CD. The CD is called a live CD (created through a distribution called Knoppix), which comes with everything one might need to carry out day-to-day tasks on the computer and it needs no installation. It also will run from a CD in a computer capable of booting from the CD drive.

One popular user application/suite available in Linux is OpenOffice. OpenOffice is a complete office suite, featuring a word processor (Writer), a spreadsheet application (Calc), and presentation software (Impress). Besides the fundamental office applications it offers OpenOffice also includes a vector drawing tool (Draw), allows database access, allows the publishing of documents in the Portable Document Format (PDF) and presentations in the Flash format (SWF). Another popular application/suite available in Linux is GIMP. GIMP (GNU/ General Image Manipulation Program) is a free, powerful image manipulation program suitable for tasks such as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring.

Advantages of Linux compared to Microsoft Windows is that it is freely distributed, more secure, and it is customizable in ways Windows is not; there are so many versions/distributions of Linux to pick out of that if you are not satisfied with one distribution then you can move on and try another and etc., until you find one that fits your needs and wants perfectly. A disadvantage of Linux compared to Windows is the selection of software and hardware; because Microsoft Windows has a bigger user base it also has a larger selection of available software programs and games and a larger amount of hardware manufacturers that will support their products in Microsoft Windows.