Blaenk Denum

This is a HowTo/Tutorial which will hopefully help you in the process of starting off with linux.

What is an Operating System?
To understand what Linux is, you must first understand what an Operating System is. An Operating System is basically a program, a rather big program, which makes your computer useful to you. For example, The Microsoft Windows Operating System, or the Apple Mac Operating System, etc. An Operating System makes use of every component in your computer to carry out everyday tasks such as Reading and Sending E-Mail, navigating the web, rendering videos or games, and many other productivity things which you usually think of as simple on the computer, as well as other complex tasks and processes. So basically think of an Operating System as a big program which tells your computer how it’s supposed to act, it’s what makes a computer a computer. Then, within the Operating System itself, you install various other programs which do more specific tasks, such as a web browser, catching on? So just…

What is Linux?
Linux is perceived as different things (Some say it’s just the kernel, but let’s stay away from that for the time being so you don’t get confused), but let me start off with a very general description so you can understand. Linux is just another Operating System, such as Windows, Mac OS X, and others. So, what’s the difference? Well, there’s many differences but the most notable one is that it’s Open Source, let’s talk about what Open Source is and then come back to Linux.

What is Open Source?
Okay, all these things that are new to you, your head is going to explode! But don’t worry, it may seem as if this is all too complicated, but it isn’t really. If you didn’t care, I wouldn’t be talking to you about all this and you could take the ignorance role as does the whole world when using Windows. Ask yourself, how many people use Windows who don’t know what an Operating System is? Exactly, so if I wanted to treat you like Microsoft, I wouldn’t bother teaching you all of this, you could just use the computer and play the “Stupid Human” role, who doesn’t need to know what’s going on in the background. And you don’t, it’s perfectly okay. In fact, computer engineers work on just that, making the interactions between human beings and computer infrastructures a lot simpler and easy. But it sure does change things when you know exactly what’s going in behind the curtains.

Okay, so Open Source. This is a tremendous, immense, HUGE topic. Some call it a miracle, a true miracle and many couldn’t imagine the world without it. Okay okay I’ll stop bragging about it, and I’ll tell you what it is. Open Source basically means just that, that the source to a program is open, there for people to take it, modify it, possibly improve it, etc., in contrast to closed source, or proprietary solutions, such as Windows. Windows is closed source, so only the company itself and some Microsoft snitches (Affiliates, or people who work in conjunction with Microsoft on certain products) have access to the source. What this does mean to you? Why should you care? You have no reason to look at the source, after all. Well, this means that because only they have access to it, they get to dictate what you do with their software, even if you bought it. Also, they have less of an initiative to do things. If there’s a vulnerability in their program or a bug, they won’t fix it unless they’re getting paid or have a good reason to. Also, they come out with releases and updates slower because only that group, or company, is working on that product, and since it’s closed source, they have less feedback. Okay, bad things first, good things last. Let’s see how Open Source solves this situation.

Open Source is driven around communities. No, we’re not talking communism here. Rather, let’s dissect this. So we know that the source is on public domain, as opposed to close source, where only a few people see the source. Usually, Open Source developers are unpaid (Though not always), this means that when they develop applications, they do it on their own will, which means that the job will usually be better done because it’s coming out of their will, and it’s not just another paycheck that’ll buy their family some bread to eat. Because it’s open, millions of people look at the source code simultaneously, this means that millions can look for vulnerabilities and bugs, and fix them immediately. Also, millions more get to evaluate the applications and report bugs and give feedback, request features, etc., therefore making the program a lot better in a lot less time and highly more mature and developed.

So what did I mean about communities? Now it seems evident. Communities are usually an Open Source Project’s advertising team, development team, art designers, evaluators, maintainers, support team, etc. Therefore, establishing a mature and good community is vital for the success of an Open Source Project. I think I forgot to mention that most Open Source Projects/Programs, are FREE. And lately there’s been a rush of Open Source programs which have become extremely popular, and most who use it don’t even know that they are Open Source, let us list a couple of the millions of projects; FireFox, OpenOffice.Org, WikiPedia, LimeWire, Blender 3D, Gaim, XChat, Thunderbird, GIMP, VLC Media Player, BitTorrent, and many, many more. All these free programs do the equivalent and sometimes better than their commercial counterparts. So let us go back to Linux…

Back to “What is Linux?”
So now you know what Linux is hopefully. So, you know Linux is Open Source, so its key differences are that it’s most of the times free (Depending on the distribution and more), and instantly, Linux inherits from Open Source’s features. Linux is very secure, and could be a whole lot more secure if configured properly by a Systems Administrator. It is very secure, that it is the Operating System of choice for servers. You might play games sometime and have see the server binaries which servers run to be able to connect to it and what not, well, there’s usually a Linux binary as well. Linux is also very stable because of this. You can leave Linux running for years without ever having to shutdown or reboot the server or computer running it. It is also because of this that it’s the Operating System of choice for servers. So, where you use Microsoft Windows usually for your personal computer, the big boss computers called Servers, which practically ’serve’ the internet for you on a platter, run on Linux. Linux is developed a whole lot quicker, with updates/fixes/patches to security threats/risks, bugs, and additions to user requested features being added rapidly in the development cycle of Linux. There are many who test new Linux versions (Distributions or kernels, either) the second they come out, and leave feedback. People are constantly filing bug reports, so that the developers can fix them.

So now you know, Linux is usually free, is stable, mature, secure, and great. Governments all over the world use it, schools and universities use it, and various other people who can’t afford Windows use it, servers use it, the internet practically runs on Linux, researchers and scientists use it, so why don’t you? The thing is, most people think that since it’s free, it should not be as capable as Windows, however, those who use Linux instead of Windows because they can’t afford it are usually getting a lot more in return than they would if they used Windows. They aren’t restricted to only using it on one or a few computers, and they won’t be sued for life if they do. In fact, Linux in other continents have become pretty much a norm, where people here would say ‘What Windows do you have’, in other places, they might say ‘What distribution do you have’. In Europe, I’ve heard it’s becoming very popular. So all these good things about linux, and why haven’t you tried it? Oh yeah, because here in the United States of America, in this capitalist, corporate country, people often go for buying their products. They think that if they invest money in it, it’s going to be better. They have rarely heard of something ‘free’, what is ‘free’ anyways?

What is ‘Free’?
Okay, in the GNU/GPL world, there’s two ‘free’s which imagery I hate, anyways, they call it ‘Free as in Beer’ and ‘Free as in Freedom’. I’m going to go over these a bit quickly just for you to understand it because I personally don’t like talking about this. Basically, Free As In Beer is ‘materially free’, which means that, for example, a ‘Free Beer’, you know, instead of paying for it, you get it for free. Then there’s the other popular definition, the Free As In Freedom, like when a ‘Slave gets his freedom’, it doesn’t mean he’s free for anyone to master, but rather he’s now free from the oppression and is able to do anything he wants. Now, applying these to Linux, distributions, which we will cover later on, as well as programs and anything else Linux related, is usually a combination of any of the two; either one of them or both, then I guess there’s also proprietary programs which could be neither but that’s a separate story. Okay, so if a thing says it’s Free As In Beer, then it means that the thing is literally ‘Free’, monetarily speaking. If it says that it’s (also) Free As In Freedom, then it means that you’re free to do anything you like with the program; copy it, distribute it, modify it, etc. For example you know how sometimes in those windows programs it makes you read this long huge thing (Which no one does anyways haha) and then make you accept to continue the installation? Well, typically, Free As In Freedom means it doesn’t have any of that, except for of course the specific program’s license which could be for example the GPL, MIT, Apache, and many more, but they’re typically not as restrictive, you can read more about them on your own if you like. Now that we covered what we mean by ‘Free’ when we talk about Linux, we can move on to…

What is a Distribution?
Okay, a distribution is basically a flavor of Linux. For example, you might notice that Windows might have, oh, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows ME, and many more, right? Is it not true that they are all still Windows? And that any program that runs on the oldest one will run on the newest one as well? Well, think of Linux as a base Operating System. Now, instead of Microsoft creating another version of Windows, other groups and organizations/companies are welcome to make their own, even you can create your own (If you don’t have a life) flavors, or distributions, of Linux. What difference is in the flavors? Well, there’s many for me to list, but basically the ‘flavors’ are additions to the base, or kernel. For example, a Government might be interested in adding security features and what not and making it more restricted, and they make their own ‘flavor’. An educational organization might be interested in incorporating tools that can help teachers and students fulfill their educational needs, they make their changes and release the ‘flavor’. Not all distributions (flavors) are public of course, who knows what a kid would do with a Government distribution (haha). But the point is that anyone group or independent person can create their own distribution.

Common distributions include Fedora (a.k.a. RedHat), Mandriva (Formerly Mandrake), SuSe (From Novell), Slackware, Debian, Gentoo, Ubuntu (My Personal Favorite!), and many, many more. There are also distributions which you don’t need to install on your computer, but can simply run off of the disk (Be it a CD or DVD). These are great if you just want to test out linux though I always tell people not to judge Linux by testing it like this because often times it runs slow because it runs off of a CD, or it might ‘look’ different. However, they’re great if you need to back something up, or if your Windows/OS X went crazy and you absolutely need to do something. These are also commonly used by security experts which need to run various ‘tools’ such as exploit launchers and all types of network traffic sniffers to see if their computers are secure. Examples of these types of Linux distributions include Knoppix (Practically the ‘original’), Slax (Great. Based on Slackware), BackTrack (Security Oriented), and many, many more. Most installable distributions have their ‘live’ equivalents, live meaning that the distribution can run off a CD/DVD.

You might be thinking, well, there’s too many options, I can’t choose, better yet, “How do I choose!?”. Well, that’s one really tought question, I guess it’s pretty much the only downside to using linux (And you’re not even at the point of using it haha). It’s not really that bad of a deal though. I personally prefer Ubuntu and so do many many people recently. It’s great for beginners but it doesn’t restrict you at all, so even though it’s great for beginners, advanced users are also in love with it. I consider myself novice, since I am nowhere near advanced but I’m well past the beginner stage. Beginners, or ‘noob’ distros (distributions) are typically Mandriva, Ubuntu, SuSe, Fedora, and a few more which I forget. There are also ‘windows-a-like’ distributions, some great, others, not so great. There’s some that charge you (Such as Xandros, LinSpire, etc.) for a Windows-a-like Operating System, in which case you might as well just rather get Windows!

Anyways, the point of this article isn’t to show you which distribution to get or how to install it, rather it’s just a rundown on what Linux is. Possibly later on I can write a tutorial on how to do the above said, however I don’t see that likely as, even this article was dormant on my site for quite sometime and it wasn’t until a friend had me publish it. I hope that you learned something, if you didn’t, then you just lost like, 20 minutes of your time, hah!