From Helsinki to the data centre
In 1991 Linus Torvalds, a student at the University of Helsinki, published a Unix-like kernel for 386 processors. Nine years later, Linux had become the core of an operating system widely adopted on internet-connected servers.
Kernel 2.2, released in January 1999, is the version currently in production on most server installations. It introduces improved SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processing) support and more efficient memory management. Version 2.4, in advanced development, will bring native ext3 journaling support, the Netfilter firewalling subsystem and improved enterprise scalability.
Monolithic modular architecture
Linux adopts a monolithic architecture: drivers, filesystems and the network stack all reside in kernel space. Modularity is provided by loadable kernel modules (LKM): drivers and features can be loaded at runtime without recompiling the kernel.
Distributions
Distributions assemble the kernel with GNU tools and package managers. The main server distributions:
- Red Hat Linux: the most widespread commercial distribution, with RPM package manager
- Debian GNU/Linux: stability-oriented, with dpkg/APT
- Slackware: closest to Unix tradition, manual configuration
Why noze chooses Linux
noze uses Linux at every level: servers, networking, security, development. No licence costs allow scaling without constraints. Open source code lets administrators analyse and fix issues at kernel level. The main internet services — Apache, Sendmail, BIND — run natively on Linux. For noze, Linux is the foundation for building Open Source solutions for the web, cyber security, automatic systems and R&D.