jamesleon 0 Report post Posted October 4, 2004 (edited) Linux is a member of the large family of Unix-like operating systems. A relative newcomer experiencing sudden spectacular popularity starting in the late 1990s, Linux joins such well-known commercial Unix operating systems as System V Release 4 (SVR4) developed by AT&T, which is now owned by Novell; the 4.4 BSD release from the University of California at Berkeley (4.4BSD), Digital Unix from Digital Equipment Corporation (now Compaq); AIX from IBM; HP-UX from Hewlett-Packard; and Solaris from Sun Microsystems. Linux was initially developed by Linus Torvalds in 1991 as an operating system for IBMcompatible personal computers based on the Intel 80386 microprocessor. Linus remains deeply involved with improving Linux, keeping it up-to-date with various hardware developments and coordinating the activity of hundreds of Linux developers around the world. Over the years, developers have worked to make Linux available on other architectures, including Alpha, SPARC, Motorola MC680x0, PowerPC, and IBM System/390. One of the more appealing benefits to Linux is that it isn't a commercial operating system: its source code under the GNU Public License[1] is open and available to anyone to study, as we will in this book; if you download the code (the official site is https://www.kernel.org/) or check the sources on a Linux CD, you will be able to explore from top to bottom one of the most successful, modern operating systems. This book, in fact, assumes you have the source code on hand and can apply what we say to your own explorations. [1] The GNU project is coordinated by the Free Software Foundation, Inc. (http://www.gnu.org/); its aim is to implement a whole operating system freely usable by everyone. The availability of a GNU C compiler has been essential for the success of the Linux project. Technically speaking, Linux is a true Unix kernel, although it is not a full Unix operating system, because it does not include all the applications such as filesystem utilities, windowing systems and graphical desktops, system administrator commands, text editors, compilers, and so on. However, since most of these programs are freely available under the GNU General Public License, they can be installed into one of the filesystems supported by Linux. Since Linux is a kernel, many Linux users prefer to rely on commercial distributions, available on CD-ROM, to get the code included in a standard Unix system. Alternatively, the code may be obtained from several different FTP sites. The Linux source code is usually installed in the /usr/src/linux directory. In the rest of this book, all file pathnames will refer implicitly to that directory. Edited November 6, 2005 by microscopic^earthling (see edit history) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
