Since it emerged in the 1990s, Linux has been the leading open source project, and has shown just what free and open source code can do.
Free to use and modify, Linux now dominates many sections of the market, including smartphones, supercomputers and embedded systems. The rights to use it are managed by licences such as GPL (the GNU General Public Licence), and a host of companies make a solid business in distributing and supporting the Linux operating system.
Strictly Linux is just the kernel, but the whole operating system is usually called by that name. It’s available in various distributions, that run on everything from a tiny Raspberry Pi, to China’s colossal Tianhe-2 supercomputer.
It’s been used everywhere, including in space – as you will find in our quiz.
It’s also faced oppostition and criticism from major software players such as Microsoft, though most have eventually come to see sense and support Linux in some shape or form. It got full support on Microsoft’s Azure cloud in June 2013.
Despite its manifest ability, Linux is still all too often hidden under the covers – so users of popular smartphones may be unaware they have it in their pockets.
Let’s raise your Linux awareness…
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it is an error in survey scrpt: when someone answers on first question (about mascot) — it says, that answer is wrong, and right answer is empty...
Many thanks to all the people who have pointed out this problem.
Our tech team are looking into it, but it is proving annoying, hard to replicate and pin down.
It crops up on all our quizzes. But it happens rarely - we've had more than a thousand successfully complete this quiz, for instance.
It seems to be more likely to happen if you start the quiz twice.
We are sorry if you hit the bug. We hope to have it fixed soon.
Peter Judge
We have now tweaked the site abd hope this is fixed.