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It Takes Less than a Kernel of Code to Establish a Benevolent Dictatorship
Linux adheres to founder Linus Torvalds’s vision of an operating system based on Unix that can run on a variety of hardware platforms including the PC
Things sometimes happen in strange ways. Take the birth of the Linux operating system, for example. It all started with a native son of Finland’s minority population of Swedish speakers, whose grandfather was a revered poet and whose campus radical parents named him after a Pulitzer-Prize-winning American chemist. Before going on to adopt the now familiar penguin mascot named Tux, Linus Torvalds wrote the code we recognize today as Linux and named it Freax. Luckily, the friend hosting the operating system on his FTP site for easy upload assigned it to a folder titled Linux. And the rest, as they say, is history.
For a long time, Linux has been seen as a geek’s system—one that would be too complicated for ordinary folks. But slowly, as the open source movement has matured, Linux has matured right along with it. And now, with modern desktop environments and new user-friendly installations, Linux is finally coming into its own as a desktop system.
The term "Linux" actually refers to the Linux kernel. And though Linus Torvalds is now only responsible for two percent of the current code being used, he’s still considered the authority on what new code is incorporated; thus, his benevolent dictator status. All of the underlying source code—unlike the code for Windows or Mac OS—is available for both the public and developers to use, modify, and distribute as they see fit.
LinuxDevCenter.com stakes its turf around this tenacious and growing segment of the open source movement by delivering an average of 290,000 pages a month to an audience of 130,000 unique visitors. Subject matter ranges from high-end PBX systems to specific database structures, to strategies and tactics that can be employed to improve network reliability.
Editorial Content
In addition to the content areas noted on the left nav-bar, coverage includes articles such as: "Installing Debian;" "Linux for Video Production;" "PHP Trouble;" "Open Source Advocacy for the Enterprise;" "Installation on a Laptop;" "Distributing Content with BitTorrent," and much more.
Source Code: The editor of LinuxDevCenter goes by the enigmatic name chromatic. He is perhaps best known for his work on automated testing in Perl 5 and the books Running Weblogs with Slash and the Extreme Programming Pocket Guide. His work is about finding and promoting the right projects for developers, users, and administrators. “I sometimes wonder,” he says, “if writing about software is more fun than actually writing it. The truth probably lies somewhere in between.”
“Requirements are not architecture. Requirements are not design, nor are they the user interface. Requirements are need.”—Andrew Hunt and David Thomas
From The Pragmatic Programmer
