What Is Linux?

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Your computer, despite being a collection of highly sophisticated parts, is really just . . . well, a collection of highly sophisticated parts. On its own, it can do nothing other than switch on and off and spin a disk or two. In order for it to do anything else, it needs an operating system (OS) to guide it. The OS takes an essentially well-endowed but completely uneducated hunk of a machine and educates it, at least enough so that it will understand what you want it to do.

You already know of, and have probably used at least one of the many operating systems that exist today. Windows, DOS, and the Mac OS are all such operating systems, and Linux is yet another. Linux is, however, different from these other operating systems, both in terms of its capabilities and its heritage. Linux was not created by a corporation or by some corporate wanna-bes out to make money. It was instead created by a Swedish computer enthusiast living in Finland, Linus Torvalds, who wanted to create a better Unix-like system that would work on home computers, particularly his. Rather than keeping his creation to himself, Torvalds opened it up to the world, so to speak, and the system was then expanded and improved on by compu-geeks around the globe who worked to make the system better and more powerful.

Linux has acquired many fans and followers since its creation in 1994. Such devotees praise Linux for its many features, as well as for its being robust, reliable, free, and open. Despite these positive characteristics, however, Linux is, on its own, just a text-based system. There is no pretty desktop, and there are no windows or charming little icons to make you feel safe and comfy once you are behind the keyboard. Powerful though it may be, Linux is still strictly a black- screen, command-line-driven operating system. I guess you could think of it as DOS on steroids, though a Linux purist will surely cringe at the thought. Sorry.

Although you can use Linux by itself, accomplishing all your tasks by typing in commands on a black screen, you don’t have to. It is fair to say that with the advent of the Macintosh and its easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI, pronounced goo-ee) in 1984, users of other operating systems began suffering something akin to GUI envy. They began clamoring for a GUI to call their own, and Windows, which gave DOS a GUI, eased many command-wary users into the Microsoft world.

Similarly, many members of the Linux world felt the need and desire to go graphical, and various software mechanisms were developed by the community at large to bring about the change. The graphical desktop environments that are included in your Fedora Core distribution, GNOME and KDE, are examples of the fruit of that development.

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