I guess you might be wondering why this article is made on such a popular operating system .But there is something else to think about. Why is it not yet on your desktop ?There are some reasons for it and after the completion of this article I am sure you are gonna check out at least one version of Linux .So lets see what makes Linux so popular and powerful .

Linux was a project started by a Finnish college student named ……guess? Linus Torvalds. He started on the Linux project while he was doing his masters in Computer Science .His intention was to make a free operating system whose code will be available to all the programmers around the world(Open source of course!!!).

What has been in the personal Computer of Linus Torvalds as a group of C files, has now , grown into a large base of about 300+mb of source code. Thanks to the open source community which has made serious efforts in making Linux the giant of it is today. So what is so special about the code of the Linux which makes it completely different from the other operating systems?

The core of any operating system is the Kernel which is the soul of an operating system. The kernel has all the code which facilitates the interaction of the user with the hardware. The applications are written on the top of the Kernel. Linus Torvalds started to write a kernel and eventually succeeded with the help of large open source community. Linux has grown to the level of posing a serious threat to Microsoft Windows ™ which occupies a lion’s share of the desktop market.

Microsoft, after the failure of Vista, has been facing severe headache from Linux. So Microsoft team is at full bore into Windows 7 development. Since vista failed to strike, many users who turned into Linux as secondary operating system, eventually expelled windows from their desktop. Taking this as the opportunity, many Linux versions of Linux have arrived (of course for free!!!).The leader in enterprise (commercial) Linux is RedHat. All the different versions are built on top of the common Linux kernel which is still updated by a team headed by Linus Torvalds.

Linux is not very much used in desktop by normal users. Then who uses it actually? Linux is known for its superfast processing speed. With just 128 MB of ram, the performance of a 1GB system can be obtained. Linux is widely used by many corporations and enterprises. Startups especially are greatly benefitted by Linux since it saves lots of cost on Operating system.

And an important advantage of Linux over Windows is that Linux never crashes. Linux can be used on almost any hardware, from embedded systems to watches!!! Sounds great? Well that’s true because of the highly stable Linux kernel. All these aspects make Linux a perfect operating system. But why is Linux not on our desktop still?

Linux is a bit tough to get used to for people who have always relied on GUI(Windows).But the recent versions of Linux are built on GNOME(GUI desktop) which makes it more simple for users. Linux is fast in growing with more and more programmers contributing millions of lines of code to make it the most powerful operating system.

Linux is emerging as a tough competitor to Microsoft which makes Microsoft to make every move with extreme care. Windows 7 is expected to be one of the best creations from Microsoft since Microsoft is aware that it will be nearly impossible to capture the desktop market if Win7 fails to prove it’s worth.

Getting back to Linux, there are several versions available as live CDs(for beginners).Some of the best for beginners is Ubuntu. Mandriva, Knoppix and Fedora are also worth trying. Fedora is the project of RedHat group. If you wanna use RedHat like enterprise Linux, go for CENTOS which is a clone of RedHat Linux.

Linux is a great choice when it comes to desktop, thanks for the open source community. A great operating system, which is worth giving a shot at.

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