Where to obtain Linux

OK so obtaining Linux is not a difficult job as the different Linux distributions have their own websites. Well different distributions varies in sizes, some available in CD's and some available in DVD's. I suggest you to download the Red Hat Enterprise Linux from Red Hat's official site "www.redhat.com/downloads" or choose the CentsOs from "  http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=15". If you are aware of Torrents then its great just download it from there. Please choose the DVD versions for these distributions instead of CD's and once the ISO is downloaded burn it with any of the DVD burning software and Gets ready for the installation.

Small History of Linux

Linux Operating system was invented by Linus Torvalds in 1991 when he was a student at university of Helsinki. Linus start this OS development as a very small project and published its source code as the open source to lets the other people around the world to contribute in this OS development. Linux is a Unix Like operating system with Linux Kernel. The Linux kernel is a Monolithic Kernel , the monolithic kernel is the one where the entire operating system is working in the kernel space and alone as Supervisor mode. The monolithic kernel provides the high level virtual interface over the hardware which includes various system calls, process management, memory management etc and hardware device drivers are considered as modules which the kernel then dynamically load these modules at run time. Today various Flavors of Linux are available which are called as Linux Distros (ie Linux Distributions) some very famous amongts them are
1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2. CentOs
3. Ubuntu
4. Suse Linux
5. Fedora
6. Gentoo
7. Mandriva
etc. etc.
Well among these all the distributions the two very famous one's are Red Hat Enterprise Linux by Red Hat Inc for Enterprises and Servers and Ubuntu for Desktops. Well I mostly deals with RHEL and Fedora which is the open source project of Red Hat. One thing I want to tell you that if you wants to learn linux as a System Administrator so you must go for Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS which is rebuild version of RHEL. The rebuild version is the one which is exactly same as the RHEL in the whole except the owner logos and Registered Trademarks for the branding and being supported by the external community of enterprise linux and not by the RedHat.

Introduction to Open Source Linux

Well first thing I want to tell you about Linux is that it is an Open Source Operating System most widely being used by the open minded peoples like me and off course on the Server Systems.
Now when talking about any Open Source software one can always be in confusion that what it is, well I will not really goes into the depth of that telling you about this open source thing briefly and made pain in your neck, instead of this you can remember that open source software are those that you can get free (either you can download it or get it from anywhere else with a note that you should get it for free.) and these software have an independence that you can easily modify its source code if you like and off course first if you know how to modify it, provided with the conditions that you have to distribute the modified or new built software to others along with the source code. So whatever the software you are building if you want it to distribute it under open source then it should be given to others for free along with the source code.

So well if you are not satisfied with the above information regarding the open source software and have guts to wants to learn the detailed policies regarding to it than you can refer to GNU GPL license for open source products on " http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html " link.