The KDE and GNOME desktop
environments continuously improve the Linux experience for casual users. Major efforts are underway
to offer critical pieces of desktop components that are still not available in open source versions,
including multimedia software and office productivity applications.
Linus continues to maintain and improve the Linux kernel.
To get more detailed histories of Linux, I recommend visiting the LWN.net site. LWN.net
has kept a detailed Linux timeline from 1998 to the present day. For example, the 2006
timeline is available at http://lwn.net/Articles/Timeline2006. Another good resource is the
book Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution (O??™Reilly). The whole first edition (published
in 1999) is available online (www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/toc.html).
What??™s So Great About Linux?
Leveraging work done on UNIX and GNU projects helped to get Linux up and running quickly.
The culture of sharing in the open source community and adoption of a wide array of tools for
communicating on the Internet have helped Linux move quickly through infancy and adolescence
to become a mature operating system.
NOTE
15
Starting with Linux 1
The simple commitment to share code is probably the single most powerful contributor to the
growth of the open source software movement in general, and Linux in particular.
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