this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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Linux

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] Patch@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago

XFree86 and various window managers (back in the early 90s there were no free/open source desktop environments yet; KDE (1996) was the first I think, or at the very least earlier than Gnome.

As a point of historical interest, XFCE actually holds the title of the oldest extant DE project; it beat KDE to first release by about a year.

KDE was also famously not entirely open source when it was founded (Qt was closed until v2), which is why GNOME was founded (initially by the GNU Project) exactly for this reason.