A brief history of Linux

There are approximately 180 million websites around the world. This is increasing every day, and they all need servers to host them, and very few site owners want the hassle of managing their hosting privately. Web hosting, by serving the world its web pages, plays a crucial role in keeping the internet viable.

Given the enormity, responsibility and complexity of this task, it might come as a surprise to some that the operating system at the heart of many of the world’s web servers was originated by just one man, a Finnish computer science student by the name of Linus Thorvalds.

The operating system Linus Thorvalds created is known as Linux, a name derived from his first name. Thorvalds created the core of Linux, known as its kernel, out of his dissatisfaction with what he saw as the restrictive licensing imposed on its parent operating system, UNIX. Thorvalds wanted to develop a system that was free to use and distribute and also open source.

Partly because it was free to use and develop on, but also because of its inherent reliability, over the past two decades Linux has been widely adopted as an operating system for web servers. Linux has a reputation primarily for stability, with many months, in some cases years, of uptime commonly reported. Linux is also highly secure, constructed in a clever, self-protective way which makes it very hard to hack.

Should you choose, for example, cPanel web hosting by EUKHost, your site will benefit from the inherent reliability of an enterprise class Linux server. With Linux-powered web hosting by EUKHost your site will be well protected and is guaranteed a very high level of uptime. At the same time, should you choose affordable UK website hosting by EUKHost you will benefit from expert technical support, well versed in the management of Linux servers.

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