What’s GNU/Linux?
Software on top of a kernel.
The first time I heard the word Linux was back in 2008 when I was a young high school student obsessed with computers. Fortunately, I was able to get good grades, so my father offered me a laptop. It wasn’t something really powerful, but it could do the trick. It had tons of software running on the pre-installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 operating system with 512 MB of Random Access Memory (RAM). I enjoyed it much then, but I wasn’t quite satisfied with the system. The computer was getting slower as I installed more apps and it didn’t look as cool as I would have wanted it to be.
I was also a bit of a Hollywood-hacker-wannabe, so out of the blue, I asked myself what do they use that makes them do almost everything while just typing on a black screen with their keyboard. My curiosity led me to Google and there it was: a load of information about Linux that ended up confusing me. However, after a little while I was dual booting my Linux (Ubuntu) with my Windows installation.
It felt like it was the dawn of a new age. Me becoming a hacker how cool could that be? Well, It wasn’t that much of a dawn, if anything. Installing software was quite cool in theory, but proved to be quite difficult giving that I didn’t really know what I was doing.
Did you notice I was saying “Linux” in the paragraphs before? I mistakenly referred to what I was using as my Linux.Even though it is acceptable as a term (and widespread); it is quite unfair in principle. Linux is a kernel developed by Finnish student Linus Torvalds in 1991. What’s a kernel? It is, in a nutshell, the layer that helps the operating system and software interact with the hardware. (More on the kernel in another article). Then what should it be called then if Linux is not the whole system. Great Question! The system should be called GNU/Linux. What’s GNU you may ask. It stands for “Gnu’s Not Unix!”. It is, in a nutshell again, the free software that runs on top of the Linux Kernel which we call the operating system. Therefore, the system should be called GNU/Linux as it is based on both the work of the GNU project and the Linux kernel. We’ve thrown a lot of acronyms in the air, but what is really GNU/Linux how can one define it? GNU/Linux is an operating system (like Windows) based upon the Linux kernel and free software created by the GNU project. Simple right?
GNU/Linux has many flavors that we call “Linux Distributions”. They are countless of them. They are leading distribution for all type of use case scenarios such as Red Hat for servers, or Ubuntu for desktops etc. The most interesting thing about them is that you can create your own distribution. You can either create a distribution based on an existing one or, if you are more of an explorer, create one from scratch!
Where did GNU/Linux come from? The system wasn’t built from scratch, but it was actually based on a previous operating system called Unix. One of the questions that I get the most is between Windows and Linux, which one is better. This is a big topic that can have hundreds of articles written about it as they are many parameters coming into perspective. What I believe is the main point of divergence is the philosophy. GNU/Linux is based on free and open software meaning that we should be able to see the source code of most if not all of the software that is installed on the system (including the system and the kernel) and then modify it if need be. Windows on the other end is closed source meaning that you only get the end result that is the system and graphical user interface in front of you.
In the beginning, GNU/Linux software was not that much user friendly compared to Windows’. However, that was a long time ago. Now you can find software and their alternative which are both easy to use and easy to understand on both platforms. Should you switch to a GNU/Linux distribution? Well, you are free to do so. However, you should backup your data and you can install it alongside your current operating system then play around with it for a bit then decide if you like it or not then make the decision.
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