What Is GNU/Linux?
Before diving headfirst into the wonky world of GNU/Linux systems, it's important to understand how they came about and some of the terms you may encounter while researching and using them. I'll start with a brief history of the big three: UNIX, Linux, and GNU.
UNIX is a proprietary, command-line-based operating system originally developed by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson (among others) at AT&T's Bell Labs in the late 1960s and early 1970s. UNIX is coded almost entirely in the C programming language (also invented by Ritchie) and was originally intended to be used as a portable and convenient OS for programmers and researchers. As a result of a long and complicated legal history involving AT&T, Bell Labs, and the federal government, UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems grew in popularity, as did Thompson's influential philosophy of a modular, minimalist approach to software design.
During this period, Richard Stallman launched the GNU Project with the goal of creating "an operating system that is free software." GNU, confusingly, stands for "GNU's Not UNIX." This project is responsible for the UNIX-like GNU OS. Stallman also launched the related Free Software Foundation (FSF) on the principle that "any user can study the source code, modify it, and share the program" for any participating software.
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