Matthew Nichols

Chapter 5 Assignment

40369

April 4, 2010

                The Linux Operating System was released in 1991, but the origin and history of this system falls even further into the past. Linux derived from a UNIX operating system. UNIX was first conceived in 1969 at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories. UNIX quickly grew and became popularly used by academic institutions and businesses. In 1983, Richard Stallman began the GNU Project with which he had the goal of creating a free and complete UNIX-compatible software system. In 1991, MINIX was an inexpensive UNIX-like operating system with which a student at the University of Helsinki, named Linus Torvalds, began to work on his own kernel due to his frustration with the licensing of MINIX which only allowed the system to be used for educational purposes. Linus Torvalds wanted a system that could be used commercially and so Linux was born.

                Linux distributions are a large family of UNIX-like software that is built on top of the Linux kernel. There are hundreds of these said distributions that are continually being updated and improved upon. Two of the more popular commercial distributions of Linux are Red Hat and Novell. Red Hat Linux 1.0 was released in 1994 and was the first Linux distribution that used RPM Package Manager as its packaging format. Red Hat Linux was the starting point for many other Linux distributions over the years. Red Hat Linux lacked many features due to copyright and patent issues and was discontinued in 2004 although still widely used. Novell’s Open Enterprise Server was released in 2005 as a platform for the delivery of level shared network services such as, file, print, directory, clustering, back-up, etc. With this system, customers had the ability to use the platform in the best interests of their needs.

                One way to download Linux distributions is to go to the Linux website. From there, they offer a form to help you ideally locate the distributions that you may be looking for based on certain criteria. The site will then lead you to a link to download the distribution that you have selected. You can also do a general search for Linux distributions on any search engine and find different distributions to download in that way. There are some different ways to install Linux. One installation method would be to burn the operating system to a disc. This would be a “Live CD” version that would run from the disc. Another way to install Linux is directly to the hard disk. If you plan to use Linux permanently, this is the suggested method. With this method, re-partitioning the hard disk is mandatory. There are also box sets to aid those with which need assistance in this process.

                Open Office is a popular office application suite available for Linux. The suite includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program. Scribus is another application available for Linux. Scribus is a desktop publishing applications used for page layouts similar to Adobe InDesign. This application is different from a word processor with highly flexible and accurate typesetting capabilities.

                One obvious advantage to using Linux over Microsoft Windows would be the cost. Linux is free while Windows can run from $50-$150 per licensing copy. Along with that, the software available with Linux carries the same comparison. Software applications are free or at a very low cost, but the availability of different programs are limited when compared to Microsoft. Microsoft is more widely used and therefore has a much larger selection of software applications when compared to Linux.