What Is Linux? (A Brief Intro)
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Hey, we're back at it again. In this episode, this segment, we're going to talk about Linux or Alinux as it's pronounced sometimes. What is it? What does it do? So Linux is a Unix-like operating system and it has been assembled under the model of the free and open source software development and distribution.

That's what Wikipedia says, actually no, this is not Wikipedia. This is Infogalactic.com. It's like Wikipedia, but better. I don't know why it's better. We'll get into that in a different segment. So, the defining thing here about Linux is actually the kernel itself. It's an operating system kernel, and it was first released on September 17th, 1991. So we are getting very close to the 25th year anniversary, I believe it is? 26 years.

You know, math is hard. And it was developed by a guy named Linus Torvalds. I believe he is Finnish. Sometimes you'll hear this operating system referred to as the GNU Linux System. And this is often perpetrated by- perpetrated? That sounds evil. It's often used by the Free Software Foundation, which is run by Richard Stallman. And this is often- often causes some kind of controversy amongst the community. It's not- doesn't matter. It's whatever. Just call it what you want. It's fine.

But Linux was originally developed for personal computers based on some, most of them, old architecture. I probably shouldn't say old, it's not that old, but you know, computers are relatively new. And it's since been ported to many different platforms around the world. So we have it on desktops, we have it on cell phones, that's what Android is based off of, it's based off of Linux, the Linux system. And due to the dominance of Android,

and the smartphones and tablets that run it, Linux is now the largest installed operating system of all general purpose operating systems. I'm saying that word a lot, operating systems. But yeah, thanks to Android and the Android platform using Linux, Linux is now the most used operating system in existence.

However, when we get to desktop computers, which is what people tend to think about when they hear Linux, it is also the leader in another situation, another scenario. These are mainframe computers, such as servers and other what they quote unquote call big iron systems, taking up as much as 99.6% of the top 500 supercomputers.

That's crazy. But however, when it comes to desktop computers, it only holds about 2.3% of the computers. I think it's actually past that. I think we passed 3% recently in the last couple weeks, maybe the last month or so. So that's big, actually. 3% is enough people that want to make games and stuff. And a lot of times people that are into computers love to play games and they're like, oh, hey,

"Uh, but my games, brah!" And it's like, but there's tons of games. Steam runs on Linux. More and more games come out every year supporting Linux. And that is amazing. I have run Linux 100% solely. I have not installed Windows, have not used Windows on my personal computers since the summer of 2011. I am into it over six years now. The day I started using it full-time, I had not looked back.

I did use it before this, I don't know the exact date I tried it to start out with. I remember I was in high school and I believe I bought a book about Linux. I heard about it and was like "What's this Linux thing?" I bought a book about it. This is early 2000s. Early 2000s, like pre-2010. Probably 2006-ish. And I came with a free CD that you would put in your computer and you'd boot Linux.

I'll tell ya, it was pretty much garbage. Like, it was terrible. It wasn't good! But it's much better now, and it's very easy to use, and I encourage anyone to try it out. At least dual boot, or put it on a USB drive and just stick it in and play with it. You don't have to mess with your computer, you can keep Windows while you mess around with it. Linux is the future. Let's get into the freeness of Linux. And what does it mean by free? Right? So...

Linux is a free and open source operating system. Open source means that anyone can look at the code used to make the operating system and look at it and basically audit it. But it doesn't necessarily mean that anyone can use it. You can have open source software that is still closed off from reuse, closed off from cloning and the like. Linux is different. Linux is built

now under the GNU GPL, which stands for GNU Public Licensing. And what this allows is that anybody can use the code in their own stuff as long as they release it under the same licensing, the GNU GPL, which makes it totally free. Free as in freedom, not free as in beer.

Because there are versions of Linux that people charge money for, kind of. I say kind of because it's still technically free and open source. So if you find a version of Linux that's being charged for, you can find the code and you can compile it yourself and then you could have it free of charge. And you can change it and modify it because you're free to do so. But a lot of times what is being charged is support for said code.

operating system and this also allows for donations if you have a favorite system version of Linux you can easily donate to the developers so that they can continue working on said projects. When Linux was first created, first being developed, it was made by Linus Torvalds as we mentioned previously

because he was fed up with the licensing of what was called Minix, which was another Unix-like system that was limited to educational use only. So he was in college, university at the time, and he... I don't know why he was frustrated with it. I guess just because he couldn't use it outside of school, which would make sense, I guess. But you can ask him that if you ever meet him. But that's when he started making Linux, and he made it...

on Minix and a lot of the applications were written for Minix were also used on Linux. So it was very cost compatible in that sense. But as Linux matured and got further in development, slowly but surely Minix was removed from the system. And now it's all here, it's all good to go and it's all available under the GPL.

So you can compile it yourself and you can use it however you want and you can make your own version of it and so on and so forth. I mean, it's so pervasive that there are versions of Linux that are themed by famous people. Or not by them, but like around them. There is a Hannah Montana Linux that exists. This is also why you have Ubuntu. You have Debian. And Ubuntu is based on Debian, but they're technically a little different.

And that's also why you have Linux Mint, which is based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian. But if we can get real granular, Debian is the base for all of those. Then you also have Red Hat. You have Fedora. You have Arch. You have Gen 2. You have many different flavors, so to speak, of Linux. And you can pick and choose whatever one you like the most. And that's what makes it so great. And another freeing thing. Like, you're not...

Under things like Windows and Mac, you're not free to do what you want with your system. You have to use what they give you. But with Linux, if you don't like something, you can change it or find one that's already been changed in. And it's that simple. Linux is free as in freedom. And also, it's often free as in beer. If you don't like beer, then soda. You know, just for your money. Due to the freeness of Linux, you get a lot of different...

Window Managers. What a window manager is, is a graphical user interface that you see when you first start the computer up. Your desktop, how it looks, how things pop up, how things look in the menu, how things look on the toolbars, that stuff. How your windows are styled. That all has to do with a window management system. And due to the freeness of Linux, we have so many options of this.

so many options for window managers. Currently, I'm using one called i3. i3 is a tiling window manager that basically utilizes the entire space of my computer screen and not to waste anything. It's very useful for efficiency, very useful for, in my case, programming things because I need a lot of stuff open all the time and I kinda don't want to have to sit there and spend time dragging and making things the whole screen anyway.

I always found myself in the past on what they call floating window managers, dragging things and making them all fit the screen well. This just does it for me. I open it up and it's full screen. I open up another thing, it splits it in half automatically for me, whether I want it to be on the left or on the bottom or the top, doesn't matter. It does what I tell it to. However, this isn't necessarily the most user-friendly of the window managers, and there's a ton of options out there.

On Linux you have at least, I'm gonna count them right now, I have some in front of me. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. And there are more than this. This is just what's listed in front of me. There are more than this, trust me. But this is the beauty of a free and open source platform for your computer. Is that if you don't like how one looks, you can change it. It's not even hard.

You just have to download the information and tell it to install. And then when you go to log in, you just pick the one you want. It's super easy. I currently have two window managers on my computer, my desktop computer. Laptop, I have one and it doesn't even start by itself. I have to tell the startup it's more granular for a reason. But on my desktop and on most desktops, you can pick. So I turn my computer on, I get to my login screen and you can even change this. That's not even, that's not even static.

It's dynamic, you can pick whatever you want for that. But you have one. Typically one always gets installed whenever you install Linux. Unless you install it manually, which is not recommended unless you've had some time in Linux. But you get one. And if you install another one on top of it, or next to it I should say, when you log in, you can tell it which one you want to use. So in theory, you can install all 15 of the ones in front of me, and just try them all out.

and when you log back in the next when you turn your computer on the next time it'll it should and often have the cases that it has the last one you used automatically selected for you so if you're in linux and you're like this doesn't look like i don't like how this looks then you can easily go and download another one if you're in cinnamon download kde plasm plasma if you're in kde plasma try enlightenment try mate try pantheon try xfce trinity sugar unity

There's so many options out there. This is great because on Windows and Mac, you don't get that. With Windows, you're stuck with the one they give you. Yeah, you can change colors here and there, but you're stuck with it. On Mac, you're stuck with it. I don't even know if you can change colors on a Mac. My wife has one. I should see if that's possible. But that's what you get. When you buy into a closed system like Windows and Mac, you're stuck with what they give you.

but on Linux! On Linux you are free to do what you want. Nobody can tell you not to. If you don't like any of the 15 I talked about or mentioned, you can make your own. That's the glory of free and open source as a desktop environment. With all that being said, I challenge you to try Linux. Try it. No one's forcing you to not use Windows or Mac.

Get a USB drive or buy a cheap CD from Ubuntu, put it in your computer, boot off of that, and that's it. You don't have to wipe out your drive. It all runs off of the USB drive of the CD. And you can play around with it. See what's there. Learn how to install programs. Find out what programs will work. A great site that you can use to find programs

is alternative2.net and you can go in there and you can type in a program. Let's say you want to look for something like Photoshop. You type in Photoshop. Let me do it right now here. Shop. You click Photoshop and what you get is a list of alternatives and you can tell it platforms and licensing. So you click platforms, you click Linux and it'll give you a list.

of all of the alternatives to Photoshop. The most used and the most uploaded on this site is GIMP. It's very well done. Everything you can do in Photoshop, you can do in GIMP. And there's many, many programs like this. And it's easy to find it with this site now. You don't have to worry about losing your stuff. You don't have to worry. If you want, if you have the ability to, I would say, partition your hard drive, have

dual boot into with Linux so that you can save things and you can run it and you can see how it works to do the flow. I did that for probably a year or two before I built my PC and just did all Linux and over the time I found myself more and more just kept going back to Linux and Linux and Linux and I only use Windows whenever I just absolutely have to and that was back then. Now I don't even have to.

I don't. There's nothing I can't do on Linux. I don't need Windows or Mac. These alternatives are really helpful. GIMP is a great alternative. A lot of things that you can get on Windows are also available for Linux. VLC Media Player is a very popular way to play songs and songs, audio and video, and you can even stream it from the internet with it. And it works on Linux and Mac and Windows.

Same thing with Audacity. Many programs like this. Just get your feet wet. Keep trying it out. Trying it out. Seeing what it is that you really can't do. And the reason I'm saying to dual boot if you can. If you know how to dual boot, I say dual boot. Because if you're a gamer, this is specifically useful if you're a gamer.

if you love your games, just... If you don't dual-build, you can't save things. So you can't install Steam and save it, and you probably couldn't even run Steam off a CD anyway. So, dual-building is imperative there. And to see how many of your games actually run on Linux, and how many games do you play on a weekly basis that aren't on Linux. It's an incredible number of games that are on Linux now, and it just keeps growing.

Another question I have, or let's just do like a, I don't know. I don't know what to call this. Just a question. If you use Linux, let me know. I'm real curious to see people that listen to this. If you use Linux, if you're on anchor and you're listening to this within the 24 hours of it being posted, give me a call in, do a comment or something. And let's chat. I want to get to know you guys. If you're listening to this elsewhere, whether it's on whatever platform,

propagation it is on the internet of podcasts in its final form. Shoot me a message on Twitter. Shoot me a message on Mastodon. I'm on Gab. I mean, there's no place I'm really not on. Yeah, Twitter is just JRSwab. Mastodon is JRSwab at Mastodon dot XYZ. Gab is JRSwab. Just hit me up. Tell me you found my podcast and you wanted to say, hey, I heard you like Linux. I like it too.

Until next time, guys. Have a great day.