CompTIA A+® Certification All-In-One For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

1.4. Welcome to the Linux World

The Unix OS was originally designed to control telephone switches for the Bell telephone network. It was designed to be highly stable and configurable. As it grew to maturity, it became popular for its stability and processing power. Over the years, Unix went from solely a command line environment to having a GUI. Its popularity led to a young university student's creation, during the early 1990s, of a Unix-like shell that would work on Intel-based systems. This student was Linus Torvalds, and he created Linus' Unix, or Linux.

1.4.1. Comparing versions of Linux

Since the creation of Linux, it has been a worldwide group project, with Linus Torvalds controlling what components go into the Linux kernel, or the core components that make up the brains of the Linux OS. Many individuals and groups have contributed programming code to the Linux kernel, usually as completed drivers for hardware. The only thing that is common to all versions of Linux is the OS kernel. Beyond the kernel, there are applications that are used with the kernel to give you a system that you can actually use to accomplish tasks. You can literally download the kernel source from http://kernel.org, compile the applications that you want to use, put them together, and have a Linux system. Because it is that easy to make your own Linux system, there are currently just about as many Linux systems as there are tasks you want to accomplish with them.

When a group or company takes the ...