If you truly enjoy working with computers, Linux is the operating system of your dreams. It is more fun than any other computer operating system around. Linux is a computer hobbyist's paradise. However, the reason why Linux is truly revolutionary is that it is Open Software. Our science and technology work owing to the free availability of information, peer review, public critique, and the...

Linux distribution is a coherent collection of free software with the Linux kernel (operating system) at its center. To run Linux, you normally need a Linux distribution on a CD.The differences between the various Linux distributions ("distros") are minor: the installation program, choice of the bundled applications and tools, arrangement of a few things on the hard drive. Regardless of...

The RedHat Linux distribution CDs contain lots of documentation. Part of it is in html format and part in plain text format. You can read it all from under DOS or MS Windows before you install Linux. For example, a soft-copy of the RedHat manual can be viewed with any MS Windows-based html browser, e.g. Netscape for Windows or MS Internet Explorer. Just access the file...

Linux is case-sensitive. For example: myfile, Myfile, and myFILE are three different files. Your password and login name are also case-sensitive. (This follows tradition since both UNIX and the "c" programming language are case-sensitive.) Naming conventions for files and directories are identical. All the files and directories which I create (for myself, as a user) are lower-case,...

Both the newer GRUB and the older LILO are boot loaders. They make it possible for you to select the operating system to boot at the boot time. Most (all?) of the booting problems described in this section can likely be overcome by installing the most recent Linux kernel and the latest GRUB boot loader. GRUB is better than LILO because LILO relies on the absolute hard drive addresses to find the...

Linux shows all the directories in one directory tree, irrespectively of what drives/hardware they are found on. Generally, this is a much better solution than the traditional DOS/Windows model--it completely abstracts the file system from the underlying hardware. You will appreciate this if you ever have to re-arrange or expand your hardware or add network resources. But for the users who are...

Pressing the key combination <Ctrl><Alt><F1> will switch you to to the first text console at any time. <Ctrl><Alt><F2> will switch you to the second text console, <Ctrl><Alt><F3> to the third text console, etc, up to <Ctrl><Alt><F6>, for the total of 6 text consoles. <Ctrl><Alt><F7> will switch you to the...

If you are having problems with a sound card, a manual configuration is an option. Here is my setup for a SoundBlaster16-compatibile ("no name") soundcard that persistently played at half speed (too slow and with "low voice") because it was misdetected. The resource to read turned out to be: /usr/src/linux-xxx/Documentation/sound (hope you installed the kernel source code so...

This is an excellent idea. It will let you use the machines that are in your closet now because they were not powerful enough to run standalone. The benefits include sharing hard drives, zipdrives, CDROMs, modem, printers, even soundcards, running programs remotely (the text or graphics mode), browsing the Internet on all computers at the same time over one phone connection. If you ever lose...

This page contains commands (tools) which are not essential for newbies but can be fun and/or productive if you take the time to learn them. Above all, they can be very educational--linux is a great learning platform. There are thousands of free programs available on Linux, but some of them may be missing on your system, depending on your distribution. You can always find the hompage with google,...