To create a Free OS like the UNIX Operating System,
They wanted to create a system that was like UNIX without all of the intellectual property issues that UNIX had. (UNIX was proprietary software).
Thousands of people and hundreds of organizations, but the guy in charge is Linus Torvalds.
Probably most you heard about: Ubuntu Linux Mint Fedora OpenSuSe Besides, Linux already is viable for usage on desktop computers, it just lacks games and some specific software.
Microsoft does not develop Visual Studio for Linux - the closest available thing is MonoDevelop. It looks and acts similar to VS, and can be found in most distribution repositories
C, C++ and scripts in Bash, Perl and Python
Because that's what the most of the people who develop and distribute it are willing to charge for it. The licensing of Linux actually doesn't stop anybody from selling it for whatever price they want.
No one but the developers of the Linux Kernel can adapt anything that makes Linux more viable for the general consumers. They are trying and ATI and NVIDIA cards both have good open source drivers in them making it easy to use most graphics in Linux(unless you need 3D acceleration). As what distrobutions go, PCLinuxOS is pushing the Windowsesque KDE to a userfriendly, consumerready state, whereas Ubuntu is excelling doing the same for the GNOME environment.
First of all, its debatable whether Windows' driver support is "better." The current Linux kernel supports more devices than any single Windows release. Linux also supports more legacy devices than Windows Vista or Windows 7 and supports numerous architectures not supported at all by Windows. Drivers in Linux are also usually considered to be more stable than the drivers supplied by the manufacturer for Windows. The reason new off-the-shelf devices may work in Windows but not in Linux is the result of a vicious cycle. Basically, some manufacturers are unwilling to expend the resources to develop Linux drivers and/or do not want to provide the documentation to do so, on the grounds that not many people use Linux. In turn, not many people use Linux because some of their devices won't work. Linux developers are more than willing to develop drivers for the device even if the manufacturer does not want to, but if the manufacturer doesn't provide at least some technical data, it is extremely difficult.
Linux Internals is a book about how Linux works.
The advantage to being able to modify Unix (or Linux, etc.) is that you can customize it to your liking, and in the case of Linux and its variants you can sell the changes. The disadvantage would be support; if you make a change you are responsible for fixing any problems that may develop.
Linux World is the Linux Development & Training Center
The courses available for Linux include Linux server, Linux desktop, bash shell, and many others.
One can obtain the latest Linux news on websites such as CRN, Linux Today or Distro Watch. One can also find news about Linux on Arch Linux and Linux Journal.