What exactly makes Linux so bulletproof?
Look at almost any critical computing system in the world (servers, workstations, embedded computers, and many others) and you will see Linux in one form or another. The open source giant may not have a significant share of the desktop market (yet), but when stability, security, and availability really matter, Linux seems to be the operating system of choice.
This isn’t news, it’s just the state of the world when it comes to technology. The real question is: Why is this software offered to the world by a university student so resistant?
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Why Linux avoids the instability traps that other operating systems fall into
Every operating system is built on a “kernel”. This is the basic logic of the operating system that governs how it manages communication with your hardware and how it processes your requests. The kernel’s approach to these basic operating system functions influences everything else. The character and design of the operating system arise from the nature of its kernel.
That’s why Microsoft moved the mainstream Windows family to the “NT” kernel with Windows XP, leaving behind the MS-DOS-based kernel used in Windows 95 and the rest of its family. The NT kernel was originally designed for workstations and servers, promoting stability and enabling the emergence of consumer technologies such as multiple CPU cores, something previously only a server or workstation had.
The Linux kernel was built with stability in mind. Rather, since it was built as a clone of UNIX, it inherited the stable nature of UNIX, which was an operating system designed to run on mainframes and minicomputers in large companies and institutions. Linux is not UNIX, but someone who knows UNIX will have no problem understanding how Linux works and what its approach is to managing hardware, software, and security.
Why Linux dominates the world of science
From desktops to supercomputers, Linux is the operating system of choice for scientists.
Although it is technically a large “monolithic” operating system kernel, the Linux kernel is modular, meaning that most updates and changes can be made to Linux without restarting the system. As a result, it is not uncommon to learn about Linux systems that have been operational for several years, while remaining up to date. The only real downtime is due to hardware failure and not software. Compare this with Windows or even macOS, where you typically have to reboot the system for any semi-serious OS update, and it’s clear why Linux is the king of the server OS.
How open source development quietly strengthens the platform
Attributed (wrongly) to Linux creator Linus Torvalds, “Linus’ Law” states: “With enough eyeballs, all bugs are superficial.” This is one of the main reasons why Linux is so robust, because across the world, thousands and thousands of programmers are constantly inspecting its source code, including the kernel.
For operating systems like Windows and macOS, no one can view the kernel source code without these companies having a say, and so there is an inherent limit to the number of man-hours spent fixing bugs or improving stability and efficiency. This also influences the cadence of patches and essentially allows a Linux installation to benefit from a rolling update if desired, and critical security patches in particular are applied as soon as those patches have undergone the necessary verification and testing.
Why Linux Package Management Keeps Your System Clean
Linux distributions (distros) use a package manager (e.g. APT, YUM, etc.) to manage software centrally. They maintain a database of every application installed on your Linux computer. When you install an application using this package manager, it also automatically fetches all dependencies.
This bypasses Windows “DLL hell”, where you (for example) frequently encounter situations where the software you have installed requires a specific version of the Visual Basic or .NET redistributable. It also makes updating easier all software on a Linux computer in one go and effectively cleans up installations, including removing dependencies that no currently installed software needs. Compare this to Windows where you never know which library packs you have installed can be safely removed.
Linux is still vulnerable to dependency issues when you do manual installations or go outside the package management system, but if you stay inside the guardrails, things are considerably less unpredictable.
What Linux does differently with processes and permissions
Linux inherits the way UNIX handles permissions. Each file and process has a specific owner, group, and permissions such as “read,” “write,” and “execute.” A normal user account has limited permissions, and if you are trying to perform a serious operation, you will need to provide a password to temporarily elevate this request to the administrative level. In Linux parlance this is called “root”, which is the superuser account. Sudo is the command that temporarily elevates you to root, instead of being permanently logged in as root.
This means that even if a specific program is somehow compromised or becomes malicious, the damage that can be done is limited. Of course, macOS is also a UNIX-like operating system and therefore has a similar permissions system. Windows traditionally defaults to the first user account as administrator, but things have also tightened up, which is why you get a UAC prompt when an app wants to do something that requires administrator privileges. But Linux remains the strictest and cleanest operating system when it comes to managing permissions, making it less likely that something will go wrong.
Apart from this, Linux has namespaces, which can isolate processes into virtual containers, preventing errors in one namespace from propagating to others. Cgroups allow administrators to limit the amount of RAM or CPU power that a group of processes has access to, meaning that in principle they cannot block the entire system. Linus init systems like systemd can also be configured to stop and restart crashing processes. So what would have been an obstacle on a server running a different operating system turns into a seconds-long hiccup as a process is brought back from the dead.
Linux thrives on everything from supercomputers to inexpensive laptops
Linux scales from the smallest gadget to the largest data center. It runs on more hardware architectures than any other operating system, from tiny ARM boards (like the Raspberry Pi) to IBM mainframes. Almost every major website runs on a Linux server, as do the 500 fastest supercomputers.
The verdict is clear: When money, lives, and critical services are at stake, only Linux is trusted by the world.
8/10
- Operating system
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Kubuntu 24.04 LTS
- Processor
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Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX (2.7 GHz up to 5.4 GHz)
- GPU
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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (dGPU), Intel Graphics (iGPU)
- RAM
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32 GB 262-pin dual-channel DDR5 SODIMM (5600 MHz)
