Multitasking allows Linux to run many programs at one time.
Users can download the latest version from the Internet.
In 1991, Linus Torvalds, a graduate student at Finland's University of Helsinki, wanted an alternative to DOS and Windows. So he wrote his own version of Unix. In 1994, he released Linux 1.0. Since then, Linux has become one of the fastest-growing operating systems. The number of Linux users has almost doubled annually from 500,000 in 1994 to about 7 million this year.