Linux Has An Advanced, Mature Design

Since Linux is an open-source version of Unix, it takes advantage of the three decades of operating system design and testing that has gone into Unix. Most new operating system concepts have been tried out in Unix first, or co-opted when invented somewhere else. See the previous section on Unix for some technical reasons why Unix is so respected.

Unix has been used for advanced computer science work since its inception. Cray computers run a version of Unix. Almost all workstations, computer design tools, engineering systems, and so forth have run Unix variants for decades. (There is currently a trend toward Windows NT for workstations, but this trend is being resisted by the technical people who have to actually use these systems.)

The recent resurgence of open-source software (which is how most software was written for a long time) has breathed new life into the Unix world, and also made Unix available to people who have not had access to this powerful operating system until now.