What is Linux, and why should you care?

Here at Yavapai College, we have the Linux Course CNT130 and another course that gives a small introduction to Linux as a network operating system, CNT120. On many separate occasions, those new to Linux have questioned its usefulness. Usually, I hear something like "Yeah, it sounds good in theory, but Linux isn't really used anywhere" or "I've been told that Linux is on the way out". Is this true? No, but rather than just leave you with that, I'm going to give you the evidence to prove it. First though, let's start out by looking at what Linux is.

Linux is a free, open source operating system. Created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, it is based on MINIX, a flavor of UNIX. UNIX in turn is an operating system was designed by employees at Bell Labs in 1969. Linux has always been designed to be an open operating system. It provides the user with source code materials, which allow the user to do anything from customize his operating system at the code level, to submit bug patches. Companies such as Red Hat, Canonical, and Novell make money from selling support for their Linux distributions.

Linux has changed over the last several years. I began using Linux with Red Hat 8 almost 10 years ago. Many of the issues I ran into required fixes involving a command line interface, and being only 11 at the time, I was overwhelmed. However, those years of experience has allowed me to see the dramatic changes within the Linux operating system. Most issues are no longer present in today's distributions, and most hardware works out of the box. In the past, the Linux GUI was (in my honest opinion) a joke. Linux was a land for hobbyists, command line gurus, hackers, and programmers.

Today however, Linux has an incredible GUI environment (thanks to those who refused to be left behind by Windows) and several different window managers that change the appearance of running programs (KDE, GNOME and XFCE). Linux employed the use of 3D effects on the desktop long before Windows Vista was released, through the Compiz plugin. This plugin has given the Linux users the cube effect, among others. With Windows Vista having been a flop from a business standpoint, Ubuntu and other Linux distributions noticed a very large gain in users.

So, let's get down to it. Where is Linux used most? Although Linux may not have the majority market share in the desktop market, Linux holds the majority in the super-computer OS market and the embedded device market. According to top500.org, 439 of the world's top 500 supercomputers run Linux. This is most likely because Linux allows better control over systems to allow for more performance tweaking than its competitor OS, Windows HPC.

It's not just supercomputers that run Linux. According to netcraft.com, the majority (around 48.38%) of webservers on the internet are running the Apache webserver. Microsoft's IIS has a market share of approximately 33.21%. Of course, that doesn't mean that all webservers running apache are inherently running Linux, but an overwhelming number of them are. Many businesses have long been aware of the power that Linux provides to its users, and with Apache use on the rise, Linux isn't going away as some might believe.

Linux use on embedded platforms is more prevalent than you may realize. In fact, if you've got a Motorolla based cell phone, you could be using Linux. Quite a number of devices use embedded Linux because companies do not have to pay royalty fees / licensing fees to modify it for their platforms. TV remotes, mobile devices, printers, and even common networking devices make use of Linux. The percentage of the market share that Linux holds is a little harder to calculate, since embedded devices are hardly ever cracked open and hacked to discover what lies underneath their physical components. Despite this lack of information, it remains clear that Windows does not hold the market share in embedded devices.

Today, Microsoft's Windows OS is the accepted industry standard. However, Windows Vista proved that users will not always accept change, and that many users will refuse to be forced to upgrade to a new OS that they find confusing and unstable. Linux on the other hand is a work in progress, and although it is not ready for the mainstream desktop market yet, it is most likely only a matter of time.