benefits: increasing speed and decreasing memory use.Virtual memory using paging (not swapping whole processes) to disk. To a separate partition or a file in the filesystem, or both, with the possibility of adding more swapping areas during runtime. A total of 16 of these 128 MB swapping areas can be used at once, for a theoretical total of 2 GB of useable swap space. It is simple to increase this if necessary, by changing a few lines of source code.Unified memory pool for user programs and disk cache. So that all free memory can be used for caching, and the cache can be reduced when running large programs.Dynamically linked shared libraries (DLL's) and static libraries.Does core dumps for post-mortem analysis. Allowing the use of a debugger on a program not only while it is running but also after it has crashed.Mostly compatible with POSIX, System V, and BSD at the source level.Mostly compatible with SCO, SVR3, and SVR4 at the binary level. Through an iBCS2-compliant emulation module.All source code is available. Including the whole kernel and all drivers, the development tools and all user programs; also, all of it is freely distributable. Plenty of commercial programs are being provided for Linux without source, but everything that has been free, including the entire base operating system, is still free.POSIX job control.Pseudoterminals (pty's).387-emulation in the kernel. So that programs don't need to do their own math emulation. Every computer running Linux appears to have a math coprocessor. Of course, if your computer already contains an FPU, it will be used instead of the emulation, and you can even compile your own kernel with math emulation removed, for a small memory gain.Support for many national or customized keyboards. It is fairly easy to add new ones dynamically.Multiple virtual consoles. Several i...
