In this tutorial, we will talk about Linux the operating system, a Linux distribution, free software and some of the history behind Linux. Now Linux is an operating system, an operating system is a piece of software that resides on your computer that allows one to run other software. The most common operating system, of course, is Microsoft Windows. Macintosh OS X is another operating system and there have been many, many others over the years. Now, technically speaking, Linux itself is the colonel behind the operating system. The colonel is sort of the brains behind the operating system. And operating system is a collection of software, including a colonel and libraries and things called compilers and various other bits and pieces, all of which are added up together and create an operating system. So, Linux is really just the colonel of the modern Linux operating system. And this Linux colonel was originally developed by this gentleman, Linus Torvalds, a man from Finland who developed the Linux colonel in the early 1990's, while in college. Now, Linus developed a colonel, but he did not have any of these other little tools that I mentioned a moment ago to create a full-fledged operating system. Another group called the GNU Project had those other tools, but did not have the colonel. The GNU Project is a group of developers that created these libraries, compilers and various other bits and pieces, very low level pieces of software. But, again, did not have a colonel to create a full-fledged operating system. They were working on a colonel, but it was not functioning properly. So Linux, the GNU folks and other people came together and took the colonel developed by Linus and the system tools developed by the GNU Project, to create Linux. And, as you can see here, sometimes it's described this way, with sort of a reference to the GNU Project. But typically, it's just described Linux and that's the way we will discuss Linux in this tutorial. Now, another very important group with regards to Linux and the Linux operating system is the free software foundation. The Linux colonel, the GNU Project's tools and lots of other software are free software. And, as you can see here, free software is a matter of liberty, not price. You should think of free as in free speech. So, free software does not necessarily mean software that is available at no cost. But, free software means software that is available to the end user that is free of restrictions and allows the user to modify, to re-distribute, to make changes, to do a whole host of things to the software, without asking for permission or being restricted in any way. That's what free software means. Free software can be provided at a cost. So, free software does not have anything to do with price. But, most of the tools that you will see in the Linux world are free software. And, they are provided under a license called the GPL, or the General Public License. Now, a Linus distribution is a complete sweet of tools, including the Linux Colonel, the GNU system tools and lots of other applications, including web browsers, photo editors and lots of other pieces of software, all of which are what end users actually use. That is called a distribution, a Linux distribution, is the term for the complete operating system. This website provides a listing of all Linux distributions, and if you scroll on the right hand side, you will see a list of all the various distributions that are available to the public, including Ubuntu Linux. One can come to DistroWatch and read about Linux distributions, read about news and releases and updates, and there is a newsletter that is available on a weekly basis that provides some background into some of the things that have been going on in the Linux community. So, a Linux distribution is often provided on a CD-ROM or some other form, that can be booted on your computer. But, again, typically a CD-ROM. And, a Linux distribution is the full package of software that's needed to run a computer on a day to day basis. And that is where we will be going to next. We will be talking about Ubuntu Linux and the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Thank you very much.