It’s fairly common to see that most people in this day and age will take advantage of using either a Windows or Apple-operated computer in their homes on a day to day basis. They’re the most popular operating systems after all. However, there’s a small percentage of computer-able people who have opted to use the Linux-based devices instead. Linux is one of the rarer used operating systems, which is assembled under the model of free and open-source software development and distribution. Their system was first released in October of 1991 by Linus Torvalds, a Finnish-American software engineer. In its first development stage, Linux was created as a free operating system for personal computers based on the Intel x86 architecture. However, since that time, it has been ported to more computer hardware platforms than any other operating system.

The Unix operating system, which is what Linux is heavily similar to, was conceived and implemented in 1969 at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories in the United States. Several other operating systems would be created throughout the proceeding years, with MINIX released in 1987. Torvalds, while attending the University of Helsinki in 1991, became curious about operating systems, and because of MINIX being restricted to educational uses only, thanks to its licensing, he began to work on his own instead. He began the development of such by using MINIX and applications written for it were also used on Linux. It later grew and developed, with GNU applications replacing all MINIX components. The product was originally to be called Freax, which was a mash up of the words ‘free’, ‘freak’ and ‘x’, creating an allusion to Unix. After using it for about a year, Torvalds ended up changing its name to Linux, and even provided an audio guide on gow to pronounce it.