FOSS: A General Introduction to Linux

The name "Linux" technically refers to an operating system "kernel", a single but key component of a complete operating system. In everyday use, the term "Linux" is frequently used to refer to a complete operating system which consists of the kernel and some of the thousands of other programs required to make an operating system useful. Much of the important system software that is typically installed on a Linux system comes from The GNU Project, a project to build an operating system made entirely of free software.

The first Linux kernel was created by Linus Torvalds. It was first released on 5 Oct 1991. It was started as an x86-only, single-processor operating system, but grew to become one of the most ported pieces of software. Other parts of a complete GNU/Linux system come from other projects such as the GNU project, and are integrated into a complete GNU/Linux OS by your supplier. Usually your supplier will assign their own version number to the integrated whole.

The GNU Project is overseen by the Free Software Foundation, founded by Richard Stallman, who believes that the people should use the term "GNU/Linux" to refer to such an operating system, because so many of the required programs were in fact, written as part of the GNU Project.

Distributions

Most Linux distributions have a special type of CD, called a live CD. If you insert this CD and then restart your computer, the live CD will run Linux on the computer while avoiding changing anything on your computer as much as possible. For example it won't normally install any files on your PC, but run only from the CD. You can give the operating system a try to see if you like it without the risk of installing anything on your hard drive. You should remember that linux typically runs very fast - if the system seems slow, it is because it is running off your CD drive, not your hard drive.

Choosing a Distro

There are dozens of different Linux distributions. Here are some ways to help you narrow down the options to a short list.

Try a distro chooser, like http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/. Often several different distributions will meet all your requirements. Your final choice from the short list may be based on whim or personal taste.

Getting Linux

Use an Existing system

The easiest way to begin using a Linux system may be to use an already running system. For example, some systems may be available in various educational or work environments. In this case you only need to contact the appropriate administrator and obtain a user ID and password. You will only be able to explore the system to a certain extent, but the first steps can be taken without having go through the installation process.

Another trouble-free way of obtaining a Linux system is to buy a computer with Linux pre-installed. The number of vendors selling such systems is constantly increasing.

Download a Linux ISO

Creating a bootable USB on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux

Creating a bootable USB on Linux (command line method)

5. Browse to the directory where you downloaded the iso with the cd command and type this command. (Assuming the iso image is ubuntu-gnome-16.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso and your drive is sdb)

6. The command will work in the background, when you return to a prompt, it will be finished.

Creating a LiveCD/DVD

A live CD/DVD is not recommended, use this procedure only if you do not have a computer that can boot from USB.

Boot From LiveCD

Live CDs don't need to be installed to your hard drive for you to use them. Instead, you simply load the Live CD into your CD-ROM drive, restart your computer and a complete running Linux system should boot up with little, if any, intervention. There are some difficulties for some distributions working with certain sets of hardware, but most systems will boot with little to no problems.

A system running a Live CD often tends to be a little slow. This is because information must be fetched from the CD-ROM (which is much slower than a hard drive) and because the Live CD must store a lot of information in memory that would normally stay on the hard disk. Don't let this fool you into thinking that Linux is a slow operating system though. Linux systems are normally very fast and reliable. If you try a Live CD, it is recommended (unless you are trying a MiniLinux) that the computer you use be a relatively recent one with a generous amount of memory (256MB or more). For most people, this should provide a trouble free way to begin to get to know Linux. Sometimes the entire Live CD can be loaded into RAM if a sufficient amount is available (say around 1GB) and this will offer excellent responsiveness.

Live CDs are a great way to test whether certain hardware is likely to be compatible with Linux. Just pop the disk into the CD-ROM drive of the system in question and reboot as described above. Most hardware problems (if there are any) should make themselves obvious during normal use.

If The Live CD Didn't Work

If your Live CD is ignored and you find yourself booting into your normal operating system, you may need to alter some settings in your BIOS. While this may sound daunting for some users, it's actually a lot easier than it sounds.

Begin by restarting your PC and when the boot process begins again you will need to strike a particular key on your keyboard. The key you need to strike will usually be displayed on the computer screen and is often the 'Del' key. Common alternatives are 'F1', 'F2', 'F10' and 'Esc'. The proper key will vary with your computers manufacturer. Once the proper key is struck your computer screen will display the 'BIOS' or 'Setup' editor. There are usually some simple instructions on the bottom of the screen, or off to one side, telling you how to navigate around the various choices and make changes. Be sure to read these before continuing, then look for something labeled 'Boot' or 'Boot order'. Using the instructions you read a moment ago, change this so that your CD-ROM is the first item in the boot order. If you think you've made a mistake, there is usually an option to 'Exit without saving changes'. If you don't see that option, holding down the 'Ctrl' and 'Alt' keys and pressing the 'Del' key should save the day. If all goes well 'Save and Exit' and your computer should boot up, checking the CD-ROM for your Live CD as it does so. If you have run a Linux Live CD and have rebooted to use your regular operating system and have arrived at a notice declaring "Missing Operating System" or "Error on System Disk", or any scary notice stopping you from loading up as normal, it is likely that the computer has "forgotten" that you normally load up from the hard drive and has started to look for your operating system in the CD Drive. To fix this, follow the instructions above accordingly to your system but instead of selecting your CD drive as the boot device, select your hard drive.

Install Linux

Here is another option that can be done right away not needing the physical CD to try it out. It can be downloaded and put onto a bootable USB stick. This is how I got mine.

Here is an article about a good distro version for anyone brand new to Linux. This feels and functions just like Win 7 and will be very easy to use right out of the box.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/mint-18-3-the-best-linux-desktop-takes-big-steps-forward/?bhid=25275353122913214062959128115956&ftag=TRE-03-10aaa6b&loc=newsletter_large_thumb_featured
https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_sylvia_cinnamon_whatsnew.php

Make folder and download the Rufus and ISO files from the next two links into it.

https://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=246 ( I downloaded my mirror file from “Linux Freedom” site )

https://rufus.akeo.ie/

Go into your folder and the Rufus is executable file that will launch the stick builder with a ISO file search. Just point it to the Mint ISO you downloaded into that same folder and it will add it to the process as it makes the stick for you.

Pull this up in another tab and read these instructions carefully step by step for the proper setting options for the Rufus program to make your stick.

https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutorial/tutorial-create-a-usb-stick-on-windows#0

Then of course you can then boot it from your Bios set up screen to try it. My PC made me power up with the stick in the port before it would see it and give me the option to use it as a boot option. Took me a bit to figure this out. lol

Oh man... Linux is everywhere and most don’t have a clue!

More…

1. Linux is not an OS, but it is the kernel, GNU Linux is the OS and it comes in several hundred flavours.

2. Linux Kernel was written by a 21 year finnish college student as a part of his hobby. Yup! His name is Linus Torvalds.

3. Torvalds created Linux based on GNU General Public License (GPL). Perhaps Torvalds would have never written his own kernel if GPL would be having it’s own kernel and driver.

4. Major part of today’s Linux kernel is written in C programming language and assembly language and only 2% of today’s kernel contains code written by Torvalds.

5. A Standard Linux Kernel of today has over 10 Million lines of code and it grows at the rate of 10% every year. About 4500 lines of codes are added and 1500 lines of code are changed everyday. Initially in 1991, Linux kernel version 0.01 was released with 10239 lines of code.

6. A guy named William Della Croce Jr. registered the name Linux and demanded royalty for using its name and mark. However he agreed to handover the trademark to Linus, later.

7. The Linux kernel’s official mascot is a penguin named Tux, abbreviation of tuxedo. The idea that Linux had a pet penguin comes from Linus Torvalds himself.

8. The first commercial distribution of GNU / Linux was Yggdrasil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil_Linux/GNU/X) and was launched in CD format in 1992. Red Hat was one of the first distributions to settle within companies and data centers in 1999.

9. Debian was one of the first GNU / Linux that was constituted and organized as a community of developers. Debian v. 4.0’s source code contains 283 million lines of code, $7.37 billion: projected cost to produce that amount of code in a commercial environment. Debian’s code base remains the foundation for other distros such as Ubuntu, Knoppix and Xandros.

10. 90% of the world’s most powerful supercomputers are using GNU/Linux. Top ten of supercomputers use Linux. 33.8% of the world runs on Linux servers compared to 7.3% running Microsoft Windows operating system.

11. Linux Torvalds has been honoured by naming an astroid after his name.

12. There are over 300 distributions GNU / Linux activities ranging from the well known Debian or Fedora distributions through governmental or educational level. And this list seems to grow with regional and personal distros being added frequently.

13. OK, Now the area of application of Linux – U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Navy Submarine Fleet, Federal Aviation Administration, Tamil Nadu for education purpose, Japan’s bullet trains, traffic control of San Francisco, the New York Stock Exchange, CERN, many air traffic control systems or control of nuclear reactors of submarines and ships, Russia, Brazil and Venezuela for interoperable management , cost efficient and technologically independence, Google, Cisco, Facebook, Twitter, Linked in, Toyota, TiVo, etc, server hosting the website of the White House (Drupal), federal government of Brazil favours Linux operating systems over all others in its PCs. Is Not Linux kernel the most widely ported operating system, running on a great variety of operating systems.

14. For those who think Linux can’t do Animation – Oscar-winning visual effects of the Titanic by James Cameron came from machines with Linux and Avatar was the last movie completely developed in 3D Applications on Linux platform using Foss Software. Exclaimed!

15. Believe it or not – In 2002, Microsoft had accumulated a $ 421 million cost of fighting the spread of Linux, according to The Register.

16. According to a study funded by the European Union, the estimated cost to redevelop the most recent kernel versions would be at $1.14 billion USD – Amazed.

17. Microsoft Windows and the Linux kernel can run simultaneously in parallel on the same machine using a software called Cooperative Linux (coLinux).

18. IBM choose Linux for what is expected to be the world’s most powerful supercomputer, Sequoia, due in 2011.

19. An unmodified version of the Linux kernel is called – “Vanilla Kernel”

20. Last year, 75% of Linux code was developed by programmers working for corporations. GOOGLE has contributed about 1.1% of the code in the current Linux kernel.

21. Linux has a strong following in Smart Phones – Palm’s WebOS, Google’s Android and Nokia’s Maemo smart phone operating systems are built on top of the Linux kernel.

22. Android’s Operating System is based off of Linux. The operating system is primarily based off of Linux kernel and Google has made several changes to make it go above and beyond the original basis of Linux kernel. The first Android Smart phone was launched by HTC! Though Samsung has captured much of the Android smart phone sector with its Galaxy series of devices.

23. Google names the code names of Android versions in alphabetical order. These names are not random but names of desserts. Can you guess the next versions of Android now? Android 5.0 K………..?!, Android 6.0 L………….?!!

24. Android mascot was stolen! Google didn’t originally create that mascot. The mascot was adopted from a character named Android! from a game called Gauntlet.

25. As of January 2010, Linux still only has a 1.02% market share within desktops.

More...

1. The New York Stock Exchange.

2. The Department of Defense of the US also uses Linux extensively. The Red Hat Linux runs the nuclear submarines of the State.

3. Scientific Linux controls the particle accelerator at CERN and all the computers associated with it.

4. The Federal Aeronautics Administration- FAA, NASA, Space X and JPL- Jet Propulsion Labratories.

5. The bullet trains in Japan use Linux to maintain and manage the sophisticated Automatic Train Control system.

6. The In-Vehicle-Infotainment technology (IVI) inside Toyota and other automobiles use Linux platform.

7. Out of the top 500 fastest supercomputers of the world, Linux or its variants power 498 of those.

8. Smartphones (Android, Maemo) are built on Linux kernel.

9. Linux has a special place in Hollywood as well. Visual effects of Titanic and Avatar were developed in 3D applications on Linux platform using FOSS software.

10. Linux is favored by the tech giants as well. For the web and cloud services, Linux is the first choice for Google, Amazon and Facebook.

11. Just about all webservers are now using linux/apache.

12. Spacewatch, a research group of Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, named several asteroids (9793 Torvalds, 9882 Stallman, 9885 Linux and 9965 GNU) after GNU/Linux and their creators, in recognition of the free operating system which was instrumental in their asteroid survey activities.

13. Tamil Nadu educational software.

14. Traffic control of San Francisco.

15. Google, Goobuntu is based on the normal ubuntu versions, but is used by internal employees of Google. Its not currently available for general public.

16. The website of the White House.

17. North Korea’s whole state internet infrastructure. (obviously without the very secure linux kernel we use).

18. Many computer games are written on Linux, then ported to Windows, Mac or whatever console they are going to.

19. Linux runs many firmware TiVo and similar DVR devices, network routers, facility automation controls, televisions and smartwatches.

20. AND MICROSOFT it’s self like you say!

From the article I posted in post # 9, this thread:

Why is Microsoft joining the move to Linux?

As Russinovich said years ago, when Microsoft started its turn toward open-source software and Linux, it's being done because it's a "practical business decision."
And that's because, as Microsoft CTO of Data Raghu Ramakrishnan recently explained, "We meet customers where they are, and in particular if you want Linux we'll give you Linux; if you want MySQL, well we'll give you MySQL; you want NoSQL well we'll give you NoSQL -- that means you need to be part of open source; open source by nature is a community thing."
Guthrie expanded:
"It started more than 10 years ago when we open-sourced ASP.NET. We recognized open source is something that every developer can benefit from. It's not nice, it's essential. It's not just code, it's community. We don't just throw code on a website, now we publish our roadmap and work with outside contributors."
For example, Guthrie added:
"There are now more than 20,000 Microsoft employees on GitHub. We now have over 200 open-source projects. We're now the largest open-source project supporter in the world."
That's a long way from former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who said, "Linux is a cancer." But even Ballmer, who's departed Microsoft's helm five years ago, now said he loves Linux.

And yup, last year at Microsoft Ignite, I picked up a handful of Microsoft loves Linux stickers shaped like hearts. I'd send you one if I had any left (gave them all out except one on my Surface lid!).

Here's a little helpful utility for Linux users. It will find duplicate files for you, and put the results into an editable file that you can then use to delete any of those duplicates that you want to delete. This can be really helpful with photos especially. I've noticed that over time, unless you are very careful, you end up with lots of duplication of images. The following is the script. Save it as "dedup.sh" and make it executable with "chmod 755 dedup.sh"

#!/bin/sh

OUTF=rem-duplicates.sh;

echo "#! /bin/sh" > $OUTF;

find "$@" -type f -print0 | \
    xargs -0 -n1 md5sum | \
    sort --key=1,32 | \
    uniq -w 32 -d --all-repeated=separate | \
    sed -r 's/^[0-9a-f]*( )*//;s/([^a-zA-Z0-9./_-])/\\\1/g;s/(.+)/#rm \1/' >> $OUTF;

chmod a+x $OUTF; ls -l $OUTF

If you execute this from your home directory, you will end up with a file in that directory called "rem-duplicates.sh"

If you have no duplicate files it will be pretty much empty. If you do have some dups, you'll see something like this...

#rm ./books/BAEN/Linux_Journal/LJArchive/LJ/267/12046f9.jpg
#rm ./books/BAEN/Linux_Journal/LJArchive/LJ/268/12046f9.jpg

#rm ./books/BAEN/Linux_Journal/LJArchive/LJ/086/4682aa.jpg
#rm ./books/BAEN/Linux_Journal/LJArchive/LJ/087/4730aa.jpg
#rm ./books/BAEN/Linux_Journal/LJArchive/LJ/088/4795aa.jpg

So, what you have is essentially a generated shell script. In a bash shell script, anything to the right of a "#" is ignored as a comment. If I wanted to, I could delete the "#" from the front of line 1, 5 and 6, and save the file. If I then ran the resulting script, the filenames that I'd deleted the "#" from would be deleted with no fuss and no muss. Any line that I'd left the "#" in front of would be ignored.

Note that this dedupifier doesn't look at filenames, or access/modify dates. It is actually looking at a checksum of the file data itself. As such, it is pretty good, though if you have a lot of data and/or files, running the 'dedup.sh' program can take a long time to finish looking at your files.

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