Linux

GNU

GNU is Not Unix
Who is Richard M. Stallman ?

M.I.T. computer scientist student
Created the GNU project and the Free Software Fondation - 1984

What is the copyleft and the GPL (GNU Public Licence) ?

Linux

Who is Linus Torvalds ?

Finnish computer scientist student
Creator of the Linux kernel - 1991

THE message in the newsgroup comp.os.minix in 1991:

"
Hello everybody out there using minix -

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just for a hobby,
won't be big and professional like gnu) for
386(486) AT clones.
"

Linux kernel characteristics:

monolithic, System V family + BSD tools, Posix standard
32 bits (64 bits: Itanium, ...)
multi-users
multi-tasks, multi-threads
multi-platform but i386 mainly. Others: PowerPC, Alpha, MIPS, Sparc, ... even on Dreamcast !
multi-processor (SMP)
GPL, open-source (cooperative work via Internet)
free = free of use (libre) & no charges (gratuit)
fully documented

The Linux kernel version history

BSD Unix family: FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD

Unix genealogy AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, IRIX, MacOS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux !

Tux

The Linux mascot Tux

The complete story
The penguin gallery

Distributions

Slackware - packages .tgz = .tar.gz
Debian - packages .deb
RedHat - packages .rpm
Mandrake - packages .rpm
Linux from scratch

Packages comparison of recent versions

Software

shells: sh -> bash, csh -> tcsh, zsh, ksh the Korn-Shell, , ,

daemons:

telnetd
httpd - Apache
ftpd - WU-FTPD, ProFTPD
smtpd - Sendmail, Postfix
nntpd - INN
dhcpd - DHCPD
named (DNS) - BIND
smbd / nmbd (SMB) - Samba
crond, atd, ...
-
ssh - OpenSSH
firewall - ipfwadm (Linux 2.0), ipchains (Linux 2.2), iptables (Linux 2.4)
proxy - squid

editors: vi, emacs, ...
compiler: gcc, ...
languages / scripting: C, C++ (gcc), Perl, Python, PHP, Java, JSP (Tomcat, ...)

databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL

X-Window interface: XFree86
window managers & desktops: KDE, Gnome, Window maker, (full list)

office software: KOffice, StarOffice, OpenOffice, Acrobat Reader
browsers: Konqueror, Galeon, Netscape, Mozilla

graphic: Gimp
multimedia: xmms (MP3), ...

Documentation

LDP - the Linux Documentation Project
man
FAQ
HOWTO
/usr/doc

O'Reilly press (good technical books)

Big companies support

Sun freeware for Solaris
Sun JDK
IBM "Linux" tools for AIX and doc
IBM DB2 database on Linux
Oracle database on Linux (HOWTO install)
Informix database
Sybase database
SAP database

Borland JBuilder (Java)
Borland Kylix (Pascal and C++ later)

Server market share:

Linux and NT: growing Market share for server OS, 1998-2000, en %
OS	1998	1999	2000
Windows NT	38	38	41
Linux	16	25	27
Netware	23	19	17
Unix	19	15	13
Other	4	3	2
Source: IDC

in 1998 IDC made a pronostic:
Linux would in second position, but not before 2002-2003...

Companies using Linux

- French public services: free software are recommended by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin directive (and here)
reasons ? no cost and security

for example:
French Defence Minister uses Linux-Mandrake 7,
browsing with Netscape and editing documents with StarOffice

Linux installation

- HCL (Hardware Compatibility List)
- 2 partitions at least: swap and / (root)
(Linux fdisk recognizes many file system types)
- choose packages
- LILO = Linux Loader