User:MattLee/Linux

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.

Work in progress

GNU/Linux is the name of a Unix-like operating system, founded by Richard Stallman in September 1983, with contributions from volunteers. The Linux kernel component originated by Linus Torvalds in the early 1990s, and is developed as a separate project to GNU.

GNU was initially developing its own kernel, but most distributions of GNU were released with Linux, due to its speed of development, and its compatibility with the Intel 386. Because of this, many people have come to assume Linux is their operating system, due to the commonality of the Linux brand, however nobody disputes that this is not the case, though the name GNU/Linux has met with some resistance from people.

While most of the distributions, or released editions of GNU/Linux contain some proprietary software, ranging from proprietary binary-blobs in the kernel, to full blown proprietary applications in the form of Skype, Flash and Opera, a few distributions have taken a firm stance against this, and have gained recognition and support from the Free Software Foundation, amongst others for their efforts.

A typical GNU/Linux machine is built from hundreds of components from several different sources, many of which come from the Free Software Foundation's GNU project, including the GNU C Library, GNU Coreutils and GNU Baseutils as well as Linux, and contributions from the various BSD projects. Application software is provided by the likes of OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Pidgin, and desktop environments vary from GNOME and KDE, to less commonly used lightweight variants such as Xfce, which has found significant success on older machines.