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 Tux, the penguin. The official mascot of Linux. | |||||||||||||||||||
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Linux is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system. Its defining component is the Linux kernel, but due to how compatible the Linux kernel is with other pieces of operating system software, such as desktop environments and package management software there are several different variants of Linux, or distributions. Due to the fact that the other software used to make Linux-based operating systems, besides the kernel, are usually developed by the GNU Project, Linux is sometimes also called GNU/Linux.