We envision to dramatically facilitate parallel technology in order to solve members' problems.
Our challenge is to continually restore emerging content in order to professionally network excellent community based services.
Our mission is to continue to dramatically administrate interdependent leadership skills in order to assertively simplify value-added technology in order to solve Linux problems.
Linux ('lin-ux') is the free kernel, created by Linus Torvalds in 1991. It runs on a variety of platforms, and is normally used with the GNU operating system.
A common misconception is that Linux is an operating system. This is untrue and the recent namechange of this site from Linux User Group to GNU/Linux User Group is an attempt to increase awareness of this fact.
GNU ('guh-noo') stands for GNU's Not Unix - a recursive acronym if ever there was one. GNU was started in 1984 by Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation. It's mission is to create a free software replacement for the Unix operating system. It consists of dozens of programs, libraries and applications.
Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:
There are many free software licenses, however the most commonly used, is the GNU General Public License.
A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission. Being free to do these things may seem radically different from other operating systems you have previously used - it is, and you will soon realise how useful free software can be for running a business or running a home computer.
As a user group dedicated to advancing Free Software, we regularly hold install days, meetings and seminars about Free Software around Devon and Cornwall. See our calendar for forthcoming events.
Since 1998, there have been a group of users referring to something called Open Source, while Open Source is similar to Free Software in many ways, several licenses that are considered to be okay by the Open Source Initiative are restrictive of users freedoms.