Most of the people think Linux is a complete system, like Windows or Mac OS. In reality, Linux is just the core of the operating system, called the kernel, which is the layer between the software that you interact with and the hardware.
However, when people ask "Do you use Linux?" they generally talk about the complete operating system, meaning they regard it as a complete system like Windows or Mac. That makes it difficult to define because there are many different desktop environments available for Linux. You could also use Linux without a graphical environment, which we call the command line. That just involves typing in commands for the computer (no mouse, no windows).
One of the greatest benefits of
using Linux is that you can get it for free. Linux is an open-source
software. Different parts of Linux are developed by different
organizations. Different parts include kernel, shell utilities, X server, system
environment, graphical programs, etc. If you want you can access the codes of
all these parts and assemble them yourself. But it's not an easy task seeking a
lot of time and all the parts have to be assembled correctly to work
properly. The organizations which perform these process and publish their
unique package is said to be Distributions(also called as Distros).
There are on an average six
hundred Linux distributors providing different features.Some of the popular distros
are Ubuntu, Linux Mint, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Red Hat.
Initially, Linux is created for
fully free computing and for open source software development. Today, over
850,000 Android phones running Linux are activated every single day. Compare
that to just 30,000 windows phones according to the latest reports. Eight out
of ten financial traders are powered by Linux. Nine out of ten of the world's
supercomputers run Linux. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon are all powered by
Linux.
Unlike other OS like windows or
IOS, Linux is built collaboratively
across companies, geographics, and markets resulting in the largest
collaborative development project in the history of computing.
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