BANGALORE, INDIA: Whoever would have thought that something that started as a hobby by a student to create an OS kernel would turn out to be a full-fledged revolution of sorts. But then, that's exactly what Linux is today, 20 years later. It powers just about every type of device you can imagine, from embedded systems to super computers.

Google Android, which powers so many smartphones today for instance, is based on Linux. IBM's supercomputer Watson, which won a Jeopardy match against the world champions for instance, also runs on Linux. Some of the best social networking and Internet sites out there, be it Google itself, Yahoo!, or Facebook, are heavy users of Linux.

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There are about 300+ types of Linux distros out there, which can do everything from basic network storage to disaster recovery; from anti-virus for a desktop to a complete firewall around an organization's network, from a back-end web server to a high-performance cluster to create movies (like the famous movie Avatar).

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The entire Open Source software movement, which started on Linux, provides software to cater to just about every business requirement. To top it all off, all this can be done without paying any license fee to anyone. If you have in house expertise, you can use any of this software without paying for anything other than the salaries.

The secret to Linux's success

The key to Linux's success is that it came at the right time, the right place, and with the right kind of environment. If for instance, Richard Stallman hadn't set the base for creating a free operating system way back in 1983, by creating the Free Software Foundation and all the components required for an OS other than the kernel, Linux would never have been created.