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UK Web hosting by Abbey Hosting
All our UK web hosting packages are run on Linux based operating systems, giving your web hosting account maximum performance and reliability.
Linux is a term that describes a Unix-like operating system for a computer. The flavors and distributions of Linux are based on a Linux kernel. This system of distributions based on a common kernel is the first commercially viable example of open source distributions. These free distributions are based on a collaborative effort to build, maintain, enhance and support a set of software components. These distributions are at the source code level meaning they are free to be taken and adapted to add new features and to enhance the code. The license agreements that govern this process generally state that the modifications are to be given back to the community in order for the license to be considered valid. Some allowance is made for proprietary changes that are then made into commercial products in the overall scheme of things. Linux itself hasn’t seen much in this way other than a primary example of creating a distribution that when made available commercially is then supported by an organization ho generates revenue primarily from support and maintenance fees. That example is Red Hat Linux.
In general, am organization that adopts a particular distribution of something as basic as an operating system to use in running its business operations doesn’t take on a developer role in understanding and maintaining that operating system. So the Red Hat organization, in realizing that customers would pay them for that service, became users of the Red Hat Linux kernel in order to have a single place to go for reliable and guaranteed response service and support plan. A business doesn’t want to deal with the source code for an operating system and Red Hat insulates these businesses from that requirement.
Red Hat takes the license for Linux under the terms of a GNU GPL license and under those terms can package and redistribute a stable set of code that it then supports, maintains and enhances for its commercial customers.
Servers are predominantly where Linux is used and particular popularity has been gained in server farms used for hosting large numbers of websites being resold to other organizations. Linux is gaining popularity being used on embedded devices including mobile phones all the way through supercomputers. Recently through the distributions known as netbooks and Ubuntu the laptop and desktop operating system use has been gaining market share.
Originally, Linux was developed in 1991 by Linus Torvalds as a kernel for the operating system. That kernel then had to have various utilities and device drivers build for the various hardware platforms that the operating system was to be ported to run on.
This was all done from a base Unix kernel that was built and designed in the 1960s, being first in the market in 1970. The Unix operating system was originally built in a university environment where it gained popularity and was then adopted by businesses and hardware manufacturers who needed a new operating system to evolve what was soon to become a client/server architecture for computers. This was in answer to the dominance of IBM in the mainframe hardware environment. There was a need for portability across a wide variety of hardware platforms and Unix leant itself to that very easily, as hardware vendors would port a common system to their hardware, add features and make it an offering bundled with their hardware.
Now operating systems are available for various hardware platforms and the user can choose, through the open source approach, the operating system that best meets their overall needs. Linux nad it’s flavors of Unix provide those choices today.