Linux

About Linux

Linux is a free, open-source Unix-like operating system kernel created by Linus Torvalds in 1991, now developed by thousands of contributors worldwide under the Linux Foundation. Combined with GNU userland tools, it forms GNU/Linux — the OS powering approximately 96% of the world's top 1 million web servers, 100% of the top 500 supercomputers, Android smartphones (2.5 billion+ devices), and the vast majority of cloud computing infrastructure. Linux distributions (distros) package the kernel with software: Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS/RHEL, Fedora, Arch, Alpine, and Amazon Linux are common server distros. Ubuntu Desktop and Fedora Workstation serve developer workstations. Linux's strength for servers is its stability, security model (user permissions, SELinux, AppArmor), performance tuning capabilities, and total cost (free vs Windows Server licensing). Container technologies (Docker, Kubernetes) are Linux-native and depend on Linux kernel features (namespaces, cgroups). WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) brings Linux to Windows developers. Linux's desktop market share remains ~3–4% for consumer PCs, but among developers the share is much higher — approximately 25% of developers use Linux as their primary OS (Stack Overflow surveys), with macOS dominant and Windows common. Linux's learning curve and hardware driver compatibility remain its primary barriers for mainstream desktop adoption.