• What is Linux?
• What are the different distributions of Linux?
• Is there a comparison between the different distributions?
• Which distribution should I use?
• Where can I download Linux?
• System states and their meaning
• How do I compile the Linux Kernel?
• What are RPMs?
• Who uses RPMs?
• Where can I find RPMs?
• What is the difference between RPMs and SRPMs?
• What is LILO?
• How do I install LILO?
• How do I configure LILO?
• How can I uninstall Lilo?
• Why does LILO freeze when booting my system?
• Can I change the Splash Screen That Grub Uses?
• What is ext3?
• What are the advantages of ext3?
• How do I install ext3 support?
• How do I convert my current ext2 fs to ext3?
• How do I mount drives on Linux?
• How do I disable Ctrl+Alt+Del in Red Hat Linux?
• How do I make Linux work on my laptop?
• How do I use Linux Fdisk to Prepare for a Linux Install?
• How do I uninstall Linux?
• What is GRUB?
• How to pronounce Linux.
• How to make remote system management from a Gnome desktop easy

Linux (often pronounced LIH-nuhks with a short "i") is a UNIX-like operating system that was designed to provide personal computer users a free or very low-cost operating system comparable to traditional and usually more expensive UNIX systems. Linux has a reputation as a very efficient and fast-performing system. Linux's kernel (the central part of the operating system) was developed by Linus Torvalds at the University of Helsinki in Finland. To complete the operating system, Torvalds and other team members made use of system components developed by members of the Free Software Foundation for the GNU project.

Linux is a remarkably complete operating system, including a graphical user interface, an X Window System, TCP/IP, the Emacs editor, and other components usually found in a comprehensive UNIX system. Although copyrights are held by various creators of Linux's components, Linux is distributed using the Free Software Foundation's copyleft stipulations that mean any modified version that is redistributed must in turn be freely available.

Unlike Windows and other proprietary systems, Linux is publicly open and extendible by contributors. Because it conforms to the Portable Operating System Interface standard user and programming interfaces, developers can write programs that can be ported to other operating systems. Linux comes in versions for all the major microprocessor platforms including the Intel, PowerPC, Sparc, and Alpha platforms. It's also available on IBM's S/390. Linux is distributed commercially by a number of companies. A magazine, Linux Journal, is published as well as a number of books and pocket references.

Linux is sometimes suggested as a possible publicly-developed alternative to the desktop predominance of Microsoft Windows. Although Linux is popular among users already familiar with UNIX, it remains far behind Windows in numbers of users.

From Linux Online:

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Linux is an operating system that was initially created as a hobby by a young student, Linus Torvalds, at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Linus had an interest in Minix, a small UNIX system, and decided to develop a system that exceeded the Minix standards. He began his work in 1991 when he released version 0.02 and worked steadily until 1994 when version 1.0 of the Linux Kernel was released.

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This information can be found here.

The Linux kernel is a UNIX-like operating system. It knows how to read and write to disk drives, allocate memory, and do other very basic manipulations of your computer's hardware.

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by howe81

Currently there are a lot of distributions of Linux. The mainstream ones are these:

• Caldera
  
  
• Debian
  
  
• LinuxPPC
  
  
• Mandrake
  
  
• Red Hat
  
  
• Slackware
  
  
• SuSE
  

Additional information about the distributions can be found here.

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Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux)

This isn't a distribution per say, rather a set of tweaks and patches to improve security at the kernel level, but it is worth investigating.

Information can be found at http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/

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by howe81 edited by bmn
last modified: 2004-11-13 03:02:45

A full comparison between the different distributions can be found at www.distrowatch.com which presents pure facts.

The Linux Distribution game however, is an editorial which aspires to be a gentle introduction to the world of Linux distributions.

All thanks to Ladislav Bodnar.

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by howe81
last modified: 2002-04-04 04:58:40

Those who ask it are often beginners looking for a place to start, and it can most certainly be intimidating. A common misconception is that of large sweeping differences between Linux distributions, and while some aspects of the OS can vary, very little Linux functionality is actually distribution-specific.

The best thing to do is usually to just see what is popular, that often means they're doing something right. DistroWatch maintains statistics on which distributions generate the most visitor traffic.

DistroWatch Hit Counter

If it is recommendations you seek, take them from this list.

You might also consider trying what's known as a "LiveCD," which is essentially a Linux installation on a bootable CD. To use one simply download a pre-built CD image, burn it onto a CD, put the CD in your CD-ROM drive and reboot your computer. It's a good way to give Linux a test run without committing part of your hard disk to it.

If you're interested, a list of these LiveCDs can be found here: FrozenTech.com

Thanks to aefstoggaflm for the updated link.

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by howe81 edited by No_Strings
last modified: 2010-03-23 22:48:22

Linuxiso.org is a place to start. They have a majority of Linux distribution ISOs (ISOs are CD Images) where you could download and burn or put onto CD.

iso.linuxquestions.org also maintains a list of ISO mirrors and bitorrents.

Also, you could download from each distributions web site, such as Red Hat could be found at »www.redhat.com and Debian could be found at »www.debian.org/.

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by howe81 edited by bmn
last modified: 2004-08-24 11:03:04

A Linux system may run in one of seven possible states numbered from 0 to 6, as well as the single-user state that the letters s or S represent. Here is a description of all these states:

•State 0 is the halt state. When you switch a system to state 0, it will shutdown immediately.

•State 1, known as the administrative state, allows access only to a super-user. Using this state, a system administrator can perform various maintenance operations and installations without interference from other users.

•State 2 is the partial multiple user state. It allows multiple users to login but it disables remote file sharing.

•State 3 is the multiple user state. It allows multiple users to login and enables remote file sharing. This is the default state for the command line interface.

•State 4 is unused.

•State 5 is the default state for graphical logins that use display managers such as gdm and xdm. If you choose to use graphical logins during the installation process, this will be your default state instead of state 3, which would be the default otherwise.

•State 6 shuts down the system and reboots (note that state 0 shuts down the system without performing an automatic reboot afterwards).

•State s or S is the single-user state. It restricts the number of logged in users to one.

Detecting and Setting the System's State
To detect the state in which your system is currently running, use the runlevel command (the term 'runlevel' is a synonym for 'state'). For example:

#runlevel
      N 3

On startup, Linux enters the default state. The system's default state is stored in a file called /etc/inittab. You may override it by changing the value of the init default entry. To change the current

system state, use the init command. For example, to switch to a single-user mode, type the following command:

#init s

Likewise, to shut the system down immediately, use the following command:

#init 0

Note, however, that, in general, you should use the 'shutdown' command. It allows you to include a warning message that is sent to all the users that are currently logged in or specify a delay.

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by nil

First download the new kernel from Kernel.org or from their ftp site.

Usually I download to /usr/src/ so I could work from there. Now untar the newly downloaded kernel source by typing:

tar -zxvf linux-2.4.6.tar.gz

Replace linux.2.4.6.tar.gz with the version of the kernel you just downloaded. Change into the directory created, usually linux. At this time, it is always good to read the README file first. Next step is to make sure that there are no stale .o files and dependencies lying around so run:

make mrproper

Once that is done, make sure you check the ./Documentation/Changes and have the minimal requirements before you begin compiling the kernel.

Once you have meet all the minimal requirements start the configuration by typing either one of these:

• make config - This is the typical configuration and requires the bash shell to work
• make menuconfig - This is a text based with color menus, radiolists & dialogs
• make xconfig - This is the graphical configuration tool for X Windows
• make oldconfig - default all questions based on the contents of your existing ./.config file.

All this is detailed in the README file so be sure to read it.

Now that you have configured the options to build your new kernel, be sure to set up all the dependencies correctly by typing:

make dep && make clean

The second section cleans up the source tree from any previous compilations.

The next step is to start compiling and building the new kernel. To do this, issue the following command:

make bzImage

This part can take some time depending on your computer. During this time, you could read some more of the documentation in the Documentation directory.

If you specified the use of modules during the configuration, then you will need to issue the next line, if you did not specify the use of modules then you can safely skip this step:

make modules && make modules_install

This will compile and build all the modules that you specified during the configuration and copy them to the /lib/modules directory so you could load them when necessary. Now to install the new kernel all you have to do is copy it from ./arch/i386/boot/ to /boot/. You would also have to copy the new System.map as well. To do this type:

cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot
cp System.map /boot

Now you will need to update the module dependencies tree, a small file that tells the kernel which modules depends on which to work. To do this type:

depmod -a

All that is left is to update LILO or GRUB to tell it to boot the new kernel.

For those with SCSI hard disks, you will need to create initial ramdisk images for preloading modules. To do this, type:

mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.4.6.img 2.4.6

Replace initrd-2.4.6.img with the name you would like to use for your initrd image and replace 2.4.6 with the kernel version you are using. Remember to include a line in LILO or GRUB to boot the image. With LILO add:

initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.6.img

Remember to replace initrd-2.4.6.img with the filename of your own initial ramdisk image. As I have not used GRUB before, I do not know how to do this so you will have to read the GRUB documentation.

Full documentation can be found here.

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by howe81
last modified: 2003-04-14 01:43:50

RPM stands for Red Hat Package Manager. These files are similar to those self-extracting zip files in Windows.

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by howe81

Although it stands for Red Hat Package Manager, it's not just Red Hat that uses them. Mandrake along with other Linux distributions use them as well.

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by howe81

Best place to find RPMs is at SpeakEasy.Rpmfind.Net. Feel free to submit more sites and I will continue to update this entry to include them.

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by howe81

RPMs contain the compiled binaries, whereas SRPMs contain the source code ready to be compiled.

RPMs can also be created or built from SRPMs using the follow line:

rpm --rebuild

Credit goes to these people: radmish , FiberOpPraise , linuxdawg , dmgibbs & bellers .

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by howe81
last modified: 2002-06-12 11:06:57

LILO stands for Linux Loader. LILO is Linux's boot loader which is used to boot up Linux. It can also be used to dual-boot or multi-boot different operating systems.

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by howe81

To install LILO, run lilo as root. You can either install it to the master boot record (lilo /dev/hda) or the root partition of your Linux installation (lilo /dev/hda1 or lilo /dev/hda2).

Additiona information can be found in the LILO mini-HOWTO.

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by howe81

To configure LILO, simply edit the /etc/lilo.conf then make additional changes and run lilo as root to update your system.

A typical /etc/lilo.conf file should look similar to this:

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boot = /dev/hda # or your root partition
delay = 10 # delay, in tenth of a second (so you can interact)
vga = 0 # optional. Use "vga=1" to get 80x50
#linear # try "linear" in case of geometry problems.

image = /boot/vmlinux # your zImage file
root = /dev/hda1 # your root partition
label = Linux # or any fancy name
read-only # mount root read-only

other = /dev/hda4 # your dos partition, if any
table = /dev/hda # the current partition table
label = dos # or any non-fancy name

---

More information on LILO can be found here.

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by howe81