gLinux is a Debian Testing-based

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

distribution Distribution may refer to: Mathematics *Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations * Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a vari ...

used at

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

as a

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''workstat ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

. The Google gLinux team builds the system from

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

, introducing their own changes. gLinux replaced the previously used

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: ''Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All the ...

-based distribution,

Goobuntu Goobuntu was a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu LTS (long-term support). It was used by almost 10,000 Google employees. It added a number of packages for in-house use, including security features and disabled the installation of some applicatio ...

. gLinux is usually installed by loading into a bootstrap environment when it is first booted up. When gLinux is getting started up, the root files are unpacked and the Debian installer starts to perform the installation. Over the years,

has focused on speed, scale, and data which is the thought process that allowed them to move to gLinux.

was using

before switching to gLinux; however, the two years of security updates it provided meant that planning for the next upgrade would take next to a year.

References

Google software Debian-based distributions Linux distributions {{Linux-stub