GNU/Linux: the free operating system
 photo by Jeffrey |
Linux was the brainchild of Linus Torvalds, who originally wanted to call it Freax. He first uploaded the working kernel to the world in September 1991.
Since then, thousands of programmers have worked on the operating system. Even Microsoft has contributed code to it!
However, Linux has always been considered the realm of geeks. In the past, you needed to be very knowledgeable about computers to install programs and drivers and make the operating system do things for you.
Add to this the number of versions of Llinux - called distributions - and Linux can look very intimidating to the layman. So it's had very little uptake by normal computer users - it holds around 1% of that market.
That number is derived from an analysis of the operating systems used by computers accessing a number of sites on the internet and is based on 160 million visitors a month.
In reality, Linux is probably more widely used than can be accounted for. For example, Linux is the operating system used in many computerised gadgets, to keep the costs down.
The 1% also excludes Linux as an operating system for network servers. While official figures indicate a market share for Linux servers at around 16%, that only accounts for computers shipped with the operating system. There is no reliable way of working out what operating system was installed on a machine sold without one, or indeed, what operating system was reinstalled over an original Windows.
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