AbiWord ( / ˈ æ b i w ɜːr d / ) is a free and open-source word processor . It is written in C++ and since version 3 it is based on GTK+ 3. The name "AbiWord" is derived from the root of the Spanish word " abierto ", meaning "open".
86-571: AbiWord was originally started by SourceGear Corporation as the first part of a proposed AbiSuite but was adopted by open source developers after SourceGear changed its business focus and ceased development. It now runs on Linux , ReactOS , Solaris, AmigaOS 4.0 (through its Cygwin X11 engine), MeeGo (on the Nokia N9 smartphone), Maemo (on the Nokia N810 ), QNX and other operating systems . Development of
172-472: A high-level language implementation of Unix made its porting to different computer platforms easier. Due to an earlier antitrust case forbidding it from entering the computer business, AT&T licensed the operating system's source code as a trade secret to anyone who asked. As a result, Unix grew quickly and became widely adopted by academic institutions and businesses. In 1984, AT&T divested itself of its regional operating companies , and
258-455: A linker . The GNU system required its own C compiler and tools to be free software, so these also had to be developed. By June 1987, the project had accumulated and developed free software for an assembler , an almost finished portable optimizing C compiler ( GCC ), an editor ( GNU Emacs ), and various Unix utilities (such as ls , grep , awk , make and ld ). They had an initial kernel that needed more updates. Once
344-424: A minimalist functionality, while more elaborate window managers such as FVWM , Enlightenment , or Window Maker provide more features such as a built-in taskbar and themes , but are still lightweight when compared to desktop environments. Desktop environments include window managers as part of their standard installations, such as Mutter (GNOME), KWin (KDE), or Xfwm (xfce), although users may choose to use
430-505: A solution stack such as LAMP . The source code of Linux may be used, modified, and distributed commercially or non-commercially by anyone under the terms of its respective licenses, such as the GNU General Public License (GPL). The license means creating novel distributions is permitted by anyone and is easier than it would be for an operating system such as MacOS or Microsoft Windows . The Linux kernel, for example,
516-455: A Linux distribution) qualifies as free (libre), and helps distribution developers make their distributions qualify. The list mostly describes distributions that are a combination of GNU packages with a Linux-libre kernel (a modified Linux kernel that removes binary blobs, obfuscated code, and portions of code under proprietary licenses) and consist only of free software (eschewing proprietary software entirely). Distributions that have adopted
602-466: A competing OS, agrees that "Linux wasn't designed, it evolved", but considers this to be a limitation, proposing that some features, especially those related to security, cannot be evolved into, "this is not a biological system at the end of the day, it's a software system." A Linux-based system is a modular Unix-like operating system, deriving much of its basic design from principles established in Unix during
688-971: A different window manager if preferred. Wayland is a display server protocol intended as a replacement for the X11 protocol; as of 2022 , it has received relatively wide adoption. Unlike X11, Wayland does not need an external window manager and compositing manager. Therefore, a Wayland compositor takes the role of the display server, window manager, and compositing manager. Weston is the reference implementation of Wayland, while GNOME's Mutter and KDE's KWin are being ported to Wayland as standalone display servers. Enlightenment has already been successfully ported since version 19. Additionally, many window managers have been made for Wayland, such as Sway or Hyprland, as well as other graphical utilities such as Waybar or Rofi. Linux currently has two modern kernel-userspace APIs for handling video input devices: V4L2 API for video streams and radio, and DVB API for digital TV reception. Due to
774-468: A fully free (libre) GNU/Linux distribution. From the mid-1990s onward, with many companies investing in free software development, the Free Software Foundation redirected its funds toward the legal and political support of free software development. Software development from that point on focused on maintaining existing projects, and starting new projects only when there was an acute threat to
860-575: A grammar checker was later added to OpenOffice.org . Link Grammar is both a theory of syntax and an open source parser which is now developed by the AbiWord project. Linux This is an accepted version of this page Linux ( / ˈ l ɪ n ʊ k s / , LIN -uuks ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel , an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds . Linux
946-404: A place in server installations such as the popular LAMP application stack. The use of Linux distributions in home and enterprise desktops has been growing. Linux distributions have also become popular in the netbook market, with many devices shipping with customized Linux distributions installed, and Google releasing their own ChromeOS designed for netbooks. Linux's greatest success in
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#17328834321831032-498: A popular CLI shell. The graphical user interface (or GUI) used by most Linux systems is built on top of an implementation of the X Window System . More recently, the Linux community has sought to advance to Wayland as the new display server protocol, in place of X11. Many other open-source software projects contribute to Linux systems. Installed components of a Linux system include the following: The user interface , also known as
1118-460: A result, any user who obtains the software legally has the same freedoms as the rest of its users do. The GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation sometimes differentiate between "strong" and "weak" copyleft. "Weak" copyleft programs typically allow distributors to link them together with non-free programs, while "strong" copyleft strictly forbids this practice. Most of the GNU Project's output
1204-481: A significant business around Linux distributions. The free software licenses , on which the various software packages of a distribution built on the Linux kernel are based, explicitly accommodate and encourage commercialization; the relationship between a Linux distribution as a whole and individual vendors may be seen as symbiotic . One common business model of commercial suppliers is charging for support, especially for business users. A number of companies also offer
1290-509: A similar manner to Google Docs , using a system known as GOCollab. Users can collaborate using a varitety of different protocols including TCP and XMPP , and formerly over AbiCollab.net, a web based service that facilitated collaboration between users. AbiWord comes with several import and export filters providing partial support for such formats as HTML , Microsoft Word (.doc), Office Open XML (.docx), OpenDocument Text (.odt), Rich Text Format (.rtf), and text documents (.txt). LaTeX
1376-493: A specialized business version of their distribution, which adds proprietary support packages and tools to administer higher numbers of installations or to simplify administrative tasks. Another business model is to give away the software to sell hardware. This used to be the norm in the computer industry, with operating systems such as CP/M , Apple DOS , and versions of the classic Mac OS before 7.6 freely copyable (but not modifiable). As computer hardware standardized throughout
1462-972: A system's software from one central location. A distribution is largely driven by its developer and user communities. Some vendors develop and fund their distributions on a volunteer basis, Debian being a well-known example. Others maintain a community version of their commercial distributions, as Red Hat does with Fedora , and SUSE does with openSUSE . In many cities and regions, local associations known as Linux User Groups (LUGs) seek to promote their preferred distribution and by extension free software. They hold meetings and provide free demonstrations, training, technical support, and operating system installation to new users. Many Internet communities also provide support to Linux users and developers. Most distributions and free software / open-source projects have IRC chatrooms or newsgroups . Online forums are another means of support, with notable examples being Unix & Linux Stack Exchange , LinuxQuestions.org and
1548-402: A user may interact with the application; however, certain extensions of the X Window System are not capable of working over the network. Several X display servers exist, with the reference implementation, X.Org Server , being the most popular. Server distributions might provide a command-line interface for developers and administrators, but provide a custom interface for end-users, designed for
1634-453: A vast body of work and may include both kernel modules and user applications and libraries. Linux vendors and communities combine and distribute the kernel, GNU components, and non-GNU components, with additional package management software in the form of Linux distributions. Many developers of open-source software agree that the Linux kernel was not designed but rather evolved through natural selection . Torvalds considers that although
1720-833: A version for Microsoft Windows has temporarily ended due to lack of maintainers (the latest released versions are 2.8.6 and 2.9.4 beta). The macOS port has remained on version 2.4 since 2005, although the current version does run non-natively on macOS through XQuartz . AbiWord is part of the AbiSource project which develops a number of office-related technologies. AbiWord supports both basic word processing features such as lists, indents and character formats, and more sophisticated features including tables, styles, page headers and footers, footnotes , templates, multiple views, page columns, spell checking , and grammar checking . The Presentation view of AbiWord, which permits easy display of presentations created in AbiWord on "screen-sized" pages,
1806-510: A version of GNU/Hurd that is suitable for production environments since the commencement of the GNU/Hurd project over 33 years ago. A stable version (or variant) of GNU can be run by combining the GNU packages with the Linux kernel , making a functional Unix-like system. The GNU project calls this GNU/Linux, and the defining features are the combination of: Within the GNU website, a list of projects
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#17328834321831892-455: Is a free software , mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaboratively developing and publishing software that gives everyone the rights to freely run the software, copy and distribute it, study it, and modify it. GNU software grants these rights in its license . In order to ensure that
1978-510: Is another feature not often found in word processors. AbiWord generally works similarly to classic versions (pre-Office 2007) of Microsoft Word , as direct ease of migration was a high priority early goal. While many interface similarities remain, cloning the Word interface is no longer a top priority. The interface is intended to follow user interface guidelines for each respective platform. AbiWord allows users to share and collaborate on documents in
2064-435: Is laid out and each project has specifics for what type of developer is able to perform the task needed for a certain piece of the GNU project. The skill level ranges from project to project but anyone with background knowledge in programming is encouraged to support the project. The packaging of GNU tools, together with the Linux kernel and other programs, is usually called a Linux distribution (distro). The GNU Project calls
2150-562: Is licensed under the GPLv2, with an exception for system calls that allows code that calls the kernel via system calls not to be licensed under the GPL. Because of the dominance of Linux-based Android on smartphones , Linux, including Android, has the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems as of May 2022 . Linux is, as of March 2024 , used by around 4 percent of desktop computers . The Chromebook , which runs
2236-539: Is now independently managed by the GNOME Project . GNU Enterprise ( GNUe ) was a meta-project started in 1996, and can be regarded as a sub-project of the GNU Project. GNUe's goal is to create free "enterprise-class data-aware applications" ( enterprise resource planners , etc.). GNUe is designed to collect Enterprise software for the GNU system in a single location (much like the GNOME project collects Desktop software),it
2322-490: Is released under a strong copyleft, although some is released under a weak copyleft or a lax, push-over free software license. The first goal of the GNU project was to create a whole free-software operating system. Because UNIX was already widespread and ran on more powerful machines, compared to contemporary CP/M or MS-DOS machines of time, it was decided it would be a Unix-like operating system. Richard Stallman later commented that he considered MS-DOS "a toy". By 1992,
2408-449: Is supported for export only. Plug-in filters are available to deal with many other formats, notably WordPerfect documents. The native file format , .abw, uses XML , so as to mitigate vendor lock-in concerns with respect to interoperability and digital archiving . The AbiWord project includes a US English-only grammar checking plugin using Link Grammar . AbiWord had grammar checking before any other open source word processor, although
2494-403: Is that the Linux kernel and other components are free and open-source software. Linux is not the only such operating system, although it is by far the most widely used. Some free and open-source software licenses are based on the principle of copyleft , a kind of reciprocity: any work derived from a copyleft piece of software must also be copyleft itself. The most common free software license,
2580-523: Is the Bourne-Again Shell (bash), originally developed for the GNU Project, other shells such as Zsh are also used. Most low-level Linux components, including various parts of the userland , use the CLI exclusively. The CLI is particularly suited for automation of repetitive or delayed tasks and provides very simple inter-process communication . On desktop systems, the most popular user interfaces are
2666-555: Is the same detailed history as at their web site. The GNU Manifesto was written by Richard Stallman to gain support and participation in the GNU Project. In the GNU Manifesto, Stallman listed four freedoms essential to software users: freedom to run a program for any purpose, freedom to study the mechanics of the program and modify it, freedom to redistribute copies, and freedom to improve and change modified versions for public use. To implement these freedoms, users needed full access to
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2752-821: Is typically packaged as a Linux distribution (distro), which includes the kernel and supporting system software and libraries — many of which are provided by the GNU Project — to create a complete operating system. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses and recommends the name " GNU/Linux " to emphasize the use and importance of GNU software in many distributions, causing some controversy . Thousands of distributions exist, many based directly or indirectly on other distributions; popular Linux distributions include Debian , Fedora Linux , Arch Linux , and Ubuntu , while commercial distributions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise . Other than
2838-468: Is typically built into the firmware and is highly tailored to the system. This includes routers , automation controls, smart home devices , video game consoles , televisions (Samsung and LG smart TVs ), automobiles (Tesla, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, and Toyota), and spacecraft ( Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon crew capsule, and the Ingenuity Mars helicopter). The Unix operating system
2924-415: Is used on a wide variety of devices including PCs, workstations , mainframes and embedded systems . Linux is the predominant operating system for servers and is also used on all of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers . When combined with Android , which is Linux-based and designed for smartphones , they have the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems . The Linux kernel
3010-421: The Free Software Foundation and wrote the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) in 1989. By the early 1990s, many of the programs required in an operating system (such as libraries, compilers , text editors , a command-line shell , and a windowing system ) were completed, although low-level elements such as device drivers , daemons , and the kernel , called GNU Hurd , were stalled and incomplete. Minix
3096-400: The GNU General Public License . Combined with the operating system utilities already developed by the GNU project, it allowed for the first operating system that was free software, commonly known as Linux . The project's current work includes software development, awareness building, political campaigning, and sharing of new material. Richard Stallman announced his intent to start coding
3182-736: The GNU toolchain , which includes the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and the GNU Build System . Amongst others, GCC provides compilers for Ada , C , C++ , Go and Fortran . Many programming languages have a cross-platform reference implementation that supports Linux, for example PHP , Perl , Ruby , Python , Java , Go , Rust and Haskell . First released in 2003, the LLVM project provides an alternative cross-platform open-source compiler for many languages. Proprietary compilers for Linux include
3268-470: The GUI shells , packaged together with extensive Desktop environments , such as KDE Plasma , GNOME , MATE , Cinnamon , LXDE , Pantheon , and Xfce , though a variety of additional user interfaces exist. Most popular user interfaces are based on the X Window System, often simply called "X". It provides network transparency and permits a graphical application running on one system to be displayed on another where
3354-726: The Intel C++ Compiler , Sun Studio , and IBM XL C/C++ Compiler . BASIC is available in procedural form from QB64 , PureBasic , Yabasic , GLBasic , Basic4GL , XBasic , wxBasic , SdlBasic , and Basic-256 , as well as object oriented through Gambas , FreeBASIC , B4X, Basic for Qt , Phoenix Object Basic, NS Basic , ProvideX, Chipmunk Basic , RapidQ and Xojo . Pascal is implemented through GNU Pascal , Free Pascal , and Virtual Pascal , as well as graphically via Lazarus , PascalABC.NET , or Delphi using FireMonkey (previously through Borland Kylix ). GNU Project The GNU Project ( / ɡ n uː / )
3440-449: The entire software of a computer grants its users all freedom rights (use, share, study, modify), even the most fundamental and important part, the operating system (including all its numerous utility programs) needed to be free software. Stallman decided to call this operating system GNU (a recursive acronym meaning " GNU's not Unix! "), basing its design on that of Unix , a proprietary operating system. According to its manifesto,
3526-471: The free software community . One of the most notable projects of the GNU Project is the GNU Compiler Collection , whose components have been adopted as the standard compiler system on many Unix-like systems. The copyright of most works by the GNU Project is owned by the Free Software Foundation. The GNOME desktop effort was launched by the GNU Project because another desktop system, KDE ,
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3612-407: The kernel and the compiler were finished, GNU was able to be used for program development . The main goal was to create many other applications to be like the Unix system. GNU was able to run Unix programs but was not identical to it. GNU incorporated longer file names, file version numbers, and a crash-proof file system. The GNU Manifesto was written to gain support and participation from others for
3698-476: The shell , is either a command-line interface (CLI), a graphical user interface (GUI), or controls attached to the associated hardware, which is common for embedded systems. For desktop systems, the default user interface is usually graphical, although the CLI is commonly available through terminal emulator windows or on a separate virtual console . CLI shells are text-based user interfaces, which use text for both input and output. The dominant shell used in Linux
3784-415: The source code . To ensure code remained free and provide it to the public, Stallman created the GNU General Public License (GPL), which allowed software and the future generations of code derived from it to remain free for public use. Although most of the GNU Project's output is technical in nature, it was launched as a social, ethical, and political initiative. As well as producing software and licenses,
3870-399: The 1970s and 1980s. Such a system uses a monolithic kernel , the Linux kernel, which handles process control, networking, access to the peripherals , and file systems . Device drivers are either integrated directly with the kernel or added as modules that are loaded while the system is running. The GNU userland is a key part of most systems based on the Linux kernel, with Android being
3956-451: The 1980s, it became more difficult for hardware manufacturers to profit from this tactic, as the OS would run on any manufacturer's computer that shared the same architecture. Most programming languages support Linux either directly or through third-party community based ports . The original development tools used for building both Linux applications and operating system programs are found within
4042-501: The GNU FSDG include Dragora GNU/Linux-Libre , GNU Guix System , Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre , Parabola GNU/Linux-libre , Trisquel GNU/Linux , PureOS , and a few others. The Fedora Project's distribution license guidelines were used as a basis for the FSDG. The Fedora Project's own guidelines, however, currently do not follow the FSDG, and thus the GNU Project does not consider Fedora to be
4128-663: The GNU General Public License (GPL), is a form of copyleft and is used for the Linux kernel and many of the components from the GNU Project. Linux-based distributions are intended by developers for interoperability with other operating systems and established computing standards. Linux systems adhere to POSIX, SUS , LSB , ISO , and ANSI standards where possible, although to date only one Linux distribution has been POSIX.1 certified, Linux-FT. Free software projects, although developed through collaboration , are often produced independently of each other. The fact that
4214-423: The GNU Project has published a number of writings, the majority of which were authored by Richard Stallman. The GNU project uses software that is free for users to copy, edit, and distribute. It is free in the sense that users can change the software to fit individual needs. The way programmers obtain the free software depends on where they get it. The software could be provided to the programmer from friends or over
4300-470: The GNU Project in a Usenet message in September 1983. Despite never having used Unix prior, Stallman felt that it was the most appropriate system design to use as a basis for the GNU Project, as it was portable and "fairly clean". When the GNU project first started they had an Emacs text editor with Lisp for writing editor commands, a source level debugger , a yacc -compatible parser generator, and
4386-404: The GNU project had completed all of the major operating system utilities, but had not completed their proposed operating system kernel , GNU Hurd . With the release of the Linux kernel , started independently by Linus Torvalds in 1991, and released under the GPLv2 with version 0.12 in 1992, for the first time it was possible to run an operating system composed completely of free software. Though
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#17328834321834472-455: The Internet, or the company a programmer works for may purchase the software. Proceeds from associate members, purchases, and donations support the GNU Project. Copyleft is what helps maintain free use of this software among other programmers. Copyleft gives the legal right to everyone to use, edit, and redistribute programs or programs' code as long as the distribution terms do not change. As
4558-453: The Linux kernel is not part of the GNU project, it was developed using GCC and other GNU programming tools and was released as free software under the GNU General Public License . Most compilation of the Linux kernel is still done with GNU toolchains, but it is currently possible to use the Clang compiler and the LLVM toolchain for compilation. As of present, the GNU project has not released
4644-460: The Linux kernel, key components that make up a distribution may include a display server (windowing system) , a package manager , a bootloader and the Bash shell . Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free and open-source software collaboration. While originally developed for x86 based personal computers , it has since been ported to more platforms than any other operating system, and
4730-647: The Linux kernel-based ChromeOS , dominates the US K–12 education market and represents nearly 20 percent of sub-$ 300 notebook sales in the US. Linux is the leading operating system on servers (over 96.4% of the top one million web servers' operating systems are Linux), leads other big iron systems such as mainframe computers , and is used on all of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers (as of November 2017 , having gradually displaced all competitors). Linux also runs on embedded systems , i.e., devices whose operating system
4816-605: The Linux kernel. On July 3, 1991, to implement Unix system calls , Linus Torvalds attempted unsuccessfully to obtain a digital copy of the POSIX standards documentation with a request to the comp.os.minix newsgroup . After not finding the POSIX documentation, Torvalds initially resorted to determining system calls from SunOS documentation owned by the university for use in operating its Sun Microsystems server. He also learned some system calls from Tanenbaum's Minix text. Torvalds began
4902-415: The beginning, it was rather casually hacked on by huge numbers of volunteers coordinating only through the Internet. Quality was maintained not by rigid standards or autocracy but by the naively simple strategy of releasing every week and getting feedback from hundreds of users within days, creating a sort of rapid Darwinian selection on the mutations introduced by developers." Bryan Cantrill , an engineer of
4988-451: The combination of GNU and the Linux kernel "GNU/Linux", and asks others to do the same, resulting in the GNU/Linux naming controversy . Most Linux distros combine GNU packages with a Linux kernel which contains proprietary binary blobs . The GNU Free System Distribution Guidelines (GNU FSDG) is a system distribution commitment that explains how an installable system distribution (such as
5074-447: The complexity and diversity of different devices, and due to the large number of formats and standards handled by those APIs, this infrastructure needs to evolve to better fit other devices. Also, a good userspace device library is the key to the success of having userspace applications to be able to work with all formats supported by those devices. The primary difference between Linux and many other popular contemporary operating systems
5160-498: The consumer market is perhaps the mobile device market, with Android being the dominant operating system on smartphones and very popular on tablets and, more recently, on wearables . Linux gaming is also on the rise with Valve showing its support for Linux and rolling out SteamOS , its own gaming-oriented Linux distribution, which was later implemented in their Steam Deck platform. Linux distributions have also gained popularity with various local and national governments, such as
5246-464: The design of Unix served as a scaffolding, "Linux grew with a lot of mutations – and because the mutations were less than random, they were faster and more directed than alpha-particles in DNA ." Eric S. Raymond considers Linux's revolutionary aspects to be social, not technical: before Linux, complex software was designed carefully by small groups, but "Linux evolved in a completely different way. From nearly
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#17328834321835332-502: The development of 386BSD , from which NetBSD , OpenBSD and FreeBSD descended, predated that of Linux. Linus Torvalds has stated on separate occasions that if the GNU kernel or 386BSD had been available at the time (1991), he probably would not have created Linux. While attending the University of Helsinki in the fall of 1990, Torvalds enrolled in a Unix course. The course used a MicroVAX minicomputer running Ultrix , and one of
5418-527: The development of the Linux kernel on Minix and applications written for Minix were also used on Linux. Later, Linux matured and further Linux kernel development took place on Linux systems. GNU applications also replaced all Minix components, because it was advantageous to use the freely available code from the GNU Project with the fledgling operating system; code licensed under the GNU GPL can be reused in other computer programs as long as they also are released under
5504-476: The development of the components of the system and free software. An analysis of the Linux kernel in 2017 showed that well over 85% of the code was developed by programmers who are being paid for their work, leaving about 8.2% to unpaid developers and 4.1% unclassified. Some of the major corporations that provide contributions include Intel , Samsung , Google , AMD , Oracle , and Facebook . Several corporations, notably Red Hat, Canonical , and SUSE have built
5590-433: The federal government of Brazil . Linus Torvalds is the lead maintainer for the Linux kernel and guides its development, while Greg Kroah-Hartman is the lead maintainer for the stable branch. Zoë Kooyman is the executive director of the Free Software Foundation, which in turn supports the GNU components. Finally, individuals and corporations develop third-party non-GNU components. These third-party components comprise
5676-466: The first version of the Linux kernel on the Internet . Like GNU and 386BSD, Linux did not have any Unix code and therefore avoided any current legal issues . Desktop Linux distributions include a windowing system such as X11 or Wayland and a desktop environment such as GNOME , KDE Plasma or Xfce . Distributions intended for servers may not have a graphical user interface at all or include
5762-513: The founding goal of the project was to build a free operating system, and if possible, "everything useful that normally comes with a Unix system so that one could get along without any software that is not free." Development was initiated in January 1984. In 1991, the Linux kernel appeared, developed outside the GNU project by Linus Torvalds , and in December 1992 it was made available under version 2 of
5848-516: The mid-1990s in the supercomputing community, where organizations such as NASA started to replace their increasingly expensive machines with clusters of inexpensive commodity computers running Linux. Commercial use began when Dell and IBM , followed by Hewlett-Packard , started offering Linux support to escape Microsoft 's monopoly in the desktop operating system market. Today, Linux systems are used throughout computing, from embedded systems to virtually all supercomputers , and have secured
5934-441: The notable exception. The GNU C library , an implementation of the C standard library , works as a wrapper for the system calls of the Linux kernel necessary to the kernel-userspace interface, the toolchain is a broad collection of programming tools vital to Linux development (including the compilers used to build the Linux kernel itself), and the coreutils implement many basic Unix tools . The GNU Project also develops Bash ,
6020-501: The operating system to their specific needs. Distributions are maintained by individuals, loose-knit teams, volunteer organizations, and commercial entities. A distribution is responsible for the default configuration of the installed Linux kernel, general system security, and more generally integration of the different software packages into a coherent whole. Distributions typically use a package manager such as apt , yum , zypper , pacman or portage to install, remove, and update all of
6106-487: The project. Programmers were encouraged to take part in any aspect of the project that interested them. People could donate funds, computer parts, or even their own time to write code and programs for the project. The origins and development of most aspects of the GNU Project (and free software in general) are shared in a detailed narrative in the Emacs help system. (C-h g runs the Emacs editor command describe-gnu-project .) It
6192-455: The required texts was Operating Systems: Design and Implementation by Andrew S. Tanenbaum . This textbook included a copy of Tanenbaum's Minix operating system. It was with this course that Torvalds first became exposed to Unix. In 1991, he became curious about operating systems. Frustrated by the licensing of Minix, which at the time limited it to educational use only, he began to work on his operating system kernel, which eventually became
6278-412: The same or a compatible license. Torvalds initiated a switch from his original license, which prohibited commercial redistribution, to the GNU GPL. Developers worked to integrate GNU components with the Linux kernel, creating a fully functional and free operating system. Linus Torvalds had wanted to call his invention " Freax ", a portmanteau of "free", "freak", and "x" (as an allusion to Unix). During
6364-441: The software licenses explicitly permit redistribution, however, provides a basis for larger-scale projects that collect the software produced by stand-alone projects and make it available all at once in the form of a Linux distribution. Many Linux distributions manage a remote collection of system software and application software packages available for download and installation through a network connection. This allows users to adapt
6450-517: The start of his work on the system, some of the project's makefiles included the name "Freax" for about half a year. Initially, Torvalds considered the name "Linux" but dismissed it as too egotistical. To facilitate development, the files were uploaded to the FTP server ( ftp.funet.fi ) of FUNET in September 1991. Ari Lemmke, Torvalds' coworker at the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) who
6536-471: The use case of the system. This custom interface is accessed through a client that resides on another system, not necessarily Linux-based. Several types of window managers exist for X11, including tiling , dynamic , stacking , and compositing . Window managers provide means to control the placement and appearance of individual application windows, and interact with the X Window System. Simpler X window managers such as dwm , ratpoison , or i3wm provide
6622-559: The various distribution-specific support and community forums, such as ones for Ubuntu , Fedora, Arch Linux , Gentoo , etc. Linux distributions host mailing lists ; commonly there will be a specific topic such as usage or development for a given list. There are several technology websites with a Linux focus. Print magazines on Linux often bundle cover disks that carry software or even complete Linux distributions. Although Linux distributions are generally available without charge, several large corporations sell, support, and contribute to
6708-429: The word "Linux" should be pronounced, he included an audio guide with the kernel source code. However, in this recording, he pronounces Linux as /ˈlinʊks/ ( LEEN -uuks ) with a short but close front unrounded vowel , instead of a near-close near-front unrounded vowel as in his newsgroup post. The adoption of Linux in production environments, rather than being used only by hobbyists, started to take off first in
6794-423: Was GNOME, which tackled the same issue from a different angle. It aimed to make a replacement for KDE that had no dependencies on proprietary software. The Harmony project did not make much progress, but GNOME developed very well. Eventually, the proprietary component that KDE depended on ( Qt ) was released as free software. GNOME has since dissociated itself from the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, and
6880-511: Was becoming popular but required users to install Qt , which was then proprietary software . To prevent people from being tempted to install KDE and Qt, the GNU Project simultaneously launched two projects. One was the Harmony toolkit . This was an attempt to make a free software replacement for Qt. Had this project been successful, the perceived problem with the KDE would have been solved. The second project
6966-501: Was conceived and implemented in 1969, at AT&T 's Bell Labs , in the United States by Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie , Douglas McIlroy , and Joe Ossanna . First released in 1971, Unix was written entirely in assembly language , as was common practice at the time. In 1973, in a key pioneering approach, it was rewritten in the C programming language by Dennis Ritchie (except for some hardware and I/O routines). The availability of
7052-494: Was created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum , a computer science professor, and released in 1987 as a minimal Unix-like operating system targeted at students and others who wanted to learn operating system principles. Although the complete source code of Minix was freely available, the licensing terms prevented it from being free software until the licensing changed in April 2000. Although not released until 1992, due to legal complications ,
7138-510: Was designed by Linus Torvalds , following the lack of a working kernel for GNU , a Unix -compatible operating system made entirely of free software that had been undergoing development since 1983 by Richard Stallman . While a separate working Unix-compatible system called Minix was later released, its license was not entirely free at the time. The first entirely free Unix for personal computers, 386BSD , did not appear until 1992, by which time Torvalds had already built and publicly released
7224-459: Was later originally developed, it represented the first successful commercial attempt at distributing a primarily single-user microcomputer that ran a Unix operating system. With Unix increasingly "locked in" as a proprietary product, the GNU Project , started in 1983 by Richard Stallman , had the goal of creating a "complete Unix-compatible software system" composed entirely of free software . Work began in 1984. Later, in 1985, Stallman started
7310-510: Was one of the volunteer administrators for the FTP server at the time, did not think that "Freax" was a good name, so he named the project "Linux" on the server without consulting Torvalds. Later, however, Torvalds consented to "Linux". According to a newsgroup post by Torvalds, the word "Linux" should be pronounced ( / ˈ l ɪ n ʊ k s / LIN -uuks ) with a short 'i' as in 'print' and 'u' as in 'put'. To further demonstrate how
7396-518: Was released from its obligation not to enter the computer business; freed of that obligation, Bell Labs began selling Unix as a proprietary product, where users were not legally allowed to modify it. Onyx Systems began selling early microcomputer-based Unix workstations in 1980. Later, Sun Microsystems , founded as a spin-off of a student project at Stanford University , also began selling Unix-based desktop workstations in 1982. While Sun workstations did not use commodity PC hardware, for which Linux
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