Welcome to New to Linux Info
Linux was born back in 1991 when a young Helsinki student became disillusioned with what was available. His name? Linus Torvalds.
Back then his personal computer (PC) used MSDOS®, the disk operating system from Microsoft™. While at his university he used and liked Unix. So he decided to develop his on PC version of Unix.
Months of programming lay ahead but the beginnings of Linux was born. What Linus developed is known as the kernel, which is the heart of any operating sysem (OS).Over time many developers and programmers world wide, added their programs to the kernel to form Linux as we know and love today. This, some would argue, is more rightly known as GNU/Linux.
Want to know more about what GNU is? go here. Linux is modular by design, therefore you can add software to it or change the look and feel of Linux at will. You can do this because GNU/Linux and most Linux distro's subscribe to the GPL License.You can find more information about the GPL here.Under the GPL, GNU/Linux or just plain Linux is free. This concept causes confusion among some.The way to view this is Linux is free,as in speech, not as in beer.
If you like computers then Linux is the place to be.No where else do you have the freedom to hack,in the original sense of the word,play around reconfigure whatever,it's up to you. That is the beauty of the GPL and Linux. If you dont like the Window manager you are using you can change it. There are several available. Go here to take a look.If you find a bug and you are a programmer/developer you know how to fix it you can do.Then you can post your patch back to the community for every Linux user to benefit. These are your rights under the GPL. You can't do that with certain others OS's. You have to wait until they see fit to patch it or even tell you there is a bug.
The Kernel
The Kernel is the heart of the OS. Linux's Kernel is constantly being updated, get yours from the link below.