While just surfing through oceans of websites and reading somethings about our very own "Linux" I suddenly felt that we hardly know even what it (linux) means??
Here are few definitions from various sources:-
Linux (commonly pronounced IPA: /?l?n?ks/ in English; variants exist[1]) is a generic term commonly used to refer to Unix-like computer operating systems which use the Linux kernel.
1. (computing, uncountable) A free Unix-like operating system kernel created by Linus Torvalds and released under the GNU General Public License.
2. (countable) One of any number of systems that uses Linux as its kernel.
A trademark for an open-source version of the UNIX operating system.
A trademark for a computer operating system that is a free implementation of the UNIX operating system.
– encarta
An open-source version of the UNIX operating system.
Pronounced lee-nucks or lih-nucks. A freely-distributable open source operating system that runs on a number of hardware platforms. The Linux kernel was developed mainly by Linus Torvalds and it is based on Unix. Because it’s free, and because it runs on many platforms, including PCs and Macintoshes, Linux has become an extremely popular alternative to proprietary operating systems.
A freeware implementation of UNIX originally written from scratch with no proprietary code by Linus Torvalds, which can be used with many different operating systems.
Linux is an operating system that was initially created as a hobby by a young student, Linus Torvalds, at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Linus had an interest in Minix, a small UNIX system, and decided to develop a system that exceeded the Minix standards.
Depending on the context, the word “Linux” describes a couple of things. Most accurately, the word “Linux” describes an operating system kernel — that is, the low-level part of an operating system that does all the hard work of talking to the computer’s hardware, managing memory and devices, and generally doing the grunt work. Unless you are an advanced user, or you run into some sort of hardware or software problem, you’ll almost never interact or even need to think about the kernel itself.
While it’s a very important part of the system, it’s not something that users interact with directly. Instead, you’ll be working with what are referred to as “user-space” programs — so called because users actually work with the programs directly. When a vendor or project bundles the Linux kernel and a bunch of user-space programs together in a way that’s useful to end users, that’s called a Linux distribution, often just “Linux” for short — because Linux is at the heart of the whole thing to begin with, and saying “Linux distribution” every time is a bit long winded. Generally speaking, when people say something like “I use Linux,” or “have you tried Linux?” they’re not just talking about the kernel, they’re talking about a Linux distribution.
