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Wednesday, 08 September 2010
What is the main advantage of creating links to a file instead of copies of the file?
Courtesy: Navdeep Singh  
The main advantage is not really that it saves disk space (though it does that too) but, rather, that a change of permissions on the file is applied to all the link access points. The link will show permissions of lrwxrwxrwx but that is for the link itself and not the access to the file to which the link points. Thus if you want to change the permissions for a command, such as su, you only have to do it on the original. With copies you have to find all of the copies and change permission on each of the copies.
 
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In 1991, Linus Torvalds began to work on the Linux kernel while he was attending the University of Helsinki. Torvalds originally created the Linux kernel as a non-commercial replacement for the Minix kernel; he later changed his original non-free license to the GPLv2, which differed primarily in that it also allowed for commercial redistribution. Linux filled the last major gap in running a complete, fully functional free operating system.
 
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