Linux has grown in popularity and capability over the years, but is it competitive with its competition. In this paper an overview of the Linux 2.6 Operating System (OS) and how it functions/performs on the technical level will be discussed. Comparisons to other retail OSs such as, Windows, Mac OS X, and prior versions of Linux will be used to show the strengths and weaknesses of this OS. “Linux was created by a student (Linus Torvalds) in Helsinki in 1991 with the assistance of developers from around the world. Linux is free, it shares its work with everyone — including competitors — and its business model is motivated primarily by adrenaline, altruism, and peer respect rather than by money. Yet, Linux's functionality, adaptability and robustness has made it the main alternative for proprietary operating systems, especially where budgets are a main concern.” (OEDB, 2007). As it is stated above Torvalds creation was a key proponent in creating the Open Source Movement, which has paved the way for the many distributions of the Linux Kernel. In the beginning Linus Torvalds was an IT student with the desire to test the limits of his current computer. During this time Torvalds was working with the MINIX OS which was create to be a cheap alternative to UNIX. Torvalds wanted to modify the kernel of MINIX and found that this was not possible so he began to create Linux. In the beginning Linux did not offer a lot of features and seemed to be lacking in ability (Diedrich, 2011). Torvalds made Linux 0.01 available to the public via an FTP server on September, 17, 1991. Linux 0.01 had a good reception among people who liked using MINIX or UNIX but found those OS’s to either to be too limited or too expensive for their needs. This spawned a new culture which helped to write drivers for Linux or would give suggestions directly to Torvalds. Once Linux hit distribution 1.1 the version that would be considered the release version of Linux at the time, it had a strong following (Diedrich, 2011). Linux was marketed as an Open Source OS, which meant it was free to the public and allowed the user to modify and customize the kernel of the OS. This freedom created a subculture that would develop applications, drivers and source codes that made Linux a very powerful OS that is designed to run on any computer, router, and even mobile device such as the Android Smart Phone. Linux has also been marketed as an enterprise edition OS through Red Hat in 2002. “Linux 2.6 is a big step for Linux on enterprise servers as well as for embedded systems. For high-end machines, new features target performance improvements, scalability, throughput, and NUMA support for SMP machines” (Santhanam, 2003). These changes are what moved Linux from being just a UNIX OS for PC to a viable business operating system. Linux kernel version 2.6, which was released in December 2003, introduced the SELinux security extension, which improved the performance of this OS on the higher end machines by cleaning up the kernel codebase to allow newer feature to be integrated into the kernel such as virtualization and improved scaling. These improvements facilitated the ability for Linux to be used on powerful supercomputers. Another advance with this version is how new features and advances were implemented, as of this version updates are done gradually every two to three months. This has taken the confusion of version jumps and organized it to remove the confusion of frequent version changes that has plagued the earlier version of this OS (Diedrich, 2011). Linux kernel version 2.6 set a new standard for the later version of the Linux kernel with this new approach to version updates and this is perhaps the greatest part of version 2.6’s legacy. The Linux OS is free in most cases (i.e. Red Hat Enterprise has a subscription fee for example and other companies charge for the software bundled with the kernel) and openly available for download on the internet. “Commonly used license is the “GNU Public License (GPL)”. In the license stated that every person has the right to make changes and redistribute the software has been modified such that, provided creator codes of the program is still available after the distribution.” (Advenda, 2009). Using Linux the owner of the OS does not have to pay a registration fee or fees for using the OS on multiple systems. That fact alone makes Linux a very cost effective way for businesses to have the abilities of the retail OS’s (i.e. Windows, and Mac OS’s) that may have been out of reach of their budget. This can be especially effective for non-profit organizations for example. Linux’s ability to use a wide variety of hardware allows this OS to move away from being just a PC OS. “Digi International announced a ZigBee-based home energy gateway that runs Linux on a Freescale i.MX28 processor. Compliant with the upcoming Smart Energy 2.0 standard, the "ConnectPort X2e for Smart Energy" enables ZigBee devices on a Home Area Network (HAN) to communicate with an energy service provider, says the company.” (Brown, 2012). This is a single example of Linux being used to control energy use in a home, which demonstrates the flexibility and the use of a wide variety of devices. Linux is not without its weaknesses due to the large number of distributions, a user that is unfamiliar with Linux will find it confusing and not easy to use. One of the largest benefits with Linux is that it does have a large user base and many difficulties for new users have solutions to many of these issues readily available on the internet posted by developers and fellow users alike. Another major fault many users find is in the reliability with Linux versus other OS’s, as Linux is Open Source and allows the user to modify the OS’s kernel. This argument can be viewed as an untenable issue to some extent as some users prefer a Windows or Mac OS over Linux (Advenda, 2009). The Linux 2.6.x kernel supports both Complex Instruction Set Computing (CISC) and Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) CPUs. Linux 2.6 has improved B-tree file system (BTRFS) for HDD format on the OS which has optimized support for SSDs, Diegocalleja states, “Btrfs is a new filesystem developed from scratch following the design principles of filesystems like ZFS, WAFL, etc. It was created by Chris Mason, an Oracle engineer who worked several years in Reiserfs v3. It is expected to become the replacement of Ext filesystems as the most used Linux filesystems” (Diegocalleja, 2010). Further optimization and change to the code for the BTRFS file system allow it to bypass the Kernel’s cache to improve performance maximum storage capacity has been reached. (Leemhuis, 2003). The versatility of Linux file systems has also made it a popular choice for users as it adds a wider range of control to the user, Palmer and Walter state, “However, in Linux, ext provides an advantage over all other file systems because it enables the use of a full range of built-in Linux commands, file manipulations, and security” (Palmer, 2012, p. 182). Linux’s speed in comparison to other OS’s does vary, but in a speed/ performance test done conducted on lunduke.com compared Windows 8, Ubuntu 12.04, and Mac OS X 10.7. The fields tested were; “look and feel”, “available software”, “gaming, customizability”, “performance”, and “virtualization”. “So, to keep things at least semi-fair: I tripple booted the same machine [an Apple MacBook Pro 2.7 GHz core i7 with 8gigs of RAM] with all three systems — and made sure the proper drivers were all installed. After using each for extended periods, here’s my take-away.” (Lunduke, 2012). In the “performance” field the Linux based Ubuntu 12.04, scored equal to Windows 8 and outperformed Mac OS X10.7 (which was sluggish in comparison to Windows and Ubuntu). The field tested the responsiveness of the OS while running on the aforementioned system. (Lunduke, 2012) The minimum CPU requirements for the Linux 2.6 kernel vary from one kernel version to another and the kernels configuration varies as well even within the same version. “As of this writing, the published minimum hardware required for the typical distribution is about 128M RAM, 2G of hard drive space, and 200MhZ Pentium or equivalent CPU” (Lowe, 2004). For example the MATLAB programming environment which uses the Linux 2.6 kernel can support a 32 bit version and 64 bit version. The processor that are supported in a 32-bit MATLAB operating environment are; Pentium III, IV AMD Athlon, Athlon XP, Athlon MP, and AMD Opteron CPUs. The MATLAB operating environment 64-bit version supports the following CPUs; AMD64, AMD Opteron, AMD Athlon 64, and Intel EM64T CPUs (Mathworks, 2012). This illustrate that the requirements vary depending on the kernels configuration, as the kernel is used as the core for this operating environment. Linux has its flaws and merits as an OSs, but it does stack up to it competition and offers an inexpensive and flexible alternative to the buying a retail OS. With many countries adopting/creating versions of Linux to be used in a commercial aspect Linux continues to grow and become a widely used OS. With newer and more advanced distributions being create to meet the demands of the end user whether it is at home, on a mobile device, or on an enterprise level Linux has proven to be a solid OS that offers limitless possibilities.

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