No Cost & No Virus Worries

Software was originally free when computers were in their infancy in the late 70's early 80's. Programmers would share all the programmes they had written including the source code which is the computer language that commands the programme. Having access to this source code meant that anyone could fix any faults they found, make improvements or tailor the software to better suit their own usage requirements. Then came Windows. Bill Gates decided to sell software packages as finished commodities restricting access to the source codes. This quickly became the norm with other companies too until Richard Stallman had enough one day and started GNU. This was going to be completely free to anyone who wanted it but was incomplete. It needed the addition of a core component which coincidentally had just been written by Finnish programmer Linus T. These were combined as GNU/Linux, a platform that can run all sorts of other free software as equally well as windows but free of charge, with access to the source code and therefor refinable but most impressively untouchable by viruses.