Back in 1992, a Finnish student, Linus Torvalds, posted to some internet forums that he was creating a new operating system that would run on PCs.

The operating system would be free and open, and based around Unix – the commercial operating system used all over the world by companies, governments and universities.

The project received overwhelming support, and nobody could have known then that, in just a few years, it would become one of the most powerful operating systems in existence.

It would find itself running not just on PCs, but on hardware ranging from small PDAs to massive corporate mainframes, and that it would help to push an open software philosophy into the mainstream.

A long road
Linux has come a long way from its Unix roots. It has been many years since even the installation was a job best left to the experts, and the simplest of tasks had to be done using complex, obtuse text-based commands.

Today, Linux is just as likely to be running the software in your fridge as it is to be running on your desktop PC: it could be processing satellite data to predict weather patterns or acting as an internet games server.

The modern Linux desktop is comparable to Windows XP and Apple’s OSX. Anybody familiar with a computer can sit down in front of Linux and have no trouble at all, and they may find that many tasks are simpler to perform.

Free
Unlike its counterparts from Apple and Microsoft, Linux is a free, open-source operating system. This means anybody can read and modify the underlying code, and anybody can distribute it without licensing restrictions.

The developer can contribute and learn, and the user at home can run a full operating system for next to nothing, in many cases completely free of charge.

Some of the best versions of Linux can be downloaded from the internet and installed onto your PC. There are no evaluation periods, no demands for payment, and no forced registration screens.