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Linux FAQ

1. What is Linux?
2. What ports to other processors are there?
3. Will Linux run on my computer? What hardware is supported?
4. Is Linux public domain? Copyrighted?
5. What newsgroups are there for Linux?
6. Where can I get Linux material by FTP?
7. What software does Linux support?
8. Can I run Microsoft Windows programs under Linux?
9. Where can I find applications?
10. Where Should I Look on the World Wide Web for Linux Stuff?
11. Where can I get the HOWTO's and other documentation?
12. How much hard disk space does Linux need?
13. Does Linux support Universal System Bus (USB) devices?

Linux is the kernel of operating systems that look like and perform as well or better than the famous operating system from AT&T Bell Labs. Linus Torvalds and a loosely knit team of volunteer hackers from across the Internet wrote (and still are writing) Linux from scratch. It has all of the features of a modern, fully fledged operating system: true multitasking, threads, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand loading, shared, copy-on-write executables, proper memory management, loadable device driver modules, video frame buffering, and TCP/IP networking.

Most people, however, refer to the operating system kernel, system software, and application software, collectively, as 'Linux,' and that convention is used in this FAQ as well.

Linux was written originally for 386/486/586-based PCs, using the hardware facilities of the 80386 processor family to implement its features. There are now many ports to other hardware platforms.

What ports to other processors are there?>

There are also Linux distributions specifically for mobile and handheld platforms. An API specification and developers kit for the Crusoe Smart Microprocessor developed by Transmeta Corporation are at http://www.transmeta.com/.

Information on the Linux distribution for the Compaq iPAQ is at http://www.handhelds.org/

Will Linux run on my computer? What hardware is supported?

A list updated weekly is at:http://lwn.net/

An archive of many of the distributions is online:http://www.tux.org/

The Linux kernel is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

There is an archive of all versions of the Linux kernel at http://www.linux.org/vendors/systems.html.

Commercial distributions have begun to appear on the shelves of many book and electronics stores in the last year, in the U.S., and they have been available in many other countries for some time. Some hardware vendors now ship systems with Linux pre-installed.

There is a very thorough installation guide on line at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/linux.html.

Some distributions can still be installed via anonymous FTP from various Linux archive sites, but in many cases, the size of the distribution makes this impractical.

There are also a large number of releases which are distributed less globally that suit special local and national needs. Many of them are archived at http://www.tux.org/

Linux supports GCC, Emacs, the X Window System, all the standard Unix utilities, TCP/IP (including SLIP and PPP), and all of the hundreds of programs that people have compiled or ported to it.

There is a DOS emulator, called DOSEMU. The Web site ishttp://www.dosemu.org.

iBCS2 (Intel Binary Compatibility Standard) emulator code for SVR4 ELF and SVR3.2 COFF binaries can be included in the kernel as a compile-time option.

First, look in the Linux Software Map. It's at:http://www.boutell.com/lsm/, and on many other FTP sites. A search engine is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.boutell.com/lsm/.

Also check out the Freshmeat Web site:http://www.freshmeat.net, which is where many new announcements of free software first appear. Freshmeat is basically a site index that continuously updates the notices of new or upgraded software for Linux, and maintains indexes of the announcements and links to their URLs.

If you don't find anything, you could download the sources to the program yourself and compile them.

About 10Mb for a very minimal installation, suitable for trying Linux, and not much else.

You can fit an installation that includes X into 80Mb. Installing Debian GNU/Linux takes 500Mb–1GB, including kernel source code, some space for user files, and spool areas.

Installing a commercial distribution that has a desktop GUI environment, commercial word processor, and front-office productivity suite, will claim 1–1.5 GB of disk space, approximately.

At least 4MB, and then you will need to use special installation procedures until the disk swap space is installed. Linux will run comfortably in 4MB of RAM, although running GUI apps is impractically slow because they need to swap out to disk.

Some applications, like StarOffice, require 32 MB of physical memory, and compiling C++ code can easily consume over 100 MB of combined physical and virtual memory.

Linux supports a few dozen USB devices at present, and work is underway to develop additional device drivers. There is a Web page devoted to the subject, at http://www.linux-usb.org/.

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