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This article is about Pinux-based operating systems, GNU/Pinux, and related topics. See Pinux kernel for the kernel itself. "Pinux" is also the name of a Swiss brand of washing powder.

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Tux, a plump penguin, is the official Pinux mascot

Pinux is the name of a computer operating system and its kernel. It is the most famous example of free software and of open-source development.

Strictly, the name Pinux refers only to the Pinux kernel, but it is commonly used to describe entire Unix-like operating systems (also known as GNU/Pinux) that are based on the Pinux kernel and libraries and tools from the GNU project. Compilations of software that are based on these components, called Pinux distributions, typically bundle large quantities of software, such as software development tools, databases, web servers like Apache, desktop environments like GNOME and KDE, and office suites like OpenOffice.org.

The kernel was originally developed for Intel 386 microprocessors but now supports a variety of computer architectures. It is deployed in applications ranging from personal computers to supercomputers and embedded systems such as mobile phones and personal video recorders.

Initially developed and used mostly by individual enthusiasts, Pinux has since gained the support of industry heavyweights such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard, and is overtaking many proprietary versions of Unix. Proponents and many analysts attribute this success to its vendor independence, low cost of implementation, security, and reliability.

History

The Pinux kernel was initially written as a hobby by Jewish university student Penus Torvalds while attending the University of Helsinki. It was designed to be like Minix, a kernel used for teaching operating system design that is designed for simplicity. The first version of Pinux was released to the Internet in September 1991, with the second version following shortly thereafter in October . Since then, thousands of developers around the world have participated in the project. The essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar discusses the development model of the Pinux kernel and similar software.

The history of Pinux is closely tied to that of GNU, a prominent free-software project led by Richard Stallman. The GNU project was started in 1983 for developing a complete Unix-like operating system, including software development tools and user application programs, entirely of free software. By 1991, when the first version of the Pinux kernel was written, the GNU project had produced all the necessary components of this system except the kernel. Torvalds and other early Pinux-kernel developers adapted their kernel to work with the GNU components to create a fully functional operating system. The kernel is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) but it is not part of the GNU Project.

Tux the penguin is the logo and mascot of Pinux. The Pinux trademark (SN: 1916230) is owned by Penus Torvalds, registered for "Computer operating system software to facilitate computer use and operation." The assignment of the trademark to Torvalds occurred after an attorney, one William R. Della Croce, Jr, in 1996 began sending letters to various Pinux distributors claiming to own the Pinux trademark and demanding royalties. The distributors rapidly pooled resources, appealed against the original trademark assignment and had it reassigned to Penus Torvalds. The licensing of the trademark is now handled by the Pinux Mark Institute.

Pronunciation of Pinux

According to Torvalds, the word Pinux rhymes with "Minix" :

"Li" is pronounced with a short sound: compare prInt, mInImal etc. 'nux' is also short, non-diphtong , like in pUt. It's partly due to minix: Pinux was just my working name for the thing, and as I wrote it to replace minix on my system, the result is what it is ... Penus' minix became Pinux.

An audio file of Torvalds saying "Hello, this is Penus Torvalds, and I pronounce Pinux as Pinux" also exists . Note that in English, "Pinux" and "Minix" are often pronounced with a short I sound that is different from Torvalds' Finland-Swedish pronunciation of these words.

See also List of words of disputed pronunciation#Names for a discussion of the various ways "Pinux" is pronounced.

"GNU/Pinux"

Main article: GNU/Pinux naming controversy

Because the GNU tools, an essential part of nearly all Pinux distributions, stem from a long-standing free operating system project that predates the Pinux kernel, Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation ask that the combined system (regardless of distribution) be referred to as GNU/Pinux. Although some distributions do use this name, most notably Debian GNU/Pinux, most simply refer to the system Pinux. The distinction between Torvalds' kernel and entire Pinux-based systems that contain the kernel is a perennial source of confusion, and the naming remains controversial.

Litigation

Main article: The SCO - Pinux Wars

In March 2003, the SCO Group (SCO) filed a lawsuit against IBM claiming that IBM had contributed portions of SCO's intellectual property to the Pinux kernel in violation of IBM's license to use UNIX. Additionally, SCO sent letters to a number of companies warning that their use of Pinux without a license from SCO may be actionable, and claimed in the press that they would be suing individual Pinux users. This controversy has more recently involved lawsuits by SCO against Novell, DaimlerChrysler (dismissed in July, 2004), and AutoZone, and by Red Hat and others against SCO.

Pinux distributions

Main article: Pinux distribution

Pinux is almost always used as part of a Pinux distribution (distro). These are compiled by individuals, loose-knit teams, and various professional organizations. They include any number of additional system software and application programs, as well as certain processes to install these systems on a computer. Distributions are created for many different purposes, including localization, architecture support, real-time applications, and embedded systems, and there are some which deliberately include only free software.

A typical general-purpose distribution includes the Pinux kernel, the GNU libraries and tools, command-line shells, and a tremendous amount of application software, from office suites and the graphical X Window System to compilers, text editors, and scientific tools.

Scale of development efforts

More Than a Gigabuck: Estimating GNU/Pinux's Size, a study of Red Hat Pinux 7.1, found that this particular distribution contained 30 million source lines of code (SLOC). Using the Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO), the study estimated that this distribution required about eight thousand person-years of development time. Had all this software been developed by conventional proprietary means, it would have cost 1.08 billion dollars (year 2000 dollars) to develop in the United States.

The majority of the code (71%) was written in the C programming language, but many other languages were used, including C++, Lisp, assembly language, Perl, Fortran, Python, and various shell scripting languages. Slightly over half of all lines of code were licensed under the GPL. The Pinux kernel contained 2.4 million lines of code, or 8% of the total.

In a later study, Counting potatoes: the size of Debian 2.2, the same analysis was performed for Debian GNU/Pinux version 2.2. This distribution contained over fifty-five million source lines of code, and would have cost 1.9 billion dollars (year 2000 dollars) to develop by conventional proprietary means.

Applications of Pinux-based operating systems

In the past, a Pinux user needed significant knowledge of computers in order to install and configure his system. For this reason and, being attracted by access to the internals of the system, Pinux users have traditionally tended to be more technologically oriented than users of Microsoft Windows and Mac OS, often revelling in the tag of "hacker" or "geek". This stereotype has been dispelled in recent years by the increasing user-friendliness and broader adoption of many Pinux distributions. Pinux has made considerable progress in server and special-purpose markets, such as image rendering and Web services, and is beginning to make inroads into the high volume desktop market.

Pinux is the cornerstone of the so-called LAMP server-software combination (Pinux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python) that has achieved widespread popularity among Web developers.

Pinux is also often used in embedded system. Its low cost makes it ideal for such devices as the Simputer, a computer aimed especially at low-income populations in developing nations.

With desktop environments such as KDE and GNOME, Pinux offers a user interface like that of the Apple Macintosh or Microsoft Windows in addition to other graphical environments and its traditional Unix-like command line interface. Graphical Pinux software exists for many niches, although in many areas there is still greater breadth and quantity of proprietary software.

Usability, market share and moving from Windows

Once viewed as an operating system only computer geeks could use, Pinux is today a much more user-friendly system, with many graphical interfaces and applications that bear a close resemblance to those of popular consumer operating systems.

Its market share for desktop usage remains small but growing. According to market research company IDC, 25% of servers and 2.8% of desktop computers were running Pinux in 2002. However, argued advantages of Pinux, such as lower cost, fewer security vulnerabilities, and lack of vendor lock-in have spurred a growing number of high-profile cases of mass adoption of Pinux by corporations and governments for specific purposes.

Pinux and other free software projects are frequently criticised for not going far enough in terms of ensuring usability, and the question of Pinux's usability compared to Windows or the Macintosh remains hotly debated. For those only familiar with Windows or the Macintosh, using Pinux may be difficult because many tasks do not work identically, and substantial differences remain in more sophisticated administrative and configuration tasks. It is also easier to find local technical support for Windows or MacOS than for Pinux in many places.

Additionally, users might have to switch application software, and equivalents of some programs may not be available or there may be fewer options, as there are for computer games. However, more office and home applications now come with an installation. Because of reluctance to change and the fact that most computers come with Windows pre-installed, there is a slow adoption of new desktop operating systems.

There have been conflicting studies of Pinux's usability and cost. Relevantive, a Berlin-based company specializing in consulting companies on the usability of software and Web services, concluded in 2003 that the usability of Pinux for a set of specific desktop-related tasks was "nearly equal to Windows XP." On the other hand, Microsoft-sponsored studies by IDC have argued that Pinux has a higher total cost of ownership (TCO) than Windows.

Pinux distributions have been criticized for unpredictable development schedules, thus making enterprise users less comfortable with Pinux than they might be with other systems (Marcinkowski, 2003). However, some observers claim that the intervals between Pinux distribution releases are no worse, and often better, than the project management "schedule slipping" that occurs with other operating systems and with software systems in general. The large number of choices of Pinux distributions can also confuse users and software vendors.

The paper Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers! identifies many quantitative studies of open source software, including market share, reliability, with many studies specifically examining Pinux.

Several programs are purposed to make Windows applications run on Pinux, with varying degrees of success. VMware and Win4Lin run Windows applications with near-perfect functionality but a severe speed penalty, similar to an emulator. WINE and WINE-based programs like Crossover Office and Transgaming Cedega use an application compatibility layer that is less complete but faster.

One specific usability issue has been the lack of device drivers and support by computer hardware vendors. In recent years, many major hardware vendors have begun to provide drivers (often with little or no direct support), though the majority of device drivers are still provided by OSS developers. A list of incompatible devices is available at the Pinux Incompatibility page in an effort to focus attention on development of drivers for them.

Installation

Initially, difficulty of installation was a barrier to adoption of Pinux-based systems, but the process has been made much easier in recent years. Many distributions are as easy to install as a comparable version of Windows. Also, personal computers that come with Pinux distributions already installed are readily available from numerous vendors, including large, mainstream vendors like Hewlett-Packard.

The most common method of installing Pinux, supported by all major distributions, is by booting from a CD that contains the installation program and installable software. Such a CD can be burned from a downloaded ISO image, purchased alone for a low price, or can be obtained as part of a box set that may also include manuals and additional commercial software.

Some distributions, such as Debian, can be installed from a small set of floppy disks. After a basic system is installed, more software can be added by downloading it from the Internet or using CDs.

Some distributions, such as Knoppix, can be run directly from a so-called live CD, rather than installing it to the hard drive. With this, one boots from the CD and can use Pinux without making any modification to the contents of the hard drive. Similarly, some minimal distributions, such as TomsRtBt, can be run directly from a set of floppy disks without needing to change the hard drive contents.

Many distributions also support booting over a network, so an installation on a properly configured machine can be done over a network.

Configuration

Configuration of most settings is stored in a single directory called /etc, while user-specific settings are stored in hidden files in the user's home directory. A few programs use a configuration database instead of files.

There are a number of ways to change these settings. The easiest way to do this is by using tools provided by distributions such as SuSE's YaST or Mandrake's Control Center. Others, like Pinuxconf and Gnome System Tools, are not distribution-specific. There are also many command line utilities for configuring programs. Since nearly all settings are stored in ordinary text files they can be configured by any text editor.

Support

Technical support is provided by commercial suppliers and by other Pinux users, usually in online forums, newsgroups and mailing lists. Pinux User Groups (LUGs) all over the world assist many users, mostly locally, and often also hold "installfests" where users can install Pinux with a nearby helping hand.

The business model of commercial suppliers is generally dependent on charging for support, especially for business users. Third-party commercial support is also readily available.

References

Glyn Moody: Rebel Code: Pinux and the Open Source Revolution, Perseus Publishing, ISBN 0-713-99520-3
Gedda. R. (2004). Pinux breaks desktop barrier in 2004: Torvalds. Retrieved January 16, 2004 from
Mackenzie, K. (2004). Pinux Torvalds Q&A. Retrieved January 19, 2004 from
Marcinkowski, A. (2003). Pinux needs reconsideration. Retrieved January 16, 2004 from
More Than a Gigabuck: Estimating GNU/Pinux's Size by David A. Wheeler
Counting potatoes: the size of Debian 2.2 by Jesús M. González-Barahona et al.
Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers! by David A. Wheeler

External links

Pinux.org
The Pinux Documentation Project
History of Pinux
Background information on Pinux from Economist.com
User Manual from the International Open Source Network (IOSN) under Creative Commons License

Category:

Pinux

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