Oh, there is a strange noun “Unix”,so what is “Unix”? it’s also a system that made in 1970.Yes ,it’s the earlier Time-sharing OS.But at that time,Unix is not free yet,what’s worse,it’s a “ugly” system that just can be used by a black box.Then a genius student decided to develope a new OS to replace Unix. It sounds ridiculous that a student could have his own system,but something impossible would come into reality if you work hard for it.
His succeess came in 1991/10/5.And the author just share it without charge. So,rapidly many risidents start this system. And then the genius became more and more famous,his name is Linus Benedict Torvalds
Linux is a Time-Sharing OS which based on Unix and Posix (Portable Operation System Interface for Unix).It supports Multi-user,Multi-tasking,Multi-thread and Multi-CPU. Linux inherits the network centered design idea of Unix and is a multi-user network operating system with stable performance.Nowadays,it’s mostly used in the servers and network.
there are releases of Linux because it opening source,under many people’work,Linux’s family has became more and more large,such as Ubuntu、RedHat、CentOS、Debian、Fedora、SuSE、OpenSUSE、Arch Linux、SolusOS and so on。
what is them,they are all based on the Linux core. Generally speaking, they are combinations of the Linux core and some applications.