It is more compact and it runs faster. T he Love-letter virus that raced around the world at the start of May was another reminder of the dangers of dependence on Microsoft programs. It was designed to attack features of Windows and its popular e-mail application, Outlook. Linux users were unaffected. In the 1990s the world's computing stock became a monoculture, like a forest with just one type of tree.
Any disease can decimate it.
B ut Linux is not just another operating system. It is the outcome of a completely different philosophy, which has made its author into such a cult figure. Torvalds did not copyright his computer code so as to receive payment for his work. Instead, he published it on the Internet and invited other programmers to improve on it and to send their results back to him. By e-mail, of course.