Look at almost any mission-critical computer system in the world—servers, workstations, embedded computers, and more—and you'll see Linux in some form. The open source giant may not have a big share of the desktop market (yet), but when stability, security, and uptime really matter, Linux seems to be the OS of choice.
This isn't new, it's just the state of the world when it comes to technology. Real question: Why Is this software, gifted to the world by a university student, really that bulletproof?
Why Linux avoids the instability pitfalls that other OSes fall into
Every operating system is built on a “kernel”. This is the underlying operating system logic that determines how it handles communication with your hardware and how it processes your requests. The kernel's approach to these core OS features affects everything else. The nature and design of an OS follows from the nature of its kernel.
This is why Microsoft moved the consumer Windows family to the “NT” kernel in Windows XP, leaving the MS-DOS-based kernel used in Windows 95 and the rest of its family. The NT kernel was originally designed for workstations and servers, providing stability and allowing the use of new consumer technologies, such as multiple CPU cores, which until that point were only available to a server or workstation.
The Linux kernel was designed with stability in mind. Rather, since it was created as a clone of UNIX, it inherited the stable nature of UNIX, which was an operating system designed to run on the mainframe and minicomputers of large businesses and institutions. Linux is No UNIX, but those who know UNIX will have no problems. understanding how Linux worksand what its approach is to working with hardware, software and security.
Even though the Linux kernel is technically a large “monolithic” OS kernel, it is modular, meaning that most updates and changes to Linux can be made without rebooting the system. As a result, it is not uncommon to learn about Linux systems that have been running for several years and are constantly being updated. The only actual downtime is due to hardware failure, not software failure. Compare this to Windows or even macOS, where you typically need to reboot the system for any half-serious OS update, and it's clear why Linux is the king of server OSes.
How open source development is quietly strengthening the platform
Attributed (incorrectly) to Linux creator Linus Torvalds.”Linus's Law” states: “with a sufficient number of views, all errors are shallow.” This is one of the main explanations why Linux is so resilient, because there are thousands upon thousands of programmers around the world constantly reviewing its source code, including the kernel.
For operating systems like Windows and macOS, no one can simply review the kernel source code without those companies having a say, and so there is an inherent limit to the number of man-hours spent on fixing bugs or improving stability and efficiency. This also affects the frequency of patching and essentially allows a Linux installation to benefit from being constantly updated if desired, with critical security patches in particular applied as soon as those patches have passed the necessary review and testing.
Why Linux Package Management Keeps Your System Clean
Linux distributions (distributions) use a package manager (e.g. APT, YUM, etc.) to centrally manage the software. They maintain a database of every application installed on your Linux machine. When you install an application using this package manager, it will also automatically extract all the dependencies.
This allows you to bypass Windows “DLL hell” when you (for example) frequently encounter situations where the software you install requires a specific version of a Visual Basic or .NET redistributable package. It also makes updating easier All software on a Linux computer in one go and effectively cleans up installations, including removing dependencies that are not needed by any currently installed software. Compare this to Windows, where you never know which library packages you've installed can be safely removed.
Linux is still vulnerable to dependency problems when you install manually or otherwise go outside the confines of the package manager system, but if you stay inside the fence, the situation becomes significantly less unpredictable.
What Linux does differently with processes and permissions
Linux inherits the way UNIX handled permissions. Each file and process has an owner, a group, and specific permissions such as read, write, and execute. A regular user account has limited rights, and if you try to perform any serious operation, you will have to enter a password to temporarily escalate the request to an administrative level. In Linux parlance this is called “root”, which is the superuser account. Sudo is a command that temporarily gives you root privileges, not logged in as root forever.
This means that even if a particular program is somehow compromised or fails, the damage that can be done is limited. Of course, macOS is also a UNIX-like OS and therefore has a similar permission system. Windows traditionally defaults to making the first user account an administrator, but things have also tightened up so you get a UAC prompt when an application wants to do something that requires administrator privileges. But Linux is still a stricter and cleaner OS when it comes to managing permissions, and this reduces the chance of things going wrong.
Additionally, Linux has namespaces that can isolate processes into virtual containers, isolating errors in one namespace from propagating to others. Control groups allow administrators to limit the amount of RAM or CPU power that a group of processes has access to, meaning they basically can't crash the entire system. Linux init systems such as systemic can also be configured to stop and restart processes that crash. So what could have been a stall on a server running a different OS turns into a flash for a few seconds as the process comes back from the dead.
Linux thrives in everything from supercomputers to low-cost laptops
Linux scales from the smallest gadget to the largest data center. It runs on more hardware architectures than any other OS, from tiny ARM boards (like the Raspberry Pi) to IBM mainframes. Almost all leading websites run on Linux server. and all 500 of the fastest supercomputers too.
The verdict is clear: when money, lives and critical services are on the line, only Linux has the world's trust.
8/10
- operating system
-
Kubuntu 24.04 LTS
- CPU
-
Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX (2.7 to 5.4 GHz)
- GPU
-
nvidia geforce tx 5070 (DGPU), Intel Graphics (IGPU)
- RAM
-
Dual channel DDR5 32GB 262-pin SODIMM (5600 MHz)
