Torvalds continues to direct the advancing of the kernel. Stallman heads the Free Software Foundation, which in turn supports the GNU components. Finally, http://pccrdu.com/services/linuxsupport.php individuals and corporations develop third-party non-GNU components. These third-party components comprise a far-flung carcass of work and may include both kernel modules and user applications and libraries. Linux vendors and communities hook on and distribute the kernel, GNU components, and non-GNU components, with additional package management software in the form of Linux distributions.

Most Linux distributions backing dozens of programming languages. The most common collection of utilities for pile both Linux applications and operating scheme programs is found within the GNU toolchain, which includes the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and the GNU build system. Amongst others, GCC provides compilers for Ada, C, C++, Java, and Fortran. The Linux kernel itself is written to be compiled with GCC. Proprietary compilers for Linux include the Intel C++ Compiler and IBM XL C/C++ Compiler.