Linux was developed by Linus Torvalds at the University of Helsinki in Finland. It was inspired by Minix, a small Unix System. It is simply an Operating System. It was introduced in October 1991.
The first official version was Linux 0.02. In 2001, 2.4 version was released. It is developed under GNU license, which allows the source code of Linux to be distributed freely. Linux is used for networking, software development and web hosting. The features of Linux are:
1. Multi user capability.
2. Multi tasking.
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3. Security.
4. Portability.
There are two ways of installing Linux – CUI (Character User Interface) and GUI (Graphical User Interface).
The following diagram depicts the organisation of Linux Operating System :
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The kernel is central to the system. It interacts with hardware directly. Without this, the operating system does not exist. The shell is a program written in ‘C’ language. Shell interacts with user, whereas kernel interacts with hardware. The different types of shell are Bourne shell, C shell and k shell. The applications are the one that run on the operating system.