There are more than 300 active Linux distributions on the market now. Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Arch Linux are some of the most popular Linux distributions.
First of all, what is a distribution?
A Linux distribution is a flavor of Linux built by a particular community or company that uses the Linux kernel and other open-source packages to build an operating system.
The next question that comes to mind is why there are so many different distributions and how they are different from one another. We are going to take a close look at this topic.We will also discuss a little bit about the history of Linux so that it becomes more clear and understandable.
Before we start discussing Linux,there is one important name we must know. that is nothing but UNIX.
A team of developers in 1969 started a project to make software for computers.It was a time when computers were huge in size and ran different operating systems, which made them very difficult to operate and manage.It was extremely costly and not affordable for normal people.
Developers at Bell developed software that can run on all hardware; they call it UNIX.It was simple and used C instead of assemble. Unix was developed by Kenneth Thompson and Dennis Ritchie of AT&T Bell Labs.
The use of the C language made Unix highly portable, and this helped it become extremely popular and widely accepted.One main thing to note here is that Unix is not free software, and AT&T was the sole owner of Unix.
After the creation of Unix, there were many attempts made to create a replica of Unix, but those were not as powerful and popular as UNIX. In 1983, Richard Stallman developed the GNU Project, whose goal was to make freely available Unix-like OSes for everyone, but unfortunately, it failed to gain popularity. Unix was very expensive and was used mainly by huge companies,government organizations, and Universities.
Now we understand how Unix was developed, how it gained popularity, and the drawbacks like the high cost of usage and the closed nature of the OS.
In 1991, Linus Torvalds, a student at the University of Helsinki, put forth the idea of creating a free version of Unix so that everyone could use it for free.He started writing code to create OS , he was a great programmer and his determination and handwork helped him to build a Unix like OS which is free to use, free to modify and free to distribute, it was then called the Linux Kernel , We can call kernel as the core of an operating system. A kernel manages everything from memory to processes to storage. This project is what we call today Linux. Linus mentioned in his book that he started the project as a hobby, but it ended with an OS kernel.
This is just a short paragraph about Linux. The history of Linux is much bigger than this.We will cover the entire history in a separate session ,So lets come to main topic why there are so many distributions of Linux?
In simple term, Linux have many distributions because its free to use,modify and distribute.We cannot see different version of windows because windows OS is proprietary and is owned by Microsoft. Any illegal use or distribution of Windows is punishable by law.
Portable : Portable means it can run on different hardware with out modification of code
Open Source: As Linux is opensource its free to use, modify, and distribute
Multi-user: Linux support multi user environment,that means multiple users can use the OS at a time.
Security: Linux is much secure because of its open source nature, as source code is open to public any one can check and find the bugs and vulnerabilities before a hacker exploit it.
Multi programming: Linux allows to run multiple programs at once also called as multi tasking facility
As we already discussed that Linux have different distributions, Lets check few of them
1.Ubuntu : Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution currently in market.Ubuntu is mainly used in Servers, Workstations and personal devices like desktops and laptops.Ubuntu is rich with features like beautiful desktop environments and built in tools.
2.Red hat/Cent OS: Red hat is one of the top Linux provider that is popular among Enterprises.Main highlight of Red hat is it provides support, There is a dedicated team in Red hat to help their customer if they face any OS level problems.but this service is not free, customers have to pay a licensing fee in order to use Red hat and to avail the support.Cent OS is an alternative to Red hat only difference is Cent OS is completely free to use but with out any OS support.
3.Other distributions like SUSE, Oracle Linux, Arch are also present but there market share is not that huge compare to the ones we discussed above. Also many cloud provider provide their own Linux distributions, for instance AWS has Amazon Linux AMI which is a customized version of Linux for AWS cloud.
As there are many distributions, there package managers also differs. package manager manages the software of the OS. In simple term package created for Red hat (.rpm) will not work in Ubuntu(.deb) and vice versa.This is an important factor that differentiate the distributions
We know Linux is free. but there are some distributions that charge money in order to use it. One example is Red hat, in order to use Red hat OS we have to pay a subscription fee and same should be renewed once its expires.Other ones like Ubuntu, Cent OS are completely free but will not get the support that Red hat provides to its customers.So we as a customer should think before choosing an OS especially in an enterprise level.
Its none other than the creator Linus Torvalds.The trademark of Linux rests with him, but don't worry due to its open source licensing Linux kernel is completely free to use,modify and distribute if you have the knowledge you can even create your own distribution from it and call it what ever you like.
Story of Linux is inspiring.Linux as an OS is now every where, from your mobile phones, to computers, Servers to IoT devices. If you don't know, majority of servers in the world runs on Linux. The website you read now is also deployed on a Linux server. So just think about the contribution Linux provided to the tech world.We can safely say that the contribution of Linux is invaluable.
About the Author
Aswin ks
Also Read: