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| 1 | +WHAT IS LINUX? |
| 2 | + |
| 3 | + Linux is a clone of the operating system Unix, written from scratch by |
| 4 | + Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across |
| 5 | + the Net. It aims towards POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliance. |
| 6 | + |
| 7 | + It has all the features you would expect in a modern fully-fledged Unix, |
| 8 | + including true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand |
| 9 | + loading, shared copy-on-write executables, proper memory management, |
| 10 | + and multistack networking including IPv4 and IPv6. |
| 11 | + |
| 12 | + It is distributed under the GNU General Public License - see the |
| 13 | + accompanying COPYING file for more details. |
| 14 | + |
| 15 | +ON WHAT HARDWARE DOES IT RUN? |
| 16 | + |
| 17 | + Although originally developed first for 32-bit x86-based PCs (386 or higher), |
| 18 | + today Linux also runs on (at least) the Compaq Alpha AXP, Sun SPARC and |
| 19 | + UltraSPARC, Motorola 68000, PowerPC, PowerPC64, ARM, Hitachi SuperH, Cell, |
| 20 | + IBM S/390, MIPS, HP PA-RISC, Intel IA-64, DEC VAX, AMD x86-64, AXIS CRIS, |
| 21 | + Xtensa, Tilera TILE, AVR32 and Renesas M32R architectures. |
| 22 | + |
| 23 | + Linux is easily portable to most general-purpose 32- or 64-bit architectures |
| 24 | + as long as they have a paged memory management unit (PMMU) and a port of the |
| 25 | + GNU C compiler (gcc) (part of The GNU Compiler Collection, GCC). Linux has |
| 26 | + also been ported to a number of architectures without a PMMU, although |
| 27 | + functionality is then obviously somewhat limited. |
| 28 | + Linux has also been ported to itself. You can now run the kernel as a |
| 29 | + userspace application - this is called UserMode Linux (UML). |
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