Getting Started with Linux

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What is Linux?

Linux is an open source kernel, the central program of an operating system, originally written and still maintained by Linus Torvalds. Kernels coordinate other programs and manage the hardware components of a computer, allowing a single computer to perform multiple tasks simultaneously. Operating systems that use Linux as a kernel are sometimes referred to as simply "Linux," but this is a misnomer; there are many other programs from which an operating system is composed.

Linux is commonly used in conjunction with a set of programs known as GNU, the X11 graphics system, and an X11 window manager. Often, such a software stack is built as part of a broader "Linux distribution," or "distro," which packages these basic components with various software packages and configuration utilities. Linux distributions are usually created with some target audience in mind; Ubuntu, for example, is designed to be easy to use on a personal computer, whereas Red Hat Enterprise Linux is designed for use in a large scale computing environment with professional computer management.


Distros

Debian

A well known and highly popular distro that is based on a strategy of small, incremental updates that accumulate over time. At any given time, there are three primary releases of Debian: stable, unstable, and testing. The stable release has the most conservative update strategy, and seeks to avoid bugs from newly introduced features in a given software package. The unstable release is more liberal, seeking to provide more up-to-date software that desktop users often demand. The testing release is intended for developers, and includes features that have not been fully tested or debugged; this release is not intended to be relied on for day to day use, and is always known as "Sid."

Ubuntu

Ubuntu is designed with beginners in mind, and targets personal computer users, although it is widely used by experienced users and developers in a variety of environments. Ubuntu is supported by Canonical, and is developed by a worldwide community of developers that includes some Canonical employees. In order to be easier for beginners to use, Ubuntu includes some proprietary or patent encumbered codecs and drivers. Ubuntu's releases are sometimes marked "long term support," indicating that updates will continue to be provided for that version for several years. Popular derivatives of Ubuntu include: Kubuntu, Xubuntu (and Lubuntu?), each installing a different default desktop manager (KDE, XFCE, and LXDE respectively).

Suggested starting points for newbies/beginners

Links

Fedora

Fedora, formerly known as Fedora Core, is a community developed distribution that is supported by Red Hat. Fedora is based on a strategy of maintaining the most up-to-date software and the latest features in each software package There are two primary releases of Fedora: stable and rawhide; stable represents the current numbered Fedora release (currently, version 11), and rawhide is a development release that will eventually become the next stable release. A new stable version of Fedora is released every 6 months. Fedora only provides updates for a given stable release for one year after the release; thus, Fedora 10 still receives updates, but Fedora 9 and earlier releases do not.

Links

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, commonly abbreviated RHEL, is Red Hat's commercial Linux distribution. RHEL is based on a conservative upgrade strategy, that focuses on security updates and bugfixes over new features. New features are usually introduced into RHEL as part of a major upgrade (when a Fedora release is selected as the next RHEL release). In addition to the officially supported repositories, the Fedora project maintains the "Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux" (EPEL) repository, from which RHEL users may install newer packages that are not currently in the main RHEL repository.

Binary packages and updates for RHEL can only be obtained as part of a support contract with Red Hat. However, source packages are available on Red Hat's FTP servers, and several distros are based on tracking these source packages. Two well known no-cost distros that are based on these packages, with Red Hat trademarks removed (this primarily refers to artwork, such as the bootsplash and desktop backgrounds), are CentOS and Scientific Linux. Knowledgeable users can compile Red Hat Enterprise Linux from the source packages, with or without Red Hat trademarks, at no cost.

Due to a commitment to releasing only open source packages, and because Red Hat is a corporation based in the United States, RHEL, Fedora, and related distros do not contain proprietary or patent-encumbered codecs (e.g. those codecs that cannot be distributed royalty-free). Packages for these codecs are available from overseas repositories that are not officially supported by Red Hat or the Fedora team; these repositories recently merged as RPM Fusion. RPM Fusion only contains open source codecs for patent encumbered formats and open source packages that are of questionable legality in the United States; proprietary codecs and plugins (such as Adobe Flash), or software that violates copyright laws or the DMCA, are not available from RPM Fusion.

Links

Mandriva

Mandriva, formerly known as Mandrake, was originally forked from Red Hat Linux 6, but has diverged significantly from the Red Hat Linux/Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution. Mandriva is intended to be a user friendly distribution, like Ubuntu, but primarily uses KDE as the desktop environment. Mandriva inc. sells a "powerpack," which contains various additional programs that have been tuned for the Mandriva desktop release.

Slackware

Slackware is a distro that is intended to be as "Unix like" as possible. Slackware variants include:

  • Wolvix
  • Absolute
  • SLAX?

Gentoo

Gentoo is one of the more complicated distributions to install and work with, and is based on a strategy of compiling packages from source code instead of installing precompiled binary packages (though such packages are available). Gentoo is designed to be extremely configureable, allowing it to be run on almost any system while requiring a fair amount of configuration on the user's part. Gentoo's package management system, portage, has the ability to build packages from source code automatically, allowing the user to determine compile options such as the cpu architecture. Although Gentoo takes more work to set up, documentation is in general very good and there is a very knowledgeable community to help resolve issues.

Links

Desktop Environments and Window Managers

What!? You mean the desktop is not the same as the distro or operating system?!

See Comparing desktop environments on Wikipedia

Major Desktops

File Managers

What does a file manager do?

It the GUI interface used to manage files (to copy, rename and move files and groups of files). It is different from filesystems commonly discussed in relation to Linux.

Some popular file managers are:

  • Dolphin
  • Konqueror
  • Nautilus
  • Thunar

Other filemanagers - see Comparison of file managers on Wikipedia

Common Applications

Office

  • Open Office - A very popular Microsoft Office replacement application that features support for Microsoft Office file types.
  • Abiword - Free Software word processor licensed under the GNU General Public License.
  • Koffice - Office suite for the K Desktop Environment (KDE). All its components have been released under free software/open source licenses.

Network/Internet

Includes browsers, email, chat and microblogging clients

  • Pidgin - Pidgin (formerly named Gaim) is a popular multi-platform instant messaging client that supports many commonly used instant messaging protocols.
  • Firefox - Free, cross-platform, graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation.
  • Thunderbird - Free, cross-platform e-mail and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation.
  • Azureus - Most popular BitTorrent client which is cross platform and open source.
  • GFTP - Free/open source multithreaded FTP client.
  • Chrome (Google's browser, Chromium is the open source version)
  • Opera - now server and browser wrapped into one
  • Conkeror (keyboard command controlled, emacs-like conventions, browser)

Twitter/Microblogging clients

    • Standalone (Choquk, others?)
    • In-browser (Tweetdeck (using Flash), Twittergadget(w/out flash))

Graphical

  • Inkscape - A vector graphics editor application.
  • Gimp - GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is a raster graphics editor application with some support for vector graphics.

Multimedia

  • Mplayer - An advanced media player that has support for almost every video codec.
  • Xine - A media player that supports DVD menus
  • VLC
  • MythTV - A program that can turn any PC with video capture card into a PVR sytem. It has many advanced features for timeshifting and scheduling recordings. It also has a number of plugins allowing it to be a frontend for emulators, music, videos, DVDs, etc.

Games

  • Enemy Territory - A game created to be the expansionpack to the 1st person shooter Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. Only the multiplayer was completed and you can download it free from many websites.
  • Tux Racer
  • Freeciv - A Civilization I/II clone with network play and AI
  • ZSNES - A popular Super Nintendo emulator available for many operating systems.
  • MAME

Text Editors

  • VI - A screen-oriented text editor computer program
  • VIM
  • EMACS
  • NANO
  • PICO
  • KATE - A gui based text editor for KDE. It has many usefull features such as a syntax coloring, built in console and built in file browser to make it easier to build programs and webpages.

Emulation

  • WINE - Project which aims to allow a PC with an x86 architecture processor running a Unix-like operating system and the X Window System to execute programs that were originally written for Microsoft Windows.
  • Cedega - Fork of WINE which is designed specifically for running games written for Microsoft Windows under Linux.

Virtual Machines

  • VMWare - Allows users to set up multiple x86 and x86-64 virtual computers and to use one or more of these virtual machines simultaneously with the hosting operating system. Each virtual machine instance can execute its own guest operating system, such as (but not limited to) Windows, Linux, and BSD variants.

Major Players (Corporations and Organizations)

  • Sun
  • Apache
  • Mozilla Foundation
  • Free Software Foundation
  • IBM
  • Redhat
  • Novell

Forums

freshmeat

sourceforge

Linux Magazine

Local User Groups

Guides

Local Basic Unix and Linux, Dual Booting Advice, Kernel Hacking, Doing Installations and Maintenance, Web Server Administration X for Annoyed Dummies

Other wikis

Resources

http://www.linuxcommand.org/

http://www.howtoforge.com/taxonomy_menu/1/1

A tutorial for beginners at Linux.org (using Debian)

Some basic Linux Lingo

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