Linux

Some distributions, such as Debian, can be installed from a small set of floppy disks. Other popular holiday plants include holly, mistletoe, red amaryllis, and Christmas cactus. 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. Since the 19th century, the traditional Christmas flower has been the winter-blooming poinsettia. The most common method of installing Linux, supported by all major distributions, is by booting from a CD that contains the installation program and installable software. In North and South America and to a lesser extent Europe and Australia, it is traditional to decorate the outside of houses with lights and sometimes with illuminated sleighs, snowmen, and other Christmas figures. Further, personal computers that come with Linux distributions already installed are readily available from numerous vendors, including large mainstream vendors like Hewlett-Packard and Dell. Decorating a Christmas tree with lights and ornaments and the decoration of the interior of the home with garlands and evergreen foliage, particularly holly and mistletoe, are common traditions.

Also it is not normally necessary to feed a stack of driver CDs into a Linux installation as most hardware is supported out of the box. Many families enclose an annual family photograph or a family newsletter summarizing the adventures and accomplishments of family members during the preceding year. It is unnecessary to file license numbers and enter them during installation. Christmas cards are extremely popular in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United States, and Europe, in part as a way to maintain relationships with distant relatives, friends, and business acquaintances. Many distributions are at least as easy to install as a comparable version of Windows. Recently there have also been declarations of Christmas peace for forest animals in many cities and municipalities, restricting hunting during the holiday. In the past, difficulty of installation was a barrier to wide adoption of Linux-based systems, but the process has been made easy in recent years. Finally, a joyous Christmas feast is wished to all inhabitants of the city.".

The paper Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers! identifies many quantitative studies of open source software, on topics including market share and reliability, with many studies specifically examining Linux. "Tomorrow, God willing, is the graceful celebration of the birth of our Lord and Saviour; and thus is declared a peaceful Christmas time to all, by advising devotion and to behave otherwise quietly and peacefully, because he who breaks this peace and violates the peace of Christmas by any illegal or improper behaviour shall under aggravating circumstances be guilty and punished according to what the law and statutes prescribe for each and every offence separately. The large number of choices of Linux distributions can also confuse users and software vendors. The declaration ceremony begins with the hymn Jumala ompi linnamme (Martin Luther's Ein` feste Burg ist unser Gott) and continues with the Declaration of Christmas Peace read from a parchment roll:. However, some observers claim that the intervals between Linux 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. It is broadcast in Finnish radio (since 1935) and television and nowadays also in some foreign countries. Linux distributions have been criticized for unpredictable development schedules, thus making enterprise users less comfortable with Linux than they might be with other systems (Marcinkowski, 2003). The declaration takes place on the Old Great Square of Turku, Finland's official Christmas City and former capital, at noon on Christmas Eve.

However, Relevantive, the renowned Berlin-based organization specializing in providing consultation to companies on the usability of software and Web services, concluded that the usability of Linux for a set of desktop-related tasks is "equal to Windows XP." Since then, there have been numerous independent studies and articles [10] [11] [12] that show that a modern Linux desktop using Gnome or KDE is on par with or superior to Microsoft Windows. Declaration of Christmas Peace has been a tradition in Finland from the Middle Ages every year, except in 1939 due to the war. Microsoft-sponsored studies such as those by IDC and Gartner have argued that Linux had a higher total cost of ownership (TCO) than Windows. Until recently, gifts were given in the UK to non-family members on Boxing Day. There have been conflicting studies of Linux's usability and cost in the past. In most of the world, Christmas gifts are given at night on Christmas Eve or in the morning on Christmas Day. Deliberately non-portable hardware drivers like Winmodems and Winprinters have been a general problem. One of the many customs of gift timing is suggested by the song "Twelve Days of Christmas", celebrating an old British tradition of gifts each day from Christmas to Epiphany.

Often, this development requires reverse engineering of some sort, as certain manufacturers remain secretive and refuse to provide the hardware or firmware specifications for their products. In Russia, Grandfather Frost brings presents on New Year's Eve, and these are opened on the same night. Though some vendors provide device drivers, many device drivers must be developed by volunteers after the release of the product. In Finland Joulupukki personally meets children and gives gifts on December 24. Support for certain new and obscure hardware remains an issue. In Poland, Santa Claus (Polish: Święty Mikołaj) gives gifts at two occasions: on the night of December 5 (so that children find them on the morning of December 6) and on Christmas Eve, December 24, (so that children find gifts that same day). Linux is rapidly gaining popularity as a desktop operating system as it is increasingly used in schools and workplaces and more people are becoming familiar with it. In other countries, including Spain, gifts are brought by the Magi at Epiphany on January 6.

Linux is past that stage now, with numerous manufacturers installing Linux and many organizations having five or more years experience with Linux - since installation evolved to graphical user interfaces - or Unix, which has been around for decades. The main day for gift giving, however, is December 24, when gifts are brought by Santa Claus or are placed under the Christmas tree. Because of reluctance to change and the fact that many computers still come with Microsoft Windows pre-installed, there has been a slow initial adoption of new desktop operating systems. In much of Germany, children put shoes out on window sills on the night of December 5, and find them filled with candy and small gifts the next morning. Most distributions of Linux have two or more means of software installation, and more office and end-user applications now come with an automated installation program. In such places, including the Netherlands, Christmas Day remains more a religious holiday. However, general applications like spreadsheets, word processors, and browsers are available for Linux in profusion. In many countries, Saint Nicholas's Day remains the principal day for gift giving.

Equivalents of some specific programs may not be available. Gift giving is not restricted to these special gift-bringers, as family members and friends also bestow gifts on each other. Users might have to switch application software, and there may be fewer options, as in the case of computer games. In other countries, children place their empty shoes out for Santa to fill on the night before Christmas, or for Saint Nicholas to fill on December 5 before his feast day the next day. For example, Gentoo Linux, a source-based distribution, is time-consuming to install, but can be more usable for advanced users than stereotypical beginner-friendly distributions, such as Mandriva or Ubuntu. In the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada children hang a Christmas stocking by the fireplace on Christmas Eve because Santa is said to come down the chimney the night before Christmas to fill them. It is worth noting that an operating system's usability is subjective and dependent on the background knowledge and needs of its users. In many countries, children leave empty containers for Santa to fill with small gifts such as toys, candy, or fruit.

It used to be easier to find local technical support for Windows or Mac OS than for Linux in some places but with local Linux User Groups or LUGs appearing everywhere this has changed. Many shopping malls in North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia have a holiday mall Santa Claus whom children can visit to ask for presents. Many older programs with text user interfaces (TUI) have wild inconsistencies between them, but they maintain loyal followings. Claus. On the command shell, many usability hangups from early Unix days generally remain, such as the difficulty in finding some commands, and the inability to undo many operations such as file deletion. In some versions, elves in a toy workshop make the holiday toys, and in some he is married to Mrs. GUI configuration tools and control panels are available for many system settings and services, but editing of plain-text configuration files is often required. In some cultures Santa Claus is accompanied by Knecht Ruprecht, or Black Peter.

The area of hardware and services configuration is where user experience is most varied. The French equivalent of Santa, Père Noël, evolved along similar lines, eventually adopting the Santa image Haddon Sundblom painted for a worldwide Coca-Cola advertising campaign in the 1930s. Additionally, proprietary software for other operating systems may be run through compatibility layers, such as Wine. Those who are on the bad list and whose behaviour has not improved before Christmas are said to receive a booby prize, such as a piece of coal or a switch with which their parents beat them, rather than presents. A growing number of proprietary software vendors are supporting Linux, and open source development for Linux is also steadily increasing. When it gets closer to Christmas time, parents use the belief to encourage children to behave well. While some very specific application may not be available for Linux, there usually exists a replacement, often of better quality. Throughout the year, Santa adds names of children to either the good or bad list depending on their behaviour.

Applications running within graphical desktop environments such as GNOME and KDE in Linux are very similar to those running on other operating systems. One belief in the United Kingdom, United States, and other countries passed down through the generations is the idea of lists of good children and bad children. Linux and other free software projects have been frequently criticized for not going far enough in terms of ensuring usability, and Linux was once considered more difficult to use than Windows or the Macintosh, although this has changed. He spends the rest of the year making toys and keeping lists on the behaviour of the children. The Linux market is among the fastest growing and is projected to exceed $35.7 billion by 2008 [9](this statistic is not comparable to capitalised operating systems like Windows - since Linux is free to use). He then climbs down the chimney, leaves gifts for the children, and eats the food they leave for him. However, argued advantages of Linux, such as lower cost, fewer security vulnerabilities [8] , and lack of vendor lock-in, have spurred a growing number of high-profile cases of mass adoption of Linux by corporations and governments. In the Anglo-American tradition, this jovial fellow arrives on Christmas Eve on a sleigh pulled by reindeer, and lands on the roofs of houses.

According to market research company IDC, in 2002, only 25% of servers and 2.8% of desktop computers were already running Linux. In North America, other colonists adopted the feast of Sinterklaas brought by the Dutch into their Christmas holiday, and Sinterklaas became Santa Claus, or Saint Nick, known in some West African and the UK countries as Father Christmas. Its market share of desktops is rapidly growing. The Dutch modeled a gift-giving Saint Nicholas on the eve of his feast day on December 6. Once viewed as an operating system only computer professionals and aficionados could use, Linux distributions have become user-friendly, with many graphical interfaces and applications. (Catholic Encyclopedia - http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11063b.htm). Graphical Linux software exists for almost any area and in some areas there is a greater quality and quantity of software available than for proprietary operating systems. Nicola, which is highly valued for its medicinal powers, is said to flow from his relics.

In desktop environments like GNOME and KDE, Linux may be used with a user interface that is similar to that of Mac OS, Microsoft Windows, or other desktop environments, and its traditional Unix-like command line interface. To this day, an oily substance known as Manna di S. Linux is rapidly gaining popularity as a desktop operating system. His relics are still preserved in the church of San Nicola in Bari. As of June 2005, the 3 fastest supercomputers in the world (as recorded by the Top500) run Linux. In 1087, Italian merchants stole his deceased body at Myra and brought it to Bari in Italy. Linux is increasingly common as an operating system for supercomputers, most recently on 64-bit AMD Opterons in the Cray XD1. He died on December 6 of 345 or 352.

Linux is also expanding into telecommunications equipment through efforts such as Carrier Grade Linux. He may have been present at the Council of Nicaea, though there is no record of his attendance. The TomTom satellite navigation system also uses an embedded version of the Linux kernel. He was imprisoned during the persecution of Diocletian and released after the accession of Constantine. A large number of network firewalls and routers, including several from Linksys and Netgear, use Linux internally, taking advantage of its advanced firewalling and routing capabilities. He made a pilgrimage to Egypt and Palestine in his youth and soon thereafter became Bishop of Myra. The popular TiVo digital video recorder also uses a customized version of Linux. The concept of a mythical figure who brings gifts to children derives from Saint Nicholas, a bishop of Myra in fourth century Lycia, Asia Minor.

In handheld devices, it is an increasingly popular alternative to the Windows CE and Palm OS operating systems. Gift-giving is a near-universal part of Christmas celebrations. In mobile phones, Linux has become a major competitor to the proprietory Symbian OS software. Since the customs of Christmas celebration largely evolved in northern Europe, many are associated with the Northern Hemisphere winter, the motifs of which are prominent in Christmas decorations and in Santa Claus stories. Its low cost makes it particularly useful in set-top boxes and for devices such as the Simputer, a computer aimed mainly at low-income populations in developing nations. Christmas customs and traditions transmitted through mass culture have been adopted by Christians and non-Christians alike, particularly in North America. Linux is also often used in embedded systems. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services may include a midnight mass or a Mass of the Nativity, and feature Christmas carols and hymns.

Sony has previously released a PS2 Linux kit for their PlayStation 2 video game console. (In most western churches, Advent starts the 4th Sunday before Christmas Day, and thus can last for 21 to 28 days.) These observations may include Advent carols and Advent calendars, sometimes containing sweets and chocolate for children. The multi-billion dollar video game industry will see widespread Linux use with the 2006 launch of the Sony PlayStation 3 video game console which will run Linux out of the box. The religious celebrations begin with Advent, the anticipation of Christ's birth, around the start of December. Additionally, Linux has a plethora of database software such as MySQL, Sybase ASE (linux application) , mSQL and others. In South Korea, Christmas is celebrated as an official holiday. A prominent example of this software combination in use is MediaWiki — the software primarily written for Wikipedia. Christmas is also known as bada din (the big day) in Hindi, and revolves there around Santa Claus and shopping.

Linux is the cornerstone of the so-called LAMP server-software combination (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python) that has achieved widespread popularity among Web developers, making it one of the most common platforms on the Web. Japan has largely adopted the western Santa Claus for its secular Christmas celebration, but their New Year's Day is considered the more important holiday. Linux has made considerable gains in server and special-purpose markets, such as image rendering and Web services, and is now making inroads into the high volume desktop market. This clashes with the traditional winter iconography, resulting in anachronisms such as a red fur-coated Santa Claus surfing in for a turkey barbecue on Australia's Bondi Beach. This stereotype has been dispelled in recent years by the increased user-friendliness and broad adoption of many Linux distributions. In Commonwealth countries in the southern hemisphere, Christmas is still celebrated on 25 December, despite this being the height of their summer season. Because of this, and because of being attracted by access to the internals of the system, Linux users have traditionally tended to be more technologically oriented than users of Microsoft Windows and Mac OS, sometimes revelling in the tag of "hacker" or "geek". Christmas was not widely celebrated in New England until after the middle of the 19th Century.

In the past, a user needed significant knowledge of computers in order to install and configure Linux. Incidentally, this was the practice of the Puritans in 17th and 18th Century England and the American Colonies. The source code for the Linux kernel used to be maintained using the software application called BitKeeper but, partly because a license dispute, it is now maintained via Git, the new directory content manager created by Linus Torvalds himself. Several Christian denominations, notably the Jehovah's Witnesses, some Puritan groups, and some fundamentalist Christians, view Christmas as a pagan holiday not sanctioned by the Bible and refuse to celebrate or recognize it in any way. This distribution contained over fifty-five million source lines of code, and the study estimated that it would have cost 1.9 billion dollars (year 2000 dollars) to develop by conventional proprietary means. Places where conservative Christian theocracies flourished, as in Cromwellian England and in the early New England colonies, were among those where celebrations were suppressed.^[4] After the Russian Revolution, Christmas celebrations were banned in the Soviet Union for the next seventy-five years. In a later study, Counting potatoes: the size of Debian 2.2, the same analysis was performed for Debian GNU/Linux version 2.2. The dynamic relationship between religious and governmental authorities and celebrators of Christmas continued through the years.

Slightly over half of the code in that distribution was licensed under the GPL. Rather than attempting to suppress every pagan tradition, Pope Gregory I allowed Christian missionaries to synthesize them with Christianity, allowing many pagan traditions to become a part of Christmas.^[3]. 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. This celebration of the winter solstice was widespread and popular in northern Europe long before the arrival of Christianity, and the word for Christmas in the Scandinavian languages is still today the pagan jul (=yule). Using the Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO), the study estimated that this distribution required about eight thousand person-years of development time. These practices and symbols were adapted or appropriated by Christian missionaries from the earlier Germanic pagan midwinter holiday of Yule. The Linux kernel contained 2.4 million lines of code, or 8% of the total. Most of the familiar traditional practices and symbols of Christmas originated in Germanic countries, including the now omnipresent Christmas tree, the Christmas ham, the Yule Log, holly, mistletoe, and the giving of presents to friends and relatives.

More Than a Gigabuck: Estimating GNU/Linux's Size, a study of Red Hat Linux 7.1, found that this particular distribution contained 30 million source lines of code (SLOC). A plethora of customs with secular, religious, or national aspects surround Christmas, varying from country to country. A variety of Linux distribution screenshots can be viewed here. In Canadian French, the December 26 holiday is generally referred to as Lendemain de Noël (which literally means "the day after Christmas"). A typical general-purpose distribution includes the Linux kernel, some GNU libraries and tools, command-line shells, and thousands of application software packages, from office suites and the graphical X Window System to compilers, text editors, and scientific tools. Stephen's Day. Over 450 distributions are available [7]. In many European and Commonwealth countries, December 26 is referred to as Boxing Day, while in Finland, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Austria and Catalonia (Spain) it is known as St.

Distributions are created for many different purposes, including localization, architecture support, real-time applications, and embedded systems, and many deliberately include only free software. In the Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia, and Poland, Christmas Day and the following day are called First and Second Christmas Day. They include additional system software and application programs, as well as certain processes to install these systems on a computer. Countries that celebrate Christmas on December 25 recognize the previous day as Christmas Eve, and vary on the naming of December 26. These are compiled by individuals, loose-knit teams, and various professional organizations. In the Philippines, radio stations usually start playing Christmas music during what is called the "-ber months" (September, October, etc.); this usually marks the start of the Christmas season. Linux is predominantly used as part of a Linux distribution (commonly called a 'distro'). It often extends beyond Christmas Day up to New Year's Day, this later holiday having its own parties.

The most comprehensive coverage of this suit is given by Groklaw. In practice, the Christmas festive period has grown longer in some countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, and now begins many weeks before Christmas, allowing more time for shopping and get-togethers. A few of Novell's press releases seem to demonstrate serious problems with SCO's claims:. Swedish children still celebrate a party, throwing out the Christmas tree (julgransplundring), on the 20th day of Christmas (January 13, Knut's Day). To date, no proof of SCO's claims of copied code in Linux has been provided and SCO's claims have varied widely. Medieval laws in Sweden declared a Christmas peace (julefrid) to be twenty days, during which fines for robbery and manslaughter were doubled. This controversy has involved lawsuits by SCO against Novell, DaimlerChrysler (partially dismissed in July, 2004), and AutoZone, and by Red Hat and others against SCO. This period corresponds with the liturgical season of Christmas.

Additionally, SCO sent letters to a number of companies warning that their use of Linux without a license from SCO may be actionable, and claimed in the press that they would be suing individual Linux users. These twelve days of Christmas, a period of feasting and merrymaking, end on Twelfth Night, the eve of the Feast of the Epiphany. In March 2003, the SCO Group (SCO) filed a lawsuit against IBM claiming that IBM had contributed some portions of SCO's copyrighted code to the Linux kernel in violation of IBM's license to use Unix. In the United Kingdom, the Christmas season traditionally runs for twelve days beginning on Christmas Day. The distinction between Torvalds' kernel and entire Linux-based systems that contain the kernel is a perennial source of confusion, and the naming remains controversial. Dates for the more secular aspects of the Christmas celebration are similarly varied. Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, has said that he finds calling Linux in general GNU/Linux "just ridiculous." Still, some distributions do use this name — notably Debian GNU/Linux — while most people simply refer to the system as Linux. and Canada, some Orthodox dioceses allow the parish priest or parish to decide which of the two calendars (i.e., Gregorian versus old Julian) to follow at the parish level and hence the timing of Christmas Day.

Because the GNU libraries and programs, an essential part of nearly all Linux distributions, stem from a long-standing free operating system project that predates the Linux kernel, Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation ask that the combined system (regardless of distribution) be referred to as GNU/Linux or a Linux-based GNU system. The Orthodox churches begin preparing for Christmas with a fast that begins 40 days before Christmas and ends with Christmas, dubbed the "Feast of the Nativity of our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ." In the U.S. See also List of words of disputed pronunciation for a fuller technical discussion of the various ways "Linux" is pronounced. This calendrical difference has led to confusion on the part of those unfamiliar with the older calendar. Note that in English, "Linux" and "Minix" are usually pronounced with a short /ɪ/ sound that is different from Torvalds's phonemically Finland-Swedish pronunciation of these words (which is somewhere between what would be considered short and long in English). This date results from their having accepted neither the reforms of the Gregorian calendar nor the Revised Julian calendar, with their ecclesiastic December 25 thus falling on the secular date of January 7 from 1900 to 2099. An audio file of Torvalds saying "Hello, this is Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux as /lɪnʊks/" also exists [6]. The majority of Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate Christmas on January 7.

In 1992, Torvalds explained [5] (IPA pronunciations added to quote in braces):. Christmas is now celebrated on December 25 in Roman Catholic, Protestant, and some Eastern Orthodox churches, such as the Greek, Bulgarian and Romanian Orthodox Church. Other variations are also possible, but less frequently heard. As with the previous theory, proponents of this theory hold that Christmas was a date of significance to Christians before it was a date of significance to pagans. The first pronunciation is considered more correct, while the second has become popular for sounding more natural in English. (Tradition fixed it on March 25.) The birth of Jesus would then have been on December 25, nine months after his conception. Linux is most commonly pronounced either to rhyme with minix [ˈlɪnəks], or to sound like lie nix [ˈlaɪnəks]. If John's birth was on the date ascribed by tradition, June 24, then the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, said by the Gospel account to have occurred three month's before John's birth, would have been in late March.

In September 2005, Intellectual Property Australia, the trademark regulator in Australia, rejected an application to trademark Linux. If John's conception occurred on Yom Kippur in late September, then his birth would have been in late June. LMI has also sought to enforce the Linux trademark in countries other than the US. This was due to a belief (not included in the Gospel account) that Zechariah was a high priest and that his vision occurred during the high priest's annual entry into the Holy of Holies. Reg No: 1916230) is owned by Linus Torvalds, registered for "Computer operating system software to facilitate computer use and operation." The licensing of the trademark is now handled by the Linux Mark Institute (LMI). The apparition of the angel Gabriel to Zechariah, announcing that he was to be the father of John the Baptist, was believed to have occurred on Yom Kippur. The Linux trademark (U.S. Catholic Encyclopedia in sources) believe this calculation to be unreliable as it is based on a string of assumptions.

In 1997, Linus Torvalds stated, "Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did." [4] Other subsystems use other licenses, although all of them share the property of being free/open-source; for example, several libraries use the LGPL (a more-permissive variant of the GPL), and the X Window System uses the permissive (non-copyleft) MIT License. However, most scholars (e.g. The GPL requires that all source code modifications and derived works also be licensed under the GPL, and is sometimes referred to as a "share and share-alike" (or copyleft) license. As it is implied that John the Baptist could only have been conceived during that particular week, and as his conception is believed to be tied to that of Jesus, it is claimed that an approximate date of December 25 can be arrived at for the birth of Jesus. The Linux kernel, along with most of the GNU components, is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 (not or later). Some believe that this almanac lists the week when John the Baptist's father served as a high priest. Originally, Linus was going to call it Freax for "free" and with the often-used X in the names of Unix-like systems. Additional calculations are made based on the six-year almanac of priestly rotations, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

(The name Linux was derived from Linus' Minix.) The name was later trademarked (see below). 23). He was the one to invent the name Linux for the directory from which Torvalds' project was first available for download [3]. 4, Ch. Lemmke was working for the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK), located in Espoo near Helsinki, as an administrator of ftp.funet.fi, an FTP server which belongs to the Finnish University and Research Network (FUNET), which has numerous organizations as its members, amongst them the TKK and the University of Helsinki. Hippolytus, who was already knowledgeably defending the faith in writing at the start of the third century, said that Christ was born Wednesday, December 25, in the 42nd year of Augustus' reign (see his Commentary on Daniel, circa 204, Bk. The name "Linux" was coined, not by Torvalds, but by Ari Lemmke. St.

Tux the penguin is the logo and mascot of Linux (although there are other, less common representations,such as theOS-tan), based on an image created by Larry Ewing in 1996. They reasoned that Jesus died on an anniversary of his conception, so the date of his birth was nine months after the date of Good Friday, either December 25 or January 6. The task of producing an integrated system, which combines all of these basic components along with graphical interfaces (such as GNOME or KDE, which in turn are based on the X Window System) and application software, is now performed by Linux distribution vendors / organizations. Early Christians sought to calculate the date of Christ's birth based on the idea that Old Testament prophets died either on an anniversary of their birth or of their conception. Today, Torvalds continues to direct the development of the kernel, while other subsystems such as the GNU components are developed separately. Under the old Julian calendar, the popular choice of 5 BC for the year of Jesus' birth would place 25 Kislev at November 25. The Linux system quickly surpassed Minix in functionality; Torvalds and other early Linux kernel developers adapted their kernel to work with the GNU components and user-space programs to create a complete, fully functional, free operating system. According to one tradition, Jesus was born during Hanukkah (25 Kislev into the beginning of Tevet).

Initial versions of Linux also required an operating system to be present in order to boot from a hard disk, but soon there were independent bootloaders, the most well known being lilo. Christmas is still known as Yule (or: Jul) in Scandinavian countries. A computer running Minix was originally necessary in order to configure, compile, and install Linux. Some Christmas traditions, particularly those in Scandinavia, have their origin in the Germanic Yule celebration. By the 0.01 release, Linus had implemented enough POSIX system calls to make Linux run the GNU Bash shell; after this bootstrapping procedure, development accelerated rapidly. At times it was forbidden by Protestant churches until after the 1800s because of its association with Catholicism. Raymond's essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar discusses the development model of the Linux kernel and similar software. Historians are unsure exactly when Christians first began celebrating the Nativity of Christ.

Eric S. Early Christians chiefly celebrated the Epiphany, when the baby Jesus was visited by the Magi (and this is still a primary time for celebration in Argentina, Spain and Armenia). Since then, thousands of developers from around the world have participated in the project. resurrection, virgin mother etc). The first version of the Linux kernel (0.01) was released to the Internet on September 17, 1991, with the second version following shortly thereafter in October [2]. This is not to suggest that the Mithraic cult was the only factor in this syncretization, many pagan gods had similar aspects of mythology (e.g. After that, it gradually evolved into an entire operating system kernel intended as a foundation for POSIX-compliant systems. At that time, in every town and city, in every military garrison and outpost from Syria to the Scottish frontier, was to be found a Mithraeum and officiating priests of the cult.

When Linus needed to read and write files to disk, this task-switching terminal emulator was extended with an entire filesystem handler. The Mithraic cult peaked around the year 300 AD when it became the official religion of the empire. The terminal emulator was running two threads: one for sending and one for receiving characters from the serial port. He was killed and resurrected, returned to heaven on the spring equinox after a last meal with his 12 disciples (representing the signs of the zodiac), eating "mizd" - a piece of bread marked with a cross (an almost universal symbol of the sun). Linux started out as a terminal emulator written in IA-32 assembler and C, which was compiled into binary form and booted from a floppy disk so that it would run outside of any operating system. He was reputed to have raised the dead, healed the sick and cast out demons. However, Tanenbaum did not permit others to extend his operating system, leading Torvalds to develop a replacement for Minix. His birth was witnessed by shepherds and magi.

Torvalds originally used Minix, a simplified Unix-like system written by Andrew Tanenbaum for teaching operating system design. Mithras was born on December 25th of virgin birth, the son of the primary Persian deity, Ahura-Mazda. Meanwhile, in 1991, another kernel — eventually dubbed "Linux" — was begun as a hobby by Finnish university student Linus Torvalds while attending the University of Helsinki. The similarities between Jesus and Mithras are many. However, due to a lack of cooperation from the Berkeley programmers, Stallman decided instead to use the Mach microkernel, which subsequently proved unexpectedly difficult, and the Hurd's development proceeded slowly. Another extremely popular cult of Persian origin, in those days was that of Mithras. According to Thomas Bushnell, the initial Hurd architect, their early plan was to adapt the BSD 4.4-Lite kernel and, in hindsight, "It is now perfectly obvious to me that this would have succeeded splendidly and the world would be a very different place today" [1]. [See Duchesne (1902) and Talley (1986).].

The GNU project began developing their own kernel, the Hurd, in 1990 (after an abandoned attempt called Trix). Thus, rather than the date of Christmas being appropriated from pagans by Christians, the opposite is held to have occurred. By the beginning of the 1990s, GNU had produced or collected nearly all of the necessary components of this system—libraries, compilers, text editors, a Unix-like shell, and other software—except for the lowest level, the kernel. They reasoned that Jesus died on an anniversary of the Incarnation (his conception), so the date of his birth would have been nine months after the date of Good Friday — either December 25 or January 6. The goal of GNU was to develop a complete Unix-like operating system composed entirely of free software. To then calculate the date of Jesus' birth, they followed the ancient idea that Old Testament prophets died at an "integral age" — either an anniversary of their birth or of their conception. In 1983, Richard Stallman founded the GNU project, which today provides an essential part of most Linux systems (see also GNU/Linux, below). Since the exact date of Jesus' death is not stated in the Gospels, early Christians sought to calculate it, and arrived at either March 25 or April 6.

. An alternative theory asserts that the date of Christmas is based on the date of Good Friday, the day Jesus died. It is deployed in applications ranging from embedded systems (such as mobile phones and personal video recorders) to personal computers to supercomputers. In Rome, it can only be confirmed as being mentioned in a document from approximately 350 but without any mention of sanction by Emperor Constantine. Linux was originally developed for Intel 386 microprocessors and now supports all popular computer architectures (and several obscure ones). Perusal of historical records indicates that the first mention of such a feast in Constantinople was not until 379, under Gregory Nazianzus. Proponents and analysts attribute this success to its vendor independence (the opposite of vendor lock-in), low cost, security, and reliability. Some scholars maintain that December 25 was only adopted in the 4th century as a Christian holiday after Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity to encourage a common religious festival for both Christians and pagans.

Since then, Linux has gained the support of major corporations such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and Novell for use in servers and is gaining popularity in the desktop market. In order to make it easier for the Romans to convert to Christianity without missing out on their festivities, Pope Julius I ordered in 350 that the birth of Christ be celebrated on the same date. Initially, Linux was primarily developed and used by individual enthusiasts. In the Roman Empire, the celebrations of Saturn during the week of the solstice, with their climax on December 25th, were the main social event. Most broadly, a Linux distribution bundles large quantities of application software with the core system, and provides more user-friendly installation and upgrades. John Chrysostom urged the community to unite in celebrating Christ's birth on December 25, a part of the community having already kept it on that day for at least ten years. In the narrowest sense, the term Linux refers to the Linux kernel, but it is commonly used to describe entire Unix-like operating systems (also known as GNU/Linux) that are based on the Linux kernel combined with libraries and tools from the GNU Project and other sources. At Antioch, probably in 386, St.

It is one of the most prominent examples of free software and of open-source development: unlike proprietary operating systems such as Windows and Mac OS, all of its underlying source code is available to the public for anyone to freely use, modify, improve, and redistribute. In Jerusalem, the fourth century pilgrim Egeria from Bordeaux witnessed the Feast of the Presentation, forty days after January 6, which must have been the date of the Nativity there. Linux is a computer operating system and its kernel. The December feast reached Egypt in the fifth century. Greene, The Register, retrieved December 22, 2005. The earliest evidence of celebration is from Alexandria, in about 200, when Clement of Alexandria says that certain Egyptian theologians "over curiously" assign not just the year but also the actual day of Christ's birth as 25 Pachon (May 20) in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus.^[2] By the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325, the Alexandrian church had fixed a dies Nativitatis et Epiphaniae. Mandrake 8.1 easier than Win-XP by Thomas C. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Christmas is not included in Irenaeus's nor Tertullian's list of Christian feasts, the earliest known lists of Christian feasts.

Desktop Linux: Ready for Prime Time? by Emmett Dulaney, Redmond Magazine, June 2005, retrieved on 21 December 2005. It was only necessary for them to joyfully greet the birth of the Son rather than the Sun." Note that in Latin, the words for "son" ('filius') and "sun" ('sol') do not in the least bit resemble each other, making such pseudo-linguistic comparisons patently absurd. Wheeler. As Isaac Asimov comments in his Guide to the Bible, "[C]onverts could join Christianity without giving up their Saturnalian happiness. Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers! by David A. These and other winter festivities continued through January 1, the festival of Kalends, when Romans marked the day of the new moon and the first day of the month as well as the beginning of the religious year. González-Barahona et al. Such traditions resemble those of Christmas and are used to establish a link between the two holidays.

Counting potatoes: the size of Debian 2.2 by Jesús M. During Saturnalia the Romans feasted, postponed all business and warfare, exchanged gifts, and temporarily freed their slaves. Wheeler. This festival lasted for seven days and included the winter solstice, which according to the Julian calendar, fell on December 25. More Than a Gigabuck: Estimating GNU/Linux's Size by David A. In a festival called Saturnalia, they glorified past days when the god Saturn ruled. Retrieved January 19, 2004 from [14]. The Romans honored Saturn, the ancient god of agriculture, each year beginning on December 17.

Linux Torvalds Q&A. The context in which Christianity, and thus Christmas, formed was during the Roman Empire. (2004). Crosses and circles are found worldwide as solar symbol, whether or not a particular culture practiced crucifixion. Mackenzie, K. Nevertheless, there is no record of the Celts actually ever practicing crucifixion or stories of any crucifixion of a "Celtic Sun God" before 19th century source. Retrieved January 16, 2004 from [13]. It is said that this was the origin of the Celtic cross, symbolising the crucified sun god, thus making it a few thousand years older than Christianity.

Linux breaks desktop barrier in 2004: Torvalds. It is alleged that, according to Celtic Mythology, the sun god was crucified on the winter solstice, and three days later, as the days grew longer again, he rose from the dead. (2004). Other cultures believed that their deity died on this day, only to return for another cycle. R. These cultures believed that their sun god was born on December 21st, the shortest day of the year, and that the days grew longer as their god aged. Gedda. From early antiquity, the days following the winter solstice on December 21 were of particular significance to cultures who worshipped sun gods.

Glyn Moody: Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution, Perseus Publishing, ISBN 0-713-99520-3. The theories for the reason Christmas is celebrated on December 25 are many and varied; none are universally accepted. Sparc (Sun4). Many different dates have been suggested for the celebration of Christmas. SuperH (Sega Dreamcast). Through the years astronomers and historians have offered conflicting explanations of what combination of traceable celestial events might explain the appearance of a giant star that had never before been seen.^[1]. IBM System/390. They are supposed to have come from Arabia or Persia, where they might have obtained their particular gifts.

PowerPC (Macintosh). The Magi, who Matthew also reports seeing a giant star, have been variously interpreted as wise men or as kings. PA-RISC (HP workstations). Some Christmas carols refer to the shepherds observing a bright star directly over Bethlehem, and following it to the birthplace. MIPS (DECstation, SGI Indy....). Another aspect of Christ's birth which has passed from the gospels into popular lore is the announcement by angels to nearby shepherds of Jesus's birth. Motorola 68K (Sun3, Amiga, Atari, early Mac, Apollo....). After Herod's death, Jesus and his family return from Egypt, but fearing the hostility of the new Judean king (Herod's son Archelaus) they go instead to Galilee and settle in Nazareth.

Alpha. Matthew then reports that the family next flees to Egypt to escape the murderous rampage of Herod, who has decided to have all children of Bethlehem under the age of two killed in order to eliminate any local rivals to his power. ARM (handhelds, embedded systems). Resolving to hinder the ruler, they go home without telling Herod of the success of their mission. Both AMD and Intel versions of "64-bit x86". While staying the night, the wise men have a dream that contains a divine warning that King Herod has murderous designs on the child. Intel/AMD x86 (the "normal PC"). They present Jesus with treasures of "gold, frankincense, and myrrh".

2003-Nov-18 Novell Statement on SCO claims regarding a non-compete clause in Novell-SCO contracts. Further inquiry leads them to Bethlehem of Judea and the home of Mary and Joseph. 2003-Jun-06 Novell Statement on SCO Contract Amendment. The wise men, or Magi, first arrive in Jerusalem and report to the king of Judea, Herod the Great, that they have seen a star, now called the Star of Bethlehem, heralding the birth of a king. 2003-May-30 Novell Statement re: SCO press conference allegations. Matthew mentions no trek to Bethlehem from Nazareth. 2003-May-28 Novell Challenges SCO Position, Reiterates Support for Linux. Matthew's gospel begins by telling the genealogy and virgin birth of Jesus, and then moves to the coming of the Wise Men from the East to Bethlehem.

2003-May-15 Novell Statement on SCO Contract Amendment (good news for Linux users). Luke's Gospel has some references to historic events at this time, saying "In these days the Roman emperor Augustus ordered to excise a counting of all population in the world" (Lk 2,1), but the only known census was in the year AD 6. Jesus' being born in Bethlehem fulfills the prophecy of the Book of Micah. There Mary gives birth to Jesus. Finding no room in inns in the town, they set up lodgings in a stable in Bethlehem in Judea.

Shortly thereafter, she and her husband Joseph leave their home in Nazareth to travel about 150 kilometres (90 miles) to Joseph's ancestral home, Bethlehem, to enroll in the census ordered by the Roman emperor, Augustus. According to Luke, Mary learns from an angel that the Holy Spirit has caused her to be with child. The gospels of Mark and John do not address the childhood of Jesus, and those of Matthew and Luke highlight different events. The story of Christ's birth has been handed down for centuries, based mainly on the Christian gospels of Matthew and Luke.

. It is often abbreviated Xmas, probably because X resembles the Greek letter Χ (chi) which has often historically been used as an abbreviation for Christ (Χριστός in Greek). The word Christmas is a contraction of Christ's Mass, derived from the Old English Cristes mæsse. Various local and regional Christmas traditions are still practised, despite the widespread influence of American and British Christmas motifs disseminated by globalization, popular literature, television, and other media.

It is largely characterized by gifts being exchanged between friends and family members, and the appearance of Santa Claus. In Western countries, Christmas has become the most economically significant holiday of the year. Examples of this process are the northern European Yule, and the Winter Solstice celebration found in many older as well as recent pagan celebrations. Many Christmas traditions originated with pre-Christian observances that were syncretised into Christianity.

Christmas has also acquired many secular aspects, which are sometimes celebrated more often than the birth of Jesus. Efforts to decide upon a date on which to celebrate his birth began some centuries later. Christ's birth, or nativity, was said by his followers to fulfill the prophecies of Judaism that a messiah would come, from the house of David, to redeem the world from sin. (In most Eastern Orthodox Churches, even where the civil calendar is the Gregorian, it is observed according to the Julian calendar, by which that date however coincides with the predominant reckoning of 7 January.) It is celebrated by most Christians to mark the birth of Jesus, which is believed to have occurred in Bethlehem in the Roman Province of Judea between 6 BC and AD 6.

Christmas (literally, the Mass of Jesus Christ) is a traditional holiday observed on 25 December.