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What Is Linux? Linux is an operating system, like Windows and Mac OSX, that branched from traditional UNIX systems long ago. The biggest difference from Windows and Mac? Linux is free. There are two ways to take this term 'freedom' that Linux nuts love to explain. Linux comes with no price tag (free), and it also gives you the freedom to do whatever you want with it. There are no restrictions on what you can change or do, what you can share (within reasonable software license terms and laws, of course), and what you can create. Linux is kept up-to-date and secure by an army of volunteers and benevolent organizations. What does freedom really mean in terms of money? A lot! You never have to drop a fat Benjamin or two for an upgrade. You don't have to buy more or special licenses to install it on more computers (saving potentially thousands of dollars). All of the software you need: Office, audio, graphic editing, and games, are all free, though you can use commercial software too. Lighter (less memory and computation usage) and older Linux distributions are still useful and available, so you can keep an old computer running. The most popular 'distributions' of Linux are considered GNU/Linux. GNU (oddly pronounced Guh-New) is the collection of software that makes up the operating system. The only thing that really remains Linux is the kernel, but you don't have to bother about that. Lots of well-known companies stand behind Linux. Google, Intel, Mozilla, Nvidia, Adobe, Sun, and many more contribute to the open-source community and provide up-to-date versions of their popular software which work on Linux. Even Microsoft and Apple join in when it comes to defining standards for all three major platforms. You'll find Linux running on many netbooks (often Moblin) and smart phones (Google's Android) nowadays and UNIX has been the backbone of the internet since it began. When companies like Apple or Google want to make a new operating system, they reach over and grab a Linux or UNIX distro to start from. I hope you'll take this opportunity to look further into Linux and see what it offers for you. I've got more info just waiting to be read. Jonny D |