10-21-2009, 07:42 AM
What is Linux - An Introduction to the whole 'Linux' Thing.
Written by iintens.
This post is brought to you by the iintens blog.
Written by iintens.
This post is brought to you by the iintens blog.
Ever since the dawn of computers, Microsoft has led the Operating System industry with their DOS and Windows operating systems, according to recent studies- 89% of computers on the internet are running a Microsoft Windows® operating system, What stopped Microsoft charging thousands of dollars for their shitty operating system?..Apple and their Mac OS operating system (Now Mac OSX) which runs on around 8% of computers in the world.
Now, you’re probably thinking ‘That doesn’t add up”, and now you’re doing the calculation over and over again thinking you’ve done something wrong?…right?…now you’re getting out your calculator and you’re a bit annoyed you can’t add two two-digit numbers together…stop right there…There IS another ‘Operating System’ called Linux .. well not really- Linux is just a kernel, a small ‘program’ that is the bridge between the rest of the operating system applications and all those little metal thingies inside that big box next to you.
The source code for this ‘program’ can be found at http://www.kernel.org … but you can’t really do anything with it without some software to run with it- this is where Linux Distributions come in to play, some people bundle this kernel with a bunch of other software, put it in a nice ISO and distribute it via the series of tubes we call the internet, now…what do you think of when you think of somebody who does this sort of stuff…someone wearing a ..err…suit who works in a huge shiny building filled with computers who gets paid a few thousand a hour right?…well that’s where you’re wrong, most Linux distributions are what we call open source software, Open source software is defined as computer software for which the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that meets the Open Source Definition or that is in the public domain. This permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified forms. It is very often developed in a public, collaborative manner, what this usually means is that the people who are packaging and distributing these operating systems doesn’t get paid to do this, they have a job, someone ‘normal’, someone like you and me..okay I don’t have a job, but you get the idea.
Until recently, Linux has only been used by tech enthusiasts because well…It was hard to use, recompiling kernels and messing with configurations files may be fun for some of us, and sure…with enough manual tweaking you can get a pretty customized and optimized system, but for non-techies it wasn’t really an option. Then came the Ubuntu project, Ubuntu is a Linux distribution focused on ease of installation and use, it is extremely stable and easy to use, and is easier to install and manage than Windows! It has been in development for around 5 years now, and has because the most popular Linux distribution according to desktoplinux.com.
Another field Linux has been used in for a long time is servers, you know…those..millions of computers that sit in those huge buildings in Texas that serve your email and YouTube videos to you every day?..yea..those ones, Why do you think Linux is used for servers?
It’s FREE – Imagine of Linux didn’t completely OWN the server industry and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 ran on 100% of all servers around the world…now..Imagine owning a major datacenter and having to pay a company that already has too much money for thousands…even millions of Microsoft Windows Server licences, basically you lose a lot of money…right? Well what are you going to do to make sure you stay in business?…charge more for your services, so the reason we can buy virtual servers from around $10 a month now is probably because of LInux.
It’s SECURE – Windows gets viruses, Linux does not, Windows has major fail-points in their file/folder permissions system, Linux does not, When a major exploit for Windows is found Microsoft pushes out a patch within a few weeks, Most major Linux distribution and application developer teams release patches within a few hours…what does this tell you? Linux is an overall more secure operating system than Windows, Apache is the HTTP[s] web server ran on 99% of Linux servers, it is a fully open-source project meaning it’s source code is fully available to the public, this makes exploiting said application a lot easier because ‘hackers’ already know what the code is- nobody is paid to write this web server…every programmer on the development team does it for fun…no money involved whatsoever- Microsoft pays its employees millions to write the Microsoft IIS web-server for its Microsoft Windows Server operating system, IIS is what we call closed-source (the source-code is not available to anybody outside the development team, in most cases not having the source-code makes things harder to ‘hack’…not here..how is it that a team who is getting paid thousands can’t even come up with a secure web server?..beats me.
It’s RELIABLE – I once had to fix a machine that had 400 days of uptime – it was a monster of a machine, it served up 600 high-traffic and dynamic websites to almost 60 people at a time, it hosted a few hundred POP3/IMAP mail accounts, it was the primary DNS server for 50 domains and it was the hub of a 1-server IRC server with a 7-day average of 200 people on it…if you can do all that on one Linux machine for over a year without having to restart, and you have to restart your Windows machine every few days that you play solitaire on..I think that tells you something about the reliability of Windows vs. the reliability of Linux, millions of servers process trillions of mission-critical requests every day, I think reliability is a VERY important factor here.
Server administrators are smart, be smart too – Use Linux
