The free Unix workalike created by Linus Torvalds and friends
starting about 1991. The pronunciation /li´nuhks/ is preferred
because the name `Linus' has an /ee/ sound in Swedish (Linus's family
is part of Finland's 6% ethnic-Swedish minority) and Linus considers
English short /i/ to be closer to /ee/ than English long /i:/. This
may be the most remarkable hacker project in history -- an entire
clone of Unix for 386, 486 and Pentium micros, distributed for free
with sources over the net (ports to Alpha and Sparc and many other
machines are also in use).
Linux is what {GNU} aimed to be, and it relies on the GNU toolset.
But the Free Software Foundation didn't produce the kernel to go with
that toolset until 1999, which was too late. Other, similar efforts
like FreeBSD and NetBSD have been technically successful but never
caught fire the way Linux has; as this is written in 2003, Linux has
effectively swallowed all proprietary Unixes except Solaris and is
seriously challenging Microsoft. It has already captured 41% of the
Internet-server market and over 25% of general business servers.
An earlier version of this entry opined "The secret of Linux's
success seems to be that Linus worked much harder early on to keep
the development process open and recruit other hackers, creating a
snowball effect." Truer than we knew. See {bazaar}.
(Some people object that the name `Linux' should be used to refer
only to the kernel, not the entire operating system. This claim is a
proxy for an underlying territorial dispute; people who insist on the
term GNU/Linux want the {FSF} to get most of the credit for Linux
because RMS and friends wrote many of its user-level tools. Neither
this theory nor the term GNU/Linux has gained more than minority
acceptance).
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {Amiga Persecution Complex}{bazaar}{BogoMIPS}{clone}{dahmum}{demigod}{distribution}{FUD}{GandhiCon}{GNU}{Halloween Documents}{Hed Rat}{IBM}{Infinite-Monkey Theorem}{kernel-of-the-week club}{Lintel}{Linus}{open source}{OS/2}{Python}{Slowlaris}{Tux}{Unix}{Unix conspiracy}{Wintel}]