Linux celebrates a milestone.(LiTe byte)

In an industry with a wealth of quirks, eccentricities, and oddities, Linux is right at home. This computer operating system is celebrating its 20th anniversary in August.

Linux was created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, a software engineer and hacker from Finland, a country perhaps best known in high-tech circles for its cell phone expertise (along with Nokia, which is also headquartered there).

Today, Linux's still-tiny worldwide market share belies its influence and allure, especially among geeks and other information technology experts. For desktop PCs, laptops, and other computerized devices, the various versions of Microsoft Windows control about 82% of the market, Apple Mac OS X controls about 7%, and Apple iOS and Linux each control about 2%, according to StatCounter (http://stat counter.com).

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One of the idiosyncrasies of Linux is that it's not controlled by a single company. More than 600 different Linux "distributions," based on the same Linux kernel, are available for machines ranging from game consoles to the fastest supercomputers in the world.

Linux distributions, or distros, typically bundle application software with the operating system, including mainstream business programs such as word processors, spreadsheets, and database programs as well as games, graphics programs, and utilities.

Much more so than on desktop PCs for individual users, Linux has a presence on servers, which include the computers that make websites available over the internet. Among these are the most popular sites on the entire web, including Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Linux is also an increasingly popular server operating system for private local and wide area networks of various types of organizations.

The Linux Advantage

For individual desktop or laptop users, one of the main attractions to Linux is the price, particularly compared to what's available from Microsoft and Apple. While some Linux distros are free, others are fee--based, but they are typically low cost. The most popular free Linux distros include Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com), openSUSE (www.opensuse.org/en), and Fedora (http://fedoraproject.org).

Other benefits to Linux include security and stability. Mostly because of the ubiquity of Windows, the bad guys who develop and distribute malware primarily target Windows PCs. Linux users also report greater reliability and less downtime.

Linux has a reputation for being strictly for techies, and this accounts, in part, for its small user-base compared to Windows and Mac OS. But for years, the ease of use differential has been shrinking. You can download the major Linux distros over the internet. But it's easier to buy a PC desktop or laptop computer preinstalled with Linux, which can save you the money that Microsoft charges PC makers to include Windows on its machines.

Dell is the major PC maker that has been most active with Linux-based products. HP recently made a major commitment to Linux, announcing in March that it would be preinstalling its own Linux-based operating system, webOS, as an option along with Windows on its desktop and laptop PCs by 2012.

However, Linux's main claim to fame these days is with Android-based mobile devices such as smart-phones, tablet computers, and e-readers. Android is Google's mobile operating system based on the Linux kernel. It's a direct competitor to Apple's iOS mobile operating system, which runs on Apple's iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

All Linux distros share a lineage back to Torvalds. Born in Helsinki in 1969, Torvalds has attained geek status on par with Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, and Vint Cerf, one of the inventors the internet.

Reid Goldsborough is a syndicated columnist and author of the book Straight Talk About the Information Superhighway. Send your comments about this column to itletters@infotoday.com.