Intro To Linux
Note: There will be a series of articles. follow me to stay up to date
Topics Covered in this part:
- Overview View of Linux
- How Linux is Built?
- The man behind Linux
- Linux Terminologies
Hello guys, My name is VIDIT 😅
Many people want to know about Linux. They only know it is an OS(Operating System), but it is more than that. Today I am telling you the basics of the LINUX, many terminologies in which many people confuse. It’s not enough just to be Stable and it’s not enough just to be fast and it’s not enough just to be virus-free. Linux made it possible to use a computer in freedom.
Overview of Linux 🙂
Linux is an Operating System and its core is just a kernel (Don’t worry I will explain the kernel later). It talks to the hardware makes the hardware work. It makes it able for you to run programs and do what you want to do. There are lots of Operating systems available but the development Community of LINUX is very different. That makes it unique among others.
Linux has over 2000 Developers every year contributing to it from all over the world. The Contribution rate is about 10 patches a day, Linux is constantly improving or updated in order to handle the charging world. There is almost no part of the world that does not use Linux. If you have skills in Linux there are tons of jobs available out there.
How Linux Is Built 😲
Fact: You use Linux every day, whether you know it or not. Over 900,000 Android Phones running Linux are activated every single day. Compare to the windows phone which is just 30,000😆. Nearly 7000,000 TVs are sold every day most of which are running on Linux. Eight out of Ten financial trades are powered by Linux. Nine out of ten of the world’s supercomputers run Linux. Many big giants like Googe, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon are powedered by Linux.
So how was Linux is built to achieve all of this? So the best answers would be for this question is due to collaborative work, Unlike other operating systems like Windows or IOS, Linux is built collaboratively across companies, geographies. That’s the power of Open Source. Just since 2005, about 8000 developers across the world have contributed to the Linux kernel.
These contributions have resulted in 15milion lines of Code 😱, It’s not just the sheer lines of code, it’s also about how quickly Linux is developed and released. A major new kernel comes out every two to three months. This is made possible by a unique collaborative development process. When submitting code to the Linux kernel, developers break changes into individual units called patches. A patch describes the lines that need to be changed, added or removed from the source code. Each patch can add new features, new support for a device, fix a bug, improve performance, etc it could be anything.
When a patch is submitted, other developers give feedback or request some changes to the contributor.
How patches are approved and release in the next release 🤔
When a patch is close to being release ready, it is accepted by a senior Linux Kernel Developer or maintainer, who manages one or more of one hundred different sections of the kernel. This doesn’t guarantee that it will go to the main line, it’s certainly a good sign.
Here it gets an even more extensive evaluation. when the maintainer finishes their review, he or she will sign-off on the patch and send it off to Linux creator and Linux Foundation fellow, Linus Torvalds, who has the ultimate authority on what is accepted into the next release, and what is not. Nearly 10,000 patches go into every new release 😮.
Who was the guy behind Linux?🤔
It was August 1991 and a 20-year-old computer science student “Linus Torvalds” sat down at his computer in Helsinki to post what is now one of the most famous entries in computer history, “ Hello everyone out there … I’m doing a free operating system ( just a hobby, won’t be anything big and professional like GNU)... It probably won’t support anything other than AT-hard disks, as that’s all I have…..”
Word of Linux open-source projects quickly spread around the world and developers from all over contributed their code. Linus named his OS kernel Linux and shows a penguin as its mascot after a little incident at the zoo. He soon made a very important decision which shaped Linux’s future just as much as the technology. He chose the GPL license created by a visionary named Richard Stallman.
The Linux kernel along with the GPL license and other gnu components revolutionized the computer industry with very simple yet very important freedoms: the freedom to use the software for any purpose.
The freedom to change the software to suit your needs. The freedom to share the software with your friends and neighbors, and the freedom to share the changes you make.
These radical ideas fuelled its spread around the world, and somewhat paradoxically, its rise from a hobby and experiment to the foundation of a large and thriving commercial ecosystem.
Companies built the business around Linux. In 1999, Red Hat’s stock tripled as it became the first Linux company to go public. That same year IBM spent a billion dollars to improve and advertise Linux.
Soon Linux was knocking out industry heavyweights, fueling the rise of the internet with its free software. In short, Linux revolutionized computing.
But whenever something is this disruptive, there is bound to be competitive crossfire. But Linux not only survived, it thrived. Today the kernel development community numbers in the thousands with hundreds of companies collaborating in Linux development.
Every three months another version of Linux is released. So where is Linux today?
Running in 75% of stock exchanges worldwide, empowering the servers that enable Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, and Google.
You use Linux literally every time you surf the Internet. It’s on your phone, on your TV, running 95% of supercomputers and in many of the devices that you use every day.
Linux is everywhere and the Helsinki based programmer who started it all? He orchestrates this worldwide army of developers from his home office in Portland, Oregon, as a fellow at the Linux Foundation.
Now let's Discuss some basic Terminologies of Linux 😃
Linux Terminologies:
- Kernel: Kernel is considered the brain of the Linux operating system. It controls the hardware and makes the hardware interact with the applications. Past Linux kernels can be found here.
- Distribution: It is also known as Distro, defined as the collection of programs combined with the Linux kernel to make up a Linux-based operating system. Eg: Ubuntu( popular distro ), Fedora, etc.
- Service: Service is a program that runs as a background process. Eg: nfsd, ftpd, httpd and named.
- FileSystem: A filesystem is a method for storing and organizing files in Linux. Eg: ext3, ext4, FAT, XFS, etc.
- X Window: X Window System provides the standard toolkit and protocol to build graphical user interfaces ( GUI ) on nearly all Linux systems.
- Boot Loader: The Boot Loader, as the name suggests, is a program that boots the operating system and starts the boot time tasks and processes of an operating system or the computer system. It enables loading the operating system within the computer memory when a computer is started or booted up. A boot loader is also known as a boot manager or bootstrap loader. Eg: GRUB, ISOLINUX.
- Desktop Environment: It is a graphical user interface on top of the operating system. GNOME, KDE, Xfce, and Fluxbox are some examples of the Desktop Env.
- Command Line: Command line is an interface for typing the commands in which the user wants to run on the top of the operating system.
- Shell: The Shell is the command-line interpreter that interprets the command line input and instructs the operating system to perform any necessary tasks and commands. Eg: Bash, etc
Thank You Guys for your time, if you liked it give me motivation by giving some claps 😊
