What Is Linux?
Linux is a computer operating system, like Microsoft Windows® or the Apple Mac OS (the Linux "desktop" or main screen, in fact, looks much like a combination of the two). Linux is most widely known among corporate computer users because of its quality, reliability, and price. Linux has matured to the point where it is now the preferred platform for most of the world's more robust and critical computer systems. Because of the robust Linux programmer community, there are several “flavors” of Linux (known as “distributions”), each specialized in slightly different way.
In 1991, Linus Torvalds, a student at the University of Helsinki in Finland, started to write a computer operating system. By releasing early versions of the software under a “public” license, Torvalds provided an environment for many other programmers to work together to improve his software, which became known as Linux. It was this commitment to freely available software code, in combination with similarly free programming tools written by Richard Stallman from MIT, that allowed Linux to rapidly become the main alternative to proprietary operating systems.
What is Free and/or Open Source Software?
Software that is developed openly by a community of programmers may look like a chaotic process close-up, but produces extremely stable results long-term--comparable to the processes of democracy and open-market economies. Linux is just one example of thousands of computer programs that have been “copy-lefted,” a licensing process that immediately puts the program's code into the public domain while at the same time guaranteeing it will stay publicly available. (Sometimes called “share and share alike”). The GNU General Public License, originally written by Richard Stallman, is the most popular of this type of license. The different movements which are generally referred to as “Free and Open Source Software” are motivated by both altruism and pragmatism; by a belief that the ability to work together to create and build upon computer code benefits both the programmer (who can produce better software by not having to start from scratch) and the ultimate users of the software (who get better software). Recent studies have shown open-source software to have many fewer coding errors than proprietary software because of the process of peer review that takes place in the development process. The most widely known example of an Open Source software program is the Apache web server software, which runs over 70% of the world's websites. Which Distribution of Linux should I use? Unfortunately, this isn't as simple as explaining what a distribution is. We can't really tell you which distribution you should be using, for a couple of reasons; it really all depends on your personal preferences, and what you want to get done. Some distros, like Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are designed primarily for companies that use Linux on servers. Some distros, like Fedora Core, Ubuntu, and openSUSE have different profiles that are suitable for use on the desktop or on the server. If you ask 20 Linux users which distro you should use, you're likely to get several different answers -- and they're all right, at least for those users. The nice thing is that most Linux distributions are free, and you can download each one and test them to see if they fit your needs.
Can I run my Windows programs under Linux?
If you're coming from a Windows background, and most people are, you might have some Windows programs that you really want to keep using even when you're using Linux. Windows programs will not run natively on Linux, but you can find a few solutions to run Windows apps under Linux or within a Linux session if you really need to do so. Wine is one option for running Windows apps under Linux. Wine is an open source implementation of the Windows API for Linux and Unix operating systems. It's a compatibility layer for Windows apps, so that they can run unmodified on top of Linux. Another option is CodeWeavers CrossOver, which is based on Wine, but not entirely open source. CodeWeavers includes features not in Wine to make it easier to set up and run Windows programs under Linux. Virtualization is another option for running your Windows applications under Linux. Virtualization software like VMware Server and VMware Workstation, Parallels, and Qemu will allow you to run a full instance of Windows under Linux -- so you can run almost any Windows program unmodified on top of Linux, within the Windows environment. (Some applications that require 3D support may not run under virtualization because virtual machines typically do not provide 3D graphics.)
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