Linux Overview

The word linux is a term generally meaning "Unix-like" computer operating system. Linux computers are generally free and open source, meaning that the source code can be used, modified, and redistributed. Sadly, linux has only about 1% of the desktop market as of March 2010. Linux can be installed onto mobile phones, smart phones, mainframes, servers, supercomputers, and even wristwatches. Large supercomputers are usually based on the linux operating system, a large company that makes linux supercomputers is called CRAY. The popularity of linux has been growing, but it is still at 1% of the market for desktop computers. Although linux can be used without a desktop environment, most people like a graphical interface. Major Desktop Environments include XFCE, Sugar, LXDE, KDE, and GNOME of which GNOME is the most popular. Major linux distributions include Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Linux Mint. All distrobutions can be found at distrowatch.