Creating the perfect computer for your specific needs is easier than ever before. In today’s day and age, you can literally build a computer part-by-part until you’ve tailor-made one that is unique from any other on the planet. Though yours will differ from others in many ways, one thing that will be the same is the presence of an operating system. Without one, your computer is no better than a person without their brain. While there are all kinds of operating systems available today, one of the most popular is Linux.
A Brief History
Linux has been around for over two decades, owing its origination to the also popular (but much older) UNIX. Like its predecessor, Linux received a lot of affection early on from academic circles.
Finish student Linus Torvalds created Linux in 1991 as a free UNIX-like kernel. Torvalds’ motivation was to create a program for his specific hardware, independent of any existing operating system because he wanted to leverage an 80386 processor to use the functions of his new computer. Using a GNU C compiler, development was handled on MINIX.
Interestingly enough, to this day, the GNU compiler remains the most popular choice for compiling Linux. That being said, other compilers, like the Intel C Compiler, can be used as well.
Basic Features
In many ways, Linux is very much like UNIX (its name is a portmanteau of Linus and UNIX). Both are extremely versatile environments and, as we mentioned, both were immediately popular with academia.
Today, more than 90% of the computer listed in the Top 500 run on some version of either UNIX or Linux.
Aside from being multiuser and multitasking like UNIX, Linux is also preemptive which makes it amazing for managing hardware resources, file systems, and directors. It’s also noteworthy for its ability to load and execute programs.
Kernel
The basic Linux kernel entails advanced memory and processor management features, an array of PC hardware devices (e.g. network cards, graphics cards, hard disks, etc.), support for all kinds of file systems and management features. As the main Linux kernel is always being revised and maintained, you can actually visit www.kerel.org to download the latest version at any time.
Shells and GUIs
It should come as no surprise that Linux supports the GUI command input. Graphics User Interface is the most popular type for personal computers thanks in large part to its use of icons and other types of visual displays.
However, Linux also supports line shells, which are textual commands similar to those UNIX systems use.
System Utilities
Just about every system utility, you would find on a standard version of UNIX can also be found in Linux. Commands like cp, ls, grep, sed, awk, and others are all there, to name a handful. These simple utilities are developed to be powerful and capable of doing single tasks with high proficiency. For example, grep can locate text inside a file while wc add up the number of words, bytes, and lines inside it too.
Instead of writing out tiresome application programs, users can solve many problems by simply connecting these tools together.
Application Programs
Another important feature of Linux is its application programs. Typically, several come standard like an image viewer called xv, a C compiler called gcc and a C++ compiler called g++.
Though many operating systems have come since Linux, it remains extremely popular for all of the reasons mentioned above. At ServerPronto, you can rest assured we know our way around Linux. If you need any help with this operating system, we would be happy to lend a hand. However, there are a number of other ways we can serve your business as well.
ServerPronto offers the best affordable and secure hosting service in all dedicated server packages.
Photo cred: Flickr /Â Simon Bouchard
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