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Linux

You may have have heard of something called Linux. What is it? What does it do? How can you use it to improve your life?...<grin> No, Linux may or may not improve your life. It depends on how much you depend on any Operating System for your life.

Linux is a Unix-like operating system that, thanks to the Internet, has grown to become a moderately successful OS that, some say, may well challenge Microsoft's domination of the PC OS market one day.

Several reasons have been put forward to justify this claim:

Linux is freely available: You can download Linux (and associated programs) from many ftp sites around the world. It is also available in the form of CD-ROM from many companies like RedHat Software, MandrakeSoft, etc. As they say, you don't have to pay through your nose to get it.
Linux can be modified by users: Linux was released under the GNU Public License (GPL). The license says that you, the user, can have access to the source code of a program under the GPL. If you modify the source code and release a new version of the program, you must provide your source code also (check the GNU website for more information on what is GNU and what they do). This allows for an open programming environment and means that bugs or fixes to Linux can be quickly and easily done by anybody, not just the 'official programmers' of the operating system.
Linux is powerful: Since Linux is based on Unix, it carries with it all the wonderful things associated with Unix: a multi-user, multi-tasking OS with many (if not all) the tools programmers have come to associate with Unix. This means that it is relatively easy to port programs from other Unix machines to Linux.
Linux is not heavily 'bloated': It can comfortably run on an Intel-486 system with 16MB of memory. Thus, you can take that old 'molding' 486 machine sitting in a corner and turn it into an adequate web server or mail server for a small company.

Of course, you don't have to take my word for it. There are many Linux related sites out there which will tell you the same story. For starters, check out the Linux Documentation Project which has a good set of links to various other Linux sites.

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