What is Linux?

I was at a friend's house last week who was giving me a bunch of photo's and movies from one of my many summer activities. He had some questions about Windows XP that I couldn't answer without a bit of research because I don't really use Windows on a day-to-day basis. Naturally he asked what I did use. While I have both Windows and Mac computers in my office, my primary computer runs Linux.

So what is Linux and why would anyone remove Windows from a new computer and install Linux instead? Actually I don't completely remove Windows from the computer when I install Linux. I set it up so that when I turn on the computer, it asks if I want to run Linux or Windows. This gives me a bit of flexibility with each of the machines in my office.

So back to the first question: What is Linux? Linux was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 who wanted to create an operating system or computer user environment similar to Unix. Unix is an operating system created by Ken Thompson at Bell Laboratories in 1969. Linus was able to leverage other work done by Richard Stallman who created the GNU project in 1983 to create another Unix-like operating system. So what is Linux? Simply an open source or free version of Unix.

OK, so what is Unix and what makes it better than Windows or Macs for day-to-day use? Better is a relative term and so it is with extreme caution that I continue. When I worked at Oracle Corporation for the summer after my freshman year of college, they put me in the Unix technical support group and had me learn Unix. This was back before graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that most people are familiar with. Instead of being able to use a mouse to navigate thru directories and file folders, one had to know commands like "cd" and "ls". If you knew the name of file but didn't know where it was located, you could use the "find" command. Unix also has a bunch of tools and utilities that I learned such as the text editor called "vi" (pronounced like the letter V and the letter I). You could say that I got really used to using these two, three, and four-letter commands to help navigate the computer. Since my hands never have to leave the keyboard to touch the mouse, I feel I can do things faster and so I have continued to use Linux. Does that make Linux better than Windows? Probably not for most users, but it does for me and so I continue to use it.

Interestingly enough the operating system used by Macs is also Unix. Apple just did a spectacular job of hiding all those cryptic commands so that even the most novice user can enjoy the Mac experience. However if you know how to open a terminal window, you can revert back to those short-but-confusing Unix commands.

One of the benefits of Unix is how it protects itself from rogue programs like viruses and malware. When the PC first came out, it cam with the Microsoft DOS operating system and could only run one program at a time. Unix on the other hand was created to run multiple programs for different users at the same time. The creators of Unix knew that Jimmy might be running a program that could crash the computer and cause harm to Susan's program. Therefore they built in protection so that Jimmy's program cannot harm Susan's nor can it harm Unix itself. Therefore it is much more difficult to write a virus for Unix than it is for DOS which has now evolved into Windows.

This brings us back to my friend asking about Linux. It seems that my friend's son had contracted a nasty virus on his computer. In an attempt to cover his tracks, the son had reformatted the hard drive. He figured he could just reinstall Windows and nobody would know there had been a virus. Unfortunately the son didn't have a license key for Windows and couldn't reinstall it. Eventually the son had to confess about the virus. While my friend could easily get a license key from Microsoft to reinstall Windows, he has opted to put Linux on his son's computer. Maybe now his son won't get a computer virus.