Linux

GNU/Linux is an operating system being developed by the open source community. Linus Torvalds created Linux.

http://www.linux.com/ seems to be a general electronic news website (ala our own http://www.tcl.tk/) rather than a 'home' for linux.

http://ragib.hypermart.net/linux/ is one history of Linux. http://www.li.org/linuxhistory.php is an older page showing some of Linus's early usenet postings. http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,9457,00.html is a Feb, 2000 article discussing the history of Linux.

20may04 jcw - The Register has a delightful article [1] about Linux's origins, and the recent Tocqueville/Brown upheaval. Not in the least for everything Andrew Tanenbaum [2] says, in his fun style.

Linux Links: The Linux Portal Site <http://www.linuxlinks.com> has a lot of free software that runs on Linux, including a number of applications written in Tcl/Tk.

DKF - Also look at http://freshmeat.org/ IIRC More likely http://freshmeat.net/

A variety of commercial entities, including Sun, IBM, SuSE, Red Hat, and others, go through the effort to build the sources, provide maintenance contracts, etc. in an effort to add value to the open source software.

One popular distribution of Linux is SuSE - where one of the Tcl community works to maintain a great Tcl presence in the distribution.

Csan: I am using Debian GNU/Linux,[3] which has been my "favorite Linux distribution for long years now, first and foremost for its technical qualities, and the fact that it is Free Software." - I am quoting davidw

Jason Tang: Linux is an operating system[*], much like Windows NT or MacOS. There are serveral different distributions of Linux, which combines the core kernel (Linux) with supporting utilities like a command line, graphical interface, utilities (such as Tcl 8.4) and various programs. The argument of which distribution of Linux is best is an endless one that has been raging for years; for those without any Unix experience, RedHat (http://www.redhat.com), Mandrake (http://www.mandrakelinux.com), and SuSE (http://www.suse.de) seem to be the most popular. Those who are willing to venture may prefer Debian (http://www.debian.org), Slackware (http://www.slackware.com), or Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org). (Apologies if I did not mention your distribution of choice.)

General Linux information may be found at Linux Online (http://www.linux.org) as well as LinuxDocs (http://www.linuxdocs.org).

I personally have been using Linux of some form or another for over six years.

A proper definition of Open Source may be found at the Open Source Initiative (http://www.opensource.org/).

[*]Technically, Linux is just the name of a kernel[4] created by Linus Torvalds. Most people extend it to include the core kernel, GNU[5] utilities, X Window System [6] server [7], and other packages. This larger bundle is generally referred to as GNU/Linux .

Mike Tuxford's POV Linux is a multiuser, Unix-like OS first created by Linus Torvalds in 1991.

Major features of Linux include:

Customizable kernel so that you can build for your machine and hardware needs as well as for specific software needs. This is one reason they are popular as routers and dedicated servers as they can be trimmed down easily to meet the needs.
bash, csh, tcsh, ksh, other Unix shells that are the basic UI to the OS.
GNU system utilities, many of which are Unix-like or even updated ports of what were originally unix utilities making Linux familiar to the Unix user. The combination of the shells and the GNU utilities are a powerful means of control of your OS.
A File System structure that is also very similar to most other Unix OSes.
The graphics are on a server/client basis rather than being tied directly into the core system, thus allowing graphical user applications to crash without the OS itself crashing.

Most Linux systems will use either the BSD init style or the SysV init style. init is the 'mother of all processes', both during boot time and during runtime.

There are many distributions of Linux, but the common denominator with them all is that you can build any Linux system into your Linux system. It is the very nature of Linux that you can build to your hardware requirements and your machine needs.

This is also the case with the X Windowing System for creating your desktop to suit your own look/feel choices.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. --Gandhi

rdt's POV: if I want to find out about a Linux distro, the first place that I look is distrowatch at http://distrowatch.com/ and the next place is LWN at http://lwn.net/Distributions/ .

LV How do the various distros (GNU/Linux term for distributions) compare, with regard to Tcl?

Linux is not Unix. The term Unix has specific legal meaning, and so the origins of the code need to be kept clear.

LES Also note that Linux software is not 100% compatible with Unix and vice-versa. Especially binary things. These often have to compiled for Unix or Linux specifically, probably after some sort of modification.