Linux is an
operating system.
It is the main big program that operates the computer - hence the name.
Linux is
UNIX like operating system.
The UNIX project (back in the 70s) was meant to create a simpler, but in the same time more powerfull example of an operating systems.
You can
read more about the UNIC philosophy, and especially about its main ideas:
Write programs that do one thing and do it well.
Write programs to work together.
How Linux came to be
Many sites tell this story better that I do, but here's how I endounterred this in the 90s:
A book about operating systems appeared in the CS departement in BGU:
This book is a masterpiece of operating systems theory, but it also contained a UNIX-like operating system (called MINIX) that you could run on a P.C !
This was free to use in the university for deucation purposes only, and there was a long list of people that asked for access to those 2 x 3.5"
floppy disks that contained everything. My friends and I were jealous, but too lazy to do anything about it.
It turned out that another student,
Linus Torvalds from Helsinki did something about it.
The rest is, off course, history.
Or legend.
Linux is the most used operating system in the world.
Here why:
Android is using the linux kernel, so we can think of Android as a program running under linux.
Android itself is used more than Windows (judging by web usage)
Linux dominates the Internet server market (cloud)
