Linux System - Table 12 > Packages - Table 7 > kernel

The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems.[6] It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software.[7] The Linux kernel is released under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2),[4] (plus some firmware images with various licenses), and is developed by contributors worldwide. Day-to-day development takes place on the Linux kernel mailing list. The Linux kernel was initially conceived and created by Finnish computer science student[8] Linus Torvalds in 1991. Linux rapidly accumulated developers and users who adopted code from other free software projects for use with the new operating system.[9] The Linux kernel has received contributions from thousands of programmers.[10] Many Linux distributions have been released based upon the Linux kernel.