GNU/Linux - The Free Operating System

GNU/Linux (commonly referred to as just "Linux") is a free operating system formed with help from many free software projects; Linux (the Kernel) being one of these software projects. Linux can be used as both a desktop and server operating system. Linux is free to download, install and use.

What is an operating system?
Which Linux distribution?
Why use Linux?
What tips have you got?
I'm thinking of running a server

What is an operating system?

An operating system is an interface between the user and computer hardware, and allows the user to run software applications.

Popular operating systems are Apple Macintosh OS X (2001), GNU/Linux Distributions (1991) and Microsoft Windows (1985).

GNU/Linux distributions primarily consist of GNU (1983) software and the Linux kernel (1991).

Which Linux distribution?

For a beginner I always reccommend Ubuntu; I then encourage you to try other distributions. The most important thing (at least for me) is that everything works easily and that you feel comfortable.

Refer to this page for more information.

Head over to ubuntu.com and download the operating system image (a .iso file). There will be instructions to burn this to a CD or write it to a USB drive (from both Windows and Linux operating systems). You can then try Ubuntu without affecting your current operating system. If you decide to install, I recommend making sure that you have a backup of your data before attempting to resize your current partition (a feature in the Ubuntu installer) or format it completely.

Why use Linux?

• Never pay another penny for software
• Be free from software copyright and restrictions
• Easily access a software repository of over 25,000 free software packages
• Get more out of your computer with less resource-intensive applications and useful tools
• Not easily infected by viruses
• Has support for read/write NTFS (Windows) drives as well as support for many Windows and Mac file types
• Runs popular free software such as the OpenOffice suite and the Firefox web-browser
• Has good hardware support with most things working "out of the box"

What tips have you got?

It is a good idea to have a Live CD handy. A tutorial for this will appear here in the near future. A Live CD (assuming the appropriate software is installed) can be used to test your computer's RAM and hard drive, recover deleted files, recover data from a broken system, fix a broken system and diagnose problems. This tool is not only handy for Linux, but any operating system. For example it can (as well as the above) be used to recover deleted/lost files from a Windows PC and even recover Windows passwords.

It can also be used to showcase Linux to a friend on their PC without affecting what they have currently installed.

I'm thinking of running a server

If I am thinking of installing a server for a particular task, Linux is always my first choice (as apposed to Windows). It is understood that Windows may be required for a few specific tasks, but generally Linux can take on most of the workload.

• Quicker to install
• Can run alongside Windows
• No cost
• Quicker to update and install applications/services
• Easy to manage via a remote SSH session
• Best choice for a web server
• Not prone to viruses

A list of tutorials will be here in the near future for the following Linux server roles.

• DHCP Server
• DNS Server
• File Server
• Print Server
• LDAP (Active Directory) Server
• Backup Server
• E-mail Server
• Web Server