Linux is one of popular version of UNIX operating System. It is open source as its source code is freely available. It is free to use. Linux was designed considering UNIX compatibility. It's functionality list is quite similar to that of UNIX.

Components of Linux System
Linux Operating System has primarily three components

Kernel - Kernel is the core part of Linux. It is responsible for all major activities of this operating system. It is consists of various modules and it interacts directly with the underlying hardware. Kernel provides the required abstraction to hide low level hardware details to system or application programs.

System Library - System libraries are special functions or programs using which application programs or system utilities accesses Kernel's features. These libraries implements most of the functionalities of the operating system and do not requires kernel module's code access rights.

System Utility - System Utility programs are responsible to do specialized, individual level tasks.

Linux Operating System
Kernel Mode vs User Mode
Kernel component code executes in a special privileged mode called kernel mode with full access to all resources of the computer. This code represents a single process, executes in single address space and do not require any context switch and hence is very efficient and fast. Kernel runs each processes and provides system services to processes, provides protected access to hardwares to processes.

Support code which is not required to run in kernel mode is in System Library. User programs and other system programs works in User Mode which has no access to system hardwares and kernel code. User programs/ utilities use System libraries to access Kernel functions to get system's low level tasks.

Basic Features
Following are some of the important features of Linux Operating System.

Portable -