We All Use Linux - Whether We Like It or Not
Jul 09, 2007
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I remember the first time someone told me I could download a "free" operating system. They told me I didn't need to pay for Microsoft Windows. The excitement was unreal. No more license fees for MS Windows, and the operating environment was just about the same (with an added GUI), faster and more stable.
So I asked - 'How can this be free?'.
The response over 10 years ago still rings sweetly to my ears - 'oh it's open source'. Your probably know that open source software is software produced for sharing amongst the user community and updated and improved by various means within the community. I never left MS Windows Operating Systems for my PC and laptop - but the concept of free software became very real as a part of my web growth.
Well here we are in 2007 and I'm sure many out there still don't know what Linux is or perhaps don't even care. The big deal though is that we all use Linux (or at least a Unix flavor/distro of some sort). Next time you download a free program, or drag a document into an ftp window or host a website - there's a good chance that the server you're downloading from, ftp'ing to or hosting on is a Linux based system with freely installed open source software.
I read some statistics a few years back that over 80% of share web host data-centers were on Linux or some other Linux based operating system (CentOS, Debian, FreeBSD, Fedora. I read an article recently about how people in the industry have tried to "count" the number of Linux users - but it's a notion impossible to consider.
All in all - be grateful for Linux. Our internet technology world pretty much wouldn't function without it.
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