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virtual reading room:
linux
Here you will find a collection of Linux related documents available on-line.
Most entries refer to individual documents - rather than being a list of websites (as in so-called "link pages") - so you can get to desired documents directly. Your comments & suggestions are always welcome. Enjoy!
Hint: For selected links to general websites and links pages, visit our Reference Desk .
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Linux General Archive and/or Linux Technical Archive section.
Linux is a freely distributable operating system heavily based on UNIX APIs -- in other words, it's very much like UNIX. Licensed under the GNU General Public License , its source code will always be available to anyone.
Here is a short list of well-written introductory documents answering the very basic questions concerning this nifty OS:
For those interested to know more about Linux, a good place to start is frequently asked questions (FAQs) and HOWTO documents coordinated by Linux Documentation Project LDP ). Following introductory documents are taken from LDP unless noted otherwise.
Comprehensive list of HOWTO documents can be found here (by Tim Bynum)
Introductory documents for setting up networking on Linux. Please see above for setting up networking hardwares. For more complicated setups, see Advanced Networking section.
Here's a couple of introductory documents for installing and configuring X Windows , a graphical environment under Linux:
Guides for various system administration tasks in general. Plese check out our Book Review section for several useful books on this topic.
While Linux in its strictest sense refers only to the kernel itself, it is normally associated with full-fledged system, i.e. Linux kernel bundled with wide range of freely distributable softwares, many of them from GNU Project
Linux in such packaged form is often called Linux distributions . Some distributions are created by commercial vendors, while others are maintained by a team of volunteers.
Collected below are some comparisons among various distributions, followed by reviews on individual distributions:
Distribution - General Information
Comparison of Multiple Distributions
Here are several slightly outdated comparisons, which nevertheless might give some idea concerning the flavors of each distributions:
Reviews of individual Distributions
[ Back to top
This is an attempt to collect the (ever increasing) media interviews of Linus Torvalds , the creator and chief maintainer of Linux.
PCWeek Webcast [15 Nov 99] - Keynote speech at Fall '99 Comdex as well as 5 min. exclusive interview
Linux Journal [12 Oct 99] - transcript from "Linux for Suits", by Doc Searls Recommended. Dr. Dobb's TechNetCast [June 99] : Linus' speech at USENIX 99 BOF, available in text Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 PC World
[18 June 99] Recommended. Technology News [16 June 99] - An article on Linus' remark at Bay Area Linux Users Group Fatbrain.com [May 99] Highly Recommended. Austin360.com [19 Apr 99] - A brief interview by Michael Kanell
VARBusiness
[12 Apr 99] - by L. Aragon & M.A. De Bellis
TIME [22 Mar 99] - by Peggy Salz-Trautman
LinuxWorld [12 Mar 99] - by R. McMillan & N. Mikes
PC Week [28 Jan 99] - by Scott Berinato
Computer Reseller News [7 Dec 98] - by Alison Diana
LinuxWorld [16 Oct 98] - by Robert McMillan
EE Times [27 Oct 98] - by Craig Matsumoto
TIME [26 Oct 98] - An article on Linus, by Janice Maloney
Dallas Morning News [6 Oct 98] - by Elizabeth Simnacher
ZDNN [30 Sep 98] - available only in RealVideo [you may experience bandwidth problem]
Computing World [17 Aug 98] - by Galen Gruman & David Orenstein
San Francisco Examiner [2 Aug 98] - by Rebecca Eisenberg
SunWorld [Aug 98] - by Robert McMillan. Including his thoughts on Java
c't [July 98] - by Jürgen Schmidt (translated from German)
bootNet [July 98] - Extremely enjoyable stuff
InfoWorld [8 June 98] - by Michael Vizard
crn.com [30 May 98] - Brief article by Stuart Glascock
TechWeb [7 Apr 98] available in: RealAudio
Text - by David Sims
Linux Focus [Mar 98] - by Manuel Martinez
First Monday [Vol.3 #3, 2 Mar 98] - by Rishab Ghosh
Linux Gazette [Feb 98] - by Alessandro Rubini [#32, Sep 98]
Tokyo Linux User Group [Sep 97] - by Hiro Yamagata. Recommended.
MetroActive [May 97] - by Michael Learmonth
Linux Journal [#29, Sep 96] - by Phil Hughes & Gena Shurtleff
Linux Journal [#9, Jan 95] - by Belinda Frazier
Linux Journal [#1, Mar 94] - by Robert Young
Meta [Oct 93] - A vintage email interview from ver. 0.99 era (from Linux Archive in Passauer Knoten ). Recommended.
Dare to Compare
Microsoft Myths - by Leon Brooks, a response to (and a parody of) the notorious Linux Myth page by Microsoft NT versus Linux for small-business networking - by Joyce Park, osOpinion [8 July 99]Mixed Double - Linux and NT as Web Server on the Test Bed - by Jürgen Schmidt (translation: E. Wolfram), c't [#13/99, June 99]Linux Vs. NT: Head To Head - by J. Tibbetts & B. Bernstein, CMP's TechWeb [28 June 99]
Linux 2.2 Gives NT a Run for Its Money--for Free - by Neil Randall,
PC Magazine [8 June 99]
Linux vs. NT, a counterpoint - by Paul Thurrott,
WinInfo [19 May 99]
Linux Versus NT - by Paul Boutin, HotWired [13 May 99]
Test show more than numbers - In this benchmarking test "(Linux) showed it needs improvement in several key areas." By H. Baltazar,
PC Week [10 May 99]
NOS crossroads - by Pankaj Chowdhry, PC Week [10 May 99]Latest FUD tactic may be backfiring - by Eric Raymond,
Linux Today [23 Apr 99]
Linux Love Fest ... VARs Look to Push OS Into Enterprise - a survey of 200 resellers, by S. Glascock & J. Roberts,
Computer Reseller News [18 Jan 98]
A PRNewswire Report on IDC's Server Operating Environments , NewsALERT [18 Jan 98]
Penguin Attack! ... or a tale of flightless waterfowls - for M.C.S.E. types
, by Jim Severino [Jan 98]
Linux Community Survey: Result - by WebCMO. Also:
2nd Report
Linux shipments up 212 percent - by S. Shankland,
CNET News.Com [16 Dec 98]
Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 vs UNIX
- by John Kirch [Updated: Dec 98]
Linux legitimacy rallies NT skeptics - by R. S. Raynovich & P. Sprenger, LAN Times Online [Aug 98]Linux vs NT: Engineers Speak Out
Part1 &
Part2 - by M. Shohat,
ISD [July/Aug 98]
Linux vs NT Shootout [16 June 98] - Available in
RealAudio or
Text
Replacing Windows NT Server with Linux - by Quinn Coldiron
Linux in Use
Distance learning...powered by Linux - by Liz Warren, Computer Weekly [18 Nov 99]Amused with Linux - an article on the switch to Linux by the UK government's (including the British Monarchy ) websites, from The Times [18 Oct 99]
Linux Outside the Fortune 500 ... or Is it Right for Your Small Business? - by William von Hagen, OfficeCommunity.com [Oct 99]Linux scores at Wimbledon - from developerWorks
Feeling Lucky? - an article on web-search site "Google" by Evan Leibovitch, ZDNet [23 July 99]Linux for mission-critical apps? Not so crazy - by Anne Chen, PC Week [5 July 99]
Linux Takes Flight on Northwest Simulators - by David Orenstein, ComputerWorld [24 May 99]Plugged In: Linux Showing Up In Supercomputers
- by Therese Pletti, Reuters [19 Apr 99] (from
San Jose Mercury News' SiliconValley.com )
Salon gets a full-body makeover - by Beth Lipton,
CNET News.Com [5 Apr 99]
Linux growth snowballs as big boys join the throng - by E. Cresswell, L. Mason & C. Neshevich, ComputorWorld Today
[26 Feb 99]
Viva La Revolución - an article about huge "Scholar Net" project, by E. Harrison, Computer Bits [Jan 99]
Project Heresy - Brian Cooley & Dan Shafer discuss their on-going effort to adopt Linux, a great series on
CNET Radio
Linux: Back door to the front office - what IT administrators are saying, by Scott Berinato,
PCWeek Online [13 Nov 98]
Due South with the British Antarctic Survey - by C. Donlon & J. Crawshaw, Linux Journal [#51, July 98]Grassroots Linux grows - by Sarah Varney,
InfoWorld [8 June 98]
Linux powers many area businesses - by Dana Blankenhorn,
Chicago Tribune [5 June 98]
Linux Helps Bring Titanic to Life - by Daryll Strauss,
Linux Journal [#46, Feb 98]
Linux Out of the Real World - by Sebastian Kuzminsky, a recount of Linux aboard the Space Shuttle,
Linux Journal [#39, July 97]
Linux Advocacy
Celebrating 'Linux Myths' ... or The story the trade press missed -- finally - by Nicholas Petreley of LinuxWorld [7 Oct 99]The post-FUD era has begun - by Evan Leibovitch. Another response to recent remarks by Bob Metcalfe (see below), ZDNet [2 Aug 99]The Boy Who Cried "FUD!" - by Kevin Holmes, osOpinion [19 July 99]Here's an interesting showdown between two InfoWorld
Bob Metcalfe [19 June 99] vs.
Nicholas Petreley [26 June 99]
Mindcraft Redux: On Mindcraft's April 1999 Benchmark - by Dan Kegel [Updated: 27 May 99]
What we have here is a failure to communicate... - an article concerning naming convention of Linux distributions (ie, Linux vs GNU/Linux), by Evan Leibovitch, ZDNet [20 May 99]
Stop the Mindcraft madness ... or You can't fight FUD with fact - by Nicholas Petreley of LinuxWorld [7 May 99]
ESR and the Mindcraft Fiasco - from
slashdot [23 Apr 99]
FEE, FI, FOE, FUD
- by Nathan Cochrane, Linux Today
[5 Apr 99]Dispelling the Kernel Compiling Myth - by Jean Martinez, Linux Gazette [#37, Feb 99]
Six Lies About Linux - a rebuttal against FUDs, by Aaron Hsiao of
About.com (Focus on Linux) [7 Dec 98]
The Linux FUD factor FAQ - by Roger Irwin [Nov 98]
Linux Myth Dispeller - by Kenneth Kinder
The four phases of Linux acceptance - by Evan Leibovitch,
from Xunil Pages
Towards World Domination - by Chris Tyler,
Slashdot [4 June 98]
Harnessing the Linux Labor Force - by Stan Seibert,
Slashdot [7 May 98]
Advocating Linux - by Lars Wirzenius [16 Aug 96]
Articles on Linux
Linux in Global Consulting Practices - by Tom Adelstein, Consulting Times A penguine's-eye view of Comdex - by Evan Leibovitch, ZDNet [22 Nov 99]
Can Linux Pass the CIO Test? - by Kimberly Hill,
intraware [June 99]
Is It Time for Linux - by Greg Shipley, Network Computing [31 May 99]Highly Recommended.
Training is the Next Battleground for Linux - by Amara Angelica,
TechWeek [17 May 99]
Why Linux needs help - by Andrew Leonard, Salon.com [15 Apr 99]
Linux, The Opposite of Windows - by Kim Komando, Popular Mechanics [Apr 99]Should you join the freeware revolution? - by Derek Slater,
CNN interactive [19 Mar 99]
The Big Leagues - by Aaron Hsiao of
About.com (Focus on Linux) [25 Feb 99]
The Rebel Code - by Amy Harmon, New York Times [21 Feb 99]
Onward - by Christina Dyrness. A six pages article from the perspectives of business & finance, TECHcapital [Jan/Feb 99]
Code Warriors - a decent article by Steven Levy, Newsweek [18 Jan 98]
Love That Linux - by Amy Johnson,
CIO Magazine [1 Dec 98]Linux quiets the cynics - by Kym Gilhooly,
Service News [Dec 98]
Linux Takes Off - by Martin Garvey,
Techweb [16 Nov 98]Linux: upstart OS gets some respect - an introductory article by Cormac Foster,
CNET [2 Nov 98]
Linux: All systems are go - by Dennis Howlet,
computing net [17 Sep 98]
The little operating system that could - by Andrew Leonard,
Salon.com [26 June 98]
Linux OS , in RealAudio - from NPR
[All Things Considered, 8 Apr 98]
Halloween Documents
Selected Documents on Open Source
Other Write-ups
Q&A: Tim O'Reilly - from sendmail.net
Interview with Jon "maddog" Hall - by Steve Brody, developerWorks [Oct 99]Are the Smaller Distributions a Force for Good or Bad? - by Christian Schaller, linuxpower.org [30 July 99]
Into the Belly of the Beast - A short recount on Eric Raymond's visit to Microsoft, by N. Jacobowitz & M. Dockrey
The Eric S. Raymond Interview - from Linux.com [18 May 99]
Words of a maddog
- an interview with John 'maddog' Hall by Dave Whitinger of
Linux Today [19 Apr 99]
Linux appeared on ... Dilbert!! Part I ,
Part II ( I just HAD TO include it here. :-)
LWN/Changelog interviews Alan Cox : Part I [Jan 99]
,
Part II [Apr 99]
Glory among the Geeks - by Peter Wayner, Salon.com [Jan 99]Unix redux? ... or Why Linux won't make like Unix and split - by Bob Young, LinuxWorld [28 Jan 99]
Linux and the monopoly game - by Nicholas Petreley, LinuxWorld [29 Jan 99]1998 Linux timeline
- a nicely done roundup of the year, from LWN [Dec 98]
Newsmaker: Robert F. Young
- an interview of RedHat President by David Carr,
Internet World [9 Nov 98]
Linux Anecdotes - by Lars Wirzenius
Online forum with Alan Cox - moderated by Phillip Smith, some.net [20 June 98]
Rampantly Unofficial Linus Torvalds FAQ - by Eric Raymond
The Transmeta Enigma - by Andrew Leonard,
Salon.com [May 98]
[ Back to top
General Documentation & Articles
Kernel Ver. 2.4
Kernel Ver. 2.2
The issue of standardizing Linux distributions to increase compatibility among various distributions is currently being worked out at the Linux Standard Base (LSB) .
Various vendors and organizations, including Red Hat , Caldera , Suse , Pacific HiTech Debian Project
Recently, quite a few articles on standardization issues in Linux have appeared:
Related documents of interest:
GNOME & GTK+
KDE
GUI Reviews
Key Applications
KOffice: The Killer App of 2000 - a short review of an alpha version by Arthur Johnson II, Ext2 [May 99]
Hunting for the corporate desktop
- an article on SuSE Linux Office Suite 99 by L. Grizno,
LinuxWorld [13 Nov 98]
Browsing the browsers - a comparison of 21 browsers available on Linux, by Ricardo Igarashi, Linux in Brazil Integrator - VMware 1.0: Windows with Linux - by Peter Siering (translation: E. Wolfram), c't [#14/99, July 99]Test Drive: VMware for Linux - by Geir Nielsen, 32BitsOnline [June 99]VMware runs Windows under Linux - a product review by Kevin Railsback, InfoWorld [7 June 99]WordPerfect 8 for Linux - by William Henning of CPU Review [2 Aug 99]Tux's secret obsession - Gaming under Linux - by Harald Radke, Linux Focus [Nov 99]A whole new civilization built on Linux - a review of Civilization: Call to Power by Rawn Shah, LinuxWorld [30 June 99]Penguins Play Games, Too - an interview with Loki Entertainment's Draeker, from Adrenaline Vault [12 June 99]
Linux and MP3s - by Rob Bos, 32BitsOnline [3 June 99]
Securing Linux: The First Steps - by Peter Lukas, from Linux Gazette [#47, Nov 99]Securing Linux - A nice introductory series by Michael Warfield, appearing on LinuxWorld Part 1 [28 May 99] , Part 2 [6 July 99]
Armoring Linux - an article covering the basics of securing a Linux box, by Lance Spitzner
Securing your root account with Linux - from SecurityPortal.com [7 June 99]
Security for the Home Network - by J. Pollman & Bill Mote, from Linux Gazette [#46, Oct 99]Security, Privacy, and Encryption on Linux - by Philo Vivero, linuxpower.org [July 99]Top Open-Source Security Tools for UNIX - by Nalneesh Gaur, Performance Computing [July 99]Securing your File System in Linux - from SecurityPortal.com [14 June 99]
Looking Onward
Software Development
Software Release Practice HOWTO - by Eric Raymond, from LDP
Software Building-HOWTO - by Mendel Leo Cooper, from LDP
CVS RCS HOWTO - by Alavoor Vasudevan, from LDP
GCC HOWTO - by Daniel Barlow, from LDP
Assembly HOWTO - by François-René Rideau, from LDP
A comparison of Linux integrated development environments - by Sam Mikes, LinuxWorld [22 July 99]Windows vs Linux: A programmers perspective - by Michael Wilkinson, osOpinion [2 July 99]Linux development: CLI, Emacs, or IDE? - by Joe Barr, LinuxWorld [2 June 99]Getting Started with Java on Linux - by Joe Sokolosky, LD.N Journal [July 99]A Cup of Java - With 2 Lumps of Linux - by Jeffery Cann, Unix World
Server-side Applications
A comparison of 4 databases - featuring Oracle, Informix, Mysql & Postgresql, by Mark Kirkwood
How to get Oracle up and running on your Linux box - by Uche Ogbuji, LinuxWorld [4 June 99]Oracle HOWTO - by Paul Haigh, from LDP
PostgreSQL HOWTO - by Al Dev, from LDP
Academic's Tool Grows Up - PostgreSQL - by Corey Huinker, 32BitsOnline [2 Dec 99]Ingress II HOWTO - by Pal Domokos, from LDP
Linux and Informix
- by Phil Hughes, a.k.a. "they just typed make ", from Linux Journal
All documents are from LDP
Beowulf
Beowulf is the project name of a cluster computer of Linux based workstations connected by channel bonded Ethernet, created by Don Becker & Thomas Sterling at CESDIS See also: Extreme Linux .
Miscellaneous
[ Back to top
Highly Recommended General Resources
Linux Documentation Project
- HOWTO's and other docs. Maintained by Greg Hankins
Linux.com - Launched in May 99. With enough cluefull folks on board, this site has a potential to become "the" Linux portal.
Google: Linux Search - provides a neat search facility for Linux-related pages
News Site
slashdot
- "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."
Linux Today
- "... a resource for business professionals interested in maintaining a high level of awareness"
Linux.de
- Latest news on Linux in general. [in German]
JLA News & Announces
- Latest news & announces on Linux, maintained by Japan Linux Association. [in Japanese]
Linux Dev.Net
- "... the first stop for software developers under Linux"
security-focus.com
- "Internet's latest and most complete computer security information clearinghouse"
Periodicals & Magazines
Kernel
The Linux Kernel Archive
- Definitive kernel source (ie, Linus)
KernelNotes.org
- Formerly known as LinuxHQ , this is where you go for kernel related info. Maintained by Jim Pick
Kernel Traffic - A free periodical which provides takes on some of the activities of the Linux Kernel ML.
Finding Linux Applications
Linux Webring
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Distributions |
Linus Interviews |
Comparison, Usage & Advocacy |
Kernel |
Standards |
Desktop |
Security |
More |
Books |
Reference Desk ]
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Last modified: Mon Dec 6 00:32:58 CET 1999
