http://www.linuxsupportline.com/~pgp/linux/linux.html#Scripts
Mike's Linux Page
This is a new addition to my many pages ... but a necessary one for me to put my
thoughts together on and refer many people I talk to to.
Nobody's using it, are they?
There are lots of examples of Linux's being used out there, but here's a great article to
give you my summary thoughts:
Linux Support Line
Linux now, vs.
What the is software
Linux is an Operating System. That was simple. But seriously, if you want to know more about
what Linux is, don't look here. That's not the approach I'm taking. Take a look at any of
the following:
Isn't it just for servers and geeks?
Besides the fact that some of us are geeks, resource can be used by normal individuals
who have some computer savvy. If you still don't know why pops up when you restart your
computer without using the option in Linux isn't ready for you.
But it's getting there.
Distribution
As for I think a quote I saw summarises it best:
linuxsupportline
Forget Linux's hype. Forget . The bottom line, according
to our hands-on analysis, is that Linux releases can do much more with far less
than can.
Yes, Linux has its problems as a desktop operating system. Yes, have staggering
recognition. But Linux is a worthy contender--both in features and performance--for
your customers' file and Internet .
I want to try it, but I have
This is how I got started. It took me weeks to find the information I wanted. Hopefully it
didn't take you weeks to find this website.
No, you don't have to wipe off your machine. It doesn't matter if you're running ,
because they can exist with Linux. You'll only be able to use one
at a time and reboot to get into the other, but it's very useful to keep them both around.
I still use alot of the new.
Here are the steps you'll want to take: (more detail will be provided shortly)
Back up all your files!
You need some space on your hard drive reserved for Linux so
Get a program that can your drive without losing any of your current information
(will list some shortly)
Reduce your main down to as small as you can plus some extra space for adding more stuff later.
Get a Linux CD (I recommend. Follow its instructions Partitions?
Most users these days have never had to with partitions. Your hard drive is
divided into one or more partitions. These are just logical of space on your drive.
If your drive had , you could divide it into one partition of
a (which is probably how it would come from the shop), two partitions of
each, or even one of 800 megabytes and one of 200 megabytes. You could have
5 partitions, one of 500 megabytes, one of 200 and three of 100 each.
each partition with a drive letter. If you had two partitions in
coming up as E:, etc.. In your
system isn't divided into drives. There is only a series of . Directories
are seperated with forward slashes instead of too is
the root, would be the directory "users" under the root, similar to in.
What makes it interesting is that any directory can be a partition. So I could have something
like:
for a directory structure ... as an example. If / were the only partition, all the files in
each of the subdirectories would be stored in that partition. However, /home/ could be its
own partition. Then everything in /, /documents/ and /downloads/ would be stored in the
first second. Follow?
But why?
One issue is space. If you want to add a second hard drive because you've got too big of a
website, you could create a big partition on the new drive and mount it as
or whatever, free up the space on the first drive for other things.
Safety is another reason. A common directory to get partitioned off in Linux is which
is where all the log files and temporary files are often stored. If a program suddenly
started out garbage to its log file, it would fill up the partition the logs
directory is in. If is just a directory of the root then you
wouldn't be able to save any of your files because the whole drive would be filled up.
But if its a seperate partition, it can only fill up that partition. It's partitioned.
Security is a big reason as well, but I'll leave further discussions on this for another day.
Where can I get instructions?
There are two types of documents you'll come accross in your searches that mentionning
now: HOWTOs and FAQs. Neither one is usually recently made but created a year or more ago
and never updated because of the amount of work involved. However, knowing where these are
and perusing them will answer many if not all of your questions. HOWTOs deal with individual
subjects such as using a card, or making partitions. FAQs often deal with individual
programs.
What can I do with Linux?
Things you never thought of doing with can be configured to do a host of
things that just can't be done with. Linux can do things well and easily that
wishes it could do. And the best is that it's all free and fairly well documented. Using
the latest hardware and will still require ... for the time being.
Linux development is becoming more mainstream with companies like creating
Computers and and helping in the development of.
Isn't it just a prompt?
The quick answer is "no" and just take a look at my screen shots page for what Linux looks
like on my desktop from time to time. These aren't posed for the camera; these are
me actually working and saying I'm glad I use.
Linux is usually configured to come up with a login: and password: prompt at boot up. These
drop you to a or other prompt. This probably isn't where you want to be if you're
used to Windows. If you're an person, go ahead and type a word to get
commands that reference that word in their manuals. To then see one of those commands,
type man command. This will help you learn most of what you need to know as you go along.
is an system that is designed for situations. That's where
there's an on your mainframe and you run an to access it and run programs.
In user mode, which is most likely how you're running Linux if migrating from ,
you just want both to run on your machine. There's a great HOWTO about this and you can
read it at the one URL below. is the version of that most Linux users are running
as it is completely open and free to use. There are other versions as well which you can
link to from it's site.
I'll do a managers, etc. some other time :)
better and more popular though, isn't it?
popularity is only from hardware manufacturers who are led (by) to believe
that everyone is using, or will be using these days. In many surveys, Linux is
the most used operating system for Internet servers. Unix-based servers are still the most
secure and stable in the world. Here are two links that will help with the.
Remember to take over from Windows? The big deal was that it didn't matter if you switched
because it would run apps. Well, that's not yet true of. Linux apps are easy
to find (see for a daily app listing) but your favorite may be
entirely inaccessible unless you reboot into. is an attempt, however, at
porting over to Linux. The idea is to provide the infrastructure
of to a program so that it thinks it's in, and then to do what
would have done (it even crashes -- but at least the authors admit it's ). A lot of
now, including C. It is growing very quickly because
of a large developer base and the fact that now is helping out too. Watch
for good things to come out of.
Better than though, if you can software, is a now-released
program that allows a Linux box to run as many other operating systems in
virtual machines as memory and speed permits. Each virtual machine (displayed in a window)
has a file on the harddrive that it perceives to be an entire hard drive. It is given some
memory and a. , etc. can be installed "in a window" on your
computer and executed simultaneously. With the networking component enabled, they can see
each other as though they were independant computers on a LAN. Try this out! A free demo
license is available.
Terms you should know
Regular Expression
Strange patterns of characters that function somewhat like. Read up on them in the
man page.
Commands you should know
You should know some of these commands:all commands are in lower case and there are no
numbers in their names, in case you thought that
That's the end of the for everyone section of this page. From here on is just a grouping
of some of my thoughts. If you've found this website at all helpful, or found that you have
more questions, please E-mail me so that I can either feel encouraged or add whatever was
missing for you and others.
My personal Linux projects:
Programming
I love the fact that developing software for Linux is so easy. All the tools you've ever
needed are included in most Linux distributions and can be customised very easily. For those
of you who've coded for would love the ease of freely
available toolkits like the.
a small business accounting package that uses MySQL
an administration program for
For a full list of programs I'm working on as well as some ressources and brief tutorials,
see my programming page.
Developing Linux Applications with
Optimizations
Just some quickies that anyone can do ...
If you're on a pentium or higher,
add the other two. If you use, that line would be.
Not all programs respect environment settings, but most do (especially those with
. This will add your settings to the application defaults to make your
program run potentially much more efficiently when compiled. Note that precompiled programs
are often not anywhere near as efficient in an attempt to make them run on any hardware.
Scripts I've done:
Jump over to my new scripts page for information on some of the small programs I've written
to make my life easier.
I do not have thereby completely forget according to the public
the world is sufficient. Perhaps the highly should times over it
think, which if one wants to go ITP: around these:
With a door everyone is enough to open can over then completely fast too
to look at the to run around itself then everything. Perhaps those can
Woman behind the still fast enough their move around the running
to small. I do not License: believe it anyhow.
Why the doors are enough to dozens with the system
not? We live still in a time, Follow-Ups where the of the authorities
because of their numerous break downs to be admired, but none is in for it?
I know only which one for the entrance by into a with
to count must, but for the on-line world these do not apply apparently.
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