BANGALORE, INDIA: Operating system which is available freely in the market, Linux turns 17 today according to comment posted by Meshach slashdot.org.
 
Today, Linux is one of the fastest growing operating systems in the history. Apart from the fact that it's freely distributed, Linux's functionality, adaptability and robustness, has made it the main alternative for proprietary Unix and Microsoft operating systems.
 
According to the reports, Linux was not a free software when it was launched but later became free in 1992 when Linus rereleased it under the GNU GPL.
 
Ironically, according to a recent survey done by EDC predicts that open source developers overwhelmingly say they would recommend using commercial versions of Linux over non-commercial versions.
 
"Credit for Linux generally goes to its human namesake, one Linus Torvalds, a Finn who got the whole thing rolling in 1991 when he used some of the GNU tools to write the beginnings of a Unix kernel that could run on PC-compatible hardware. And indeed Torvalds deserves all the credit he has ever gotten, and a whole lot more. But he could not have made it happen by himself, any more than Richard Stallman could have. To write code at all, Torvalds had to have cheap but powerful development tools, and these he got from Stallman's GNU project," describes Neil Stephanson in his book, In the Beginning Was the Command Line.