From the course: Introduction to Linux
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The Linux kernel - Linux Tutorial
From the course: Introduction to Linux
The Linux kernel
- [Lecturer] While it's common to think about Linux as an operating system, it's more precise to understand Linux as the kernel of an operating system. All operating systems have a kernel, though we don't often talk about them as much as we do the Linux kernel. The Linux kernel is open-source software, which has been built and modified over the years by thousands of contributors. It was first released by Linus Torvalds in 1991, and it was created in response to restrictive licensing that burdened other operating systems at the time. The license that applies to the Linux kernel allows it to be used and distributed freely, and this has resulted in the Linux kernel being made available in a large variety of Linux distributions, which we'll talk about later on. A kernel is software that communicates with a computer's hardware in order to give programs, and therefore, users access to the computer's hardware resources so they can do what they need to do. A kernel can run on its own, though…
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