29th July 2004, 12:35 PM
Yes, indeed, what we MEAN is that this is Linux, LINUX.
Linux, based on the Unix system, is not merely one OS or even a family of OS products by the same company. Linux is "open source", which means the source code is freely available to ANYONE. More than that, due to how it's copyrighted, pretty much ANYONE can not only change the code to make their own "flavor" of the system, they can distrubute it freely afterwards. In fact, the agreement for making any modifications is that you MUST freely distribute the source code at the very least. Many of them also provide for free the compiled finished product. Now, this means a LOT of small companies as well as individual geeks have made their very own Linux and give it out totally for free, totally legally. Red Hat happens to have a price tag on it, but if you look around, you will find a free version of it and you are freely entitled to just get it should you wish. Mandrake just plain gives it away, but it does charge for other services, namely customer support. Most of the popular distributions do request donations to keep them going.
Yes, it IS complicated, and with so many versions with such different code behind them, there is the issue of picking the one you want. I myself had a lot of trouble finally picking the one I wanted. It was between Red Hat and Mandrake for a while, but eventually due to a lot of suggestions that Mandrake is basically more designed for home users and first time users of Linux, I went with that. Now I'm experimenting (and as a result, have had to reinstall from scratch a few times already :D, it's all good), and trying to figure out how it works. There's a reason I'm doing this. It's not for the vast library of exclusive games :D, it's so I can get to understand an OS that will surely take it's place among businesses, and with my goals in life, that's kinda important. I say it'll take over simply BECAUSE of how much cheaper it is.
Anyway, so far I've found out that by using the su command, I can run install programs with root's permissions, and thus installed the updated Mozilla. Problem is, it didn't find the existing Mozilla installation, so now I have both 6 and 7 on there. If it wasn't for me being afraid of deleting something important to the KDE GUI, I'd get rid of Mozilla 6 myself.
Anyway, there's one thing that's clear. While Linux can read FAT32 partitions (and probably NTFS), XP cannot read from ext3 partitions. Oh well :D.
Linux, based on the Unix system, is not merely one OS or even a family of OS products by the same company. Linux is "open source", which means the source code is freely available to ANYONE. More than that, due to how it's copyrighted, pretty much ANYONE can not only change the code to make their own "flavor" of the system, they can distrubute it freely afterwards. In fact, the agreement for making any modifications is that you MUST freely distribute the source code at the very least. Many of them also provide for free the compiled finished product. Now, this means a LOT of small companies as well as individual geeks have made their very own Linux and give it out totally for free, totally legally. Red Hat happens to have a price tag on it, but if you look around, you will find a free version of it and you are freely entitled to just get it should you wish. Mandrake just plain gives it away, but it does charge for other services, namely customer support. Most of the popular distributions do request donations to keep them going.
Yes, it IS complicated, and with so many versions with such different code behind them, there is the issue of picking the one you want. I myself had a lot of trouble finally picking the one I wanted. It was between Red Hat and Mandrake for a while, but eventually due to a lot of suggestions that Mandrake is basically more designed for home users and first time users of Linux, I went with that. Now I'm experimenting (and as a result, have had to reinstall from scratch a few times already :D, it's all good), and trying to figure out how it works. There's a reason I'm doing this. It's not for the vast library of exclusive games :D, it's so I can get to understand an OS that will surely take it's place among businesses, and with my goals in life, that's kinda important. I say it'll take over simply BECAUSE of how much cheaper it is.
Anyway, so far I've found out that by using the su command, I can run install programs with root's permissions, and thus installed the updated Mozilla. Problem is, it didn't find the existing Mozilla installation, so now I have both 6 and 7 on there. If it wasn't for me being afraid of deleting something important to the KDE GUI, I'd get rid of Mozilla 6 myself.
Anyway, there's one thing that's clear. While Linux can read FAT32 partitions (and probably NTFS), XP cannot read from ext3 partitions. Oh well :D.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)