Linux - The Choice of a Gnu Generation

Linux is an Open Source version of Unix developed by Linus Torvalds to port Unix to the Intel x86 processor. This made Unix available on the most ubiquitous computer hardware that has ever existed, and therefore available to almost everyone. Linux has since been ported to almost every processor and function one could imagine, including gameboxes, personal digital assistants (PDAs), personal digital video recorders, and IBM mainframes, expanding the original concept of Unix for x86 to Unix for everything. Linux isn't the only version of Unix available to most people (also notable are the various BSD variants, also Open Source), but it's by far the most popular.

In this chapter, we discuss how to get Linux, how to install it, and some of the basic commands.

DISTRIBUTIONS:

Caldera
www.caldera-systems.com/

Corel
linux.corel.com/

Debian
www.debian.org/

Mandrake
www.linux-mandrake.com/

MkLinux
www.mklinux.com/

Red Hat
www.redhat.com/

Slackware
www.slackware.com/

SuSE
www.suse.com/

TurboLinux
www.turbolinux.com/