Linux: From awk to sed

Apache

A free hobbyist web server program that has gained widespread adoption within the Linux community (although not outside of it). It is useful for small websites serving static content, but its lack of scalability means that it cannot be considered as a true enterprise solution for mission critical platforms.

awk

A program designed to manipulate text data in various ways, now superceded by Pearl.

Bash

Another name for the Linux shell. Comes from an old MIT hacker joke about wanting to bash the terminal as it was so difficult to use. Unfortunately, it hasn't improved much since.

BSD License

Like the GNU Public License, the BSD license is a software license designed for open source software. Unlike the GPL it does not contain any viral provisions - it simply states that you are allowed to use the source code in any manner you wish and disclaims any liability for use of the code. The name comes from the FreeBSD distro which uses this license.

C/C++

C is one of the first programming languages developed, taking a lot of ideas from Pascal and improving them. It is a general-purpose functional language and has been used to write the majority of software available today, as well as both the Linux and Windows operating systems. Today however C has been superceded by C++, an object-orientated (OO) extension to C which enables advanced OO functionality to be included in your software, and the use of C itself is generally limited to maintenance of older packages.

Compiler

A program that takes source code written in a particular language and turns it into an executable that can be run by the user.

cron

cron is a program that acts much like Window's Scheduled Tasks folder - it has a list of programs to start at different times. Programs started in this manner are often called "daemons".

CVS

CVS (Code Versioning System) is a Linux program based on older programs like PVCS and SourceSafe which has recently become popular in certain areas of the Linux programming community. Its purpose is to allow multiple versions of the source code for a program to be kept on disk.

Daemon

An executable program started by the cron program.

Distro

This is a contraction of "distribution," and refers to a specific company's version of Linux. Each distro has it's own set of tools and software, and it's own method of configuring the Linux filesystem. The choice of distro is very important when installing Linux, as due to filesystem configuration issues some software will be incompatible with certain distros!

Some of the more popular distros are:

Mandrake - an attempt to make a version of Linux as Windows-like as possible. More suited to the novice than any of the other distros as it comes preconfigured to handle most desktop tasks, however there have been reports of buggy installation routines trashing people's hard drives.
Red Hat - this distro is aimed at the corporate user, and comes with a good support package and proper liability. Out of all of the Linux distros this is the only one that stands a chance of still being in five years time thanks to their corporate focus.
Debian - Debian is an ideological distro, and as such should be treated very carefully by the novice user. It exists solely to provide a platform for the GNU/Linux philosophy of open source and as such excludes the majority of the more useful applications required to use Linux in a productive fashion. It also suffers from the burden of being maintained by people who are both rude and intolerant - don't expect any help for the novice here!
FreeBSD - this distro is designed as a server platform and by all accounts does this very well, although its extremely nonstandard configuration hinders its use as a desktop platform. Its users are very antagonistic about other Linux distros, but they can provide help for the novice and unlike most distributions there is a reasonable amount of documentation, even if it is somewhat technical.

Emacs

An all-in-one text editor written by RMS, this huge program attempts to do everything, from text editing to email to browsing the web to organising your folders. As such it is loaded with features, but requires a comprehensive knowledge of the arcane language List to use many of them, and the software takes up a staggering amount of RAM - comparible to MS Word for instance!

Eric S. Raymond

Once a member of the Free Software Foundation with Richard Stallmann, Eric S. Raymond (also known as ESR) split from that group over ideological differences. As a staunch Republican ESR argued that open source software was not incompatible with the interests of big business and that they should take corporate interests into account. However RMS's Communist leanings wouldn't let him accept the truth of this position, and ESR was forced out of the group. Since then he has written several books suitable for introducing the concept of open source to the corporate world, and pushed Linux as a worthwhile corporate solution.

Executable

A program for Linux - what would under windows be a .exe file. Unfortunately Linux doesn't use extensions as a means of identifying files, so determining which files are programs can often be quite hard.

ext2

ext2 is the name of the file system that Linux uses, similar to the FAT system used by Windows. Although ext2 is more efficient than FAT in reading and writing files, in the event of a system crash it is extremely vulnerable to corruption (due to its lack of advanced journalling functionality compared to modern file systems like FAT), which is why good Linux administrators make system backups so often.

Free Software

c.f. Open Source.

Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation is a group dedicated to pushing the idea that all software should be open sourced, and in pursuit of this aim they engage in legal proceedings against people or companies they suspect of having broken the terms of the GPL and encourage programmers to give them the copyrights of their code, ostensibly to allow them to better "protect" it against... well I'm not sure.

GNOME

GNOME is a window manager for Linux. It started several years ago following a vitriolic attack on the KDE project by RMS, who claimed that KDE failed to meet his definition of free, despite it being licensed under the GPL as anyone can check for themselves. The upshot was the formation of the GNOME project to create a rival window manager. GNOME itself is now fairly usable, although it lacks the maturity of even KDE, and is said to be notoriously difficult to develop under, which may explain the lack of decent applications for it.

GPL

The GPL (which stands for GNU Public License) is a software license similar to the EULA (End User License Agreement) that you are bound by when purchasing off-the-shelf software. However unlike most commercial licenses, the aim of the GPL is to ensure the spread of open source software rather than prevent the user from pirating the software. It achieves this through a viral clause which states that whenever the software is given to anyone else, they must receive the source code as well or be in violation of the license. In addition, anyone modifying this code, or including it in another program, must also use the GPL. In this manner, the GPL "encourages" people to share the source code of programs through the threat of legal action. However, it must be noted that the GPL is still untested legally, and that it may be nothing more than a house of cards that will topple as soon as it faces a legal challenge.

grep

A program which allows a user to search for words in a file.

KDE

Like X windows, KDE is a window manager originally programmed in Germany, as evidenced in the names of software like Konqueror, but now developed across the world. The aim of KDE was to take the functionality and ease of use of the Windows desktop and replicate it under Linux, and in many ways it has been a success - usability tests repeatedly indicated that new users were more comfortable with KDE than any of the other desktops. However it still suffers from inconsistency across different parts of the interface and different applications, and has a very annoying dependancy to lock up entirely on occasion.

Kernal

The kernal is the core part of the Linux operating system, and includes everything required to run software such as the file system and GUI.

Konqueror

Konqueror is the web browser for the KDE window manager. It is small and fast, and integrates solidly with KDE in much the same manner IE does with Windows, making it ideal for new Linux users. Konqueror is one of the few pieces of Linux software that compares well with their Windows equivalents, and I hope it continues in the same vein, avoiding the vast mistakes of the Mozilla browser project.

Lunis Torrvaldez

Vaunted "creator" of the Linux operating system, this Soviet hacker took a well-respected academic's toy Unix and repackaged it as his own creation, naming it after himself in a fit of narcissism. Since then he has led programming efforts on the Linux kernal, although his lack of exposure to modern tools such as debuggers and versioning systems has made the process torturous and slow. Matters have not been helped by his shameless leveraging of his position as Linux's "creator" to obtain cushy jobs in America where he does little other than attract investment from Linux zealots for doomed dot-coms.

Minix

The original operating system which Lunis Torrvaldez took and changed to make Linux. Minix was a toy version of Unix written by Andrew Tanembaum in order to illustrate a few basic points of operating system principles, and as such lacked the necessary complexity and underlying architecture required to implement a full multitasking, multiuser operating system, and these flaws have led to serious problems with the Linux kernal such as it not having a modern virtual memory system until very recently.

Mozilla

Mozilla is the name given to the rewrite of the old Netscape Navigator web browser which is now defunct. The project was started under AOL's auspices to free them from their use of Internet Explorer, and AOL recently released a version of Mozilla under the name Netscape 6. While Mozilla is currently in a usable state, it unfortunately retains many of the flaws the Netscape codebase suffered from, and has added new ones in its attempt to be all things to all men. Until recently it has been the only browser Linux users have been able to use to view the web, but now it has a serious competitor in Konqueror, which has avoided the poor performance and stability issues that have dogged Mozilla.

M$, Micro$oft, Micro$haft Winblows, etc.

Childish insults hurled by Linux zealots at a company that has achieved market dominance through a combination of good business practice, cunning marketing and knowing what their customers want. While it may seem that these insults are being hurled by 15-year old children, it is often surprising to find out that some of these people are older than you are, and are supposedly computer "professionals"!

MySQL

The only non-commercial database available for Linux, MySQL originally started as an interface to a set of data files and was then crudely extended to try and become a full relational database, with only limited success. Although at first glance it looks impressive, a closer inspection shows that it lacks almost any of the features that make up a relational database, and performance problems continue to dog it when under heavy load. Critical missing features mean that it cannot be considered for any application where data loss matters, which is basically everything apart from personal websites.

Open source

A philosophy which states that all software should come with the source code so that users can see how the program is written, and can thus modify it if they wish to. Software which doesn't come with the source code is referred to as being "proprietary." This concept was envisioned by Richard Stallmann, director of the FSF, and later also championed by Eric Raymond, who attempted to put a business-friendly spin on the concept.

Pearl

Pearl is one of the more popular programming languages available under Linux, primarily because for a long time it was about the only alternative to C/C++. Designed by Larry Wall, a "linguist" (received an M.A. degree 20+ years ago, but as far as we can ascertain, has no actual published work in linguistics), it avoids the trend of making programming languages easier to use in favour of "natural language" constructs which make it resemble assembler more than anything else and almost impossible to learn and just goes to show why programming languages should be designed by people that actually have programming experience. Unfortunately, because Perl is only available under Linux it has attracted a hardcore of fanatic supporters who will defend it at great length even when its flaws (and there are many) are obvious.

PostgreSQL

Postgres is the second most popular database available under Linux, behind MySQL. Unlike MySQL, Postgres is a fully-featured relational database management system that supports much of the advanced functionality offered by industry standard databases such as Oracle and SQL Server, and unlike MySQL is isn't free, but available for a small charge from several vendors. Again unlike MySQL development has been rapid with progress in both features and performance being made over the last few years, but it still lakes some of the critical features which make Oracle and SQL Server the choice for truly mission-critical enterprise solutions.

Programming languages

A programming language is a particular set of source code instructions for making programs. There are hundreds of different languages in use today and each has their own ways of doing things and are generally used for different tasks. Unfortunately popular languages like Visual Basic and VC++ aren't available under Linux, and support for others such as Java is patchy, although unsurprisingly Linux zealots attack these as being inferior. Common languages used under Linux are C, C++, Python and Perl.

Python

Developed by Guido Von Rossum to replace Perl, Python is a simple language that is capable of many things thanks to its extensive library of third-party code. In the last five years it has rapidly gained in popularity thanks to many disaffected Perl programmers switching over to Python, and this trend looks set to continue. In general Python is much easier to code in than Perl and is far easier to maintain, meaning that money can be saved across the entire product lifecycle. However the one disadvantage it has against Perl is that because it isn't compiled it suffers from a performance hit, making it unsuitable for writing high-performance software.

Richard Stallmann

Richard Stallmann (often referred to as RMS, although this seems to be an affectation based on the vast number of three-letter acronyms in computing) is one of the founders and director of the Free Software Foundation, and is a tireless proponent of open source. At one point he used to be a programmer, writing software such as Emacs (a text editor) and some of the GNU/Linux tools used by Debian and other free distros. Nowadays he does nothing other than give speeches about open source software, and attack projects which don't follow his ideology, such as KDE or glibc.

Root

root (lowercase "r") is the name of the administrator account under Linux, the sole account that can configure much of the operating system and access hidden system files. While this means that users cannot delete important system files it suffers from a serious lack in a real-world environment - with only one possible administrator account you can only have one person administrating the system, and in a large multi-user environment this limits Linux's usability.

Samba

A program which allows you to access files under Linux from Windows. Often used by small companies which cannot afford a proper Microsoft server to go with their desktop machines.

sed

A program designed to manipulate streams of binary data such as pictures.

Shell

A shell is the name that system administrators give to the command prompt that comes with Linux. Whereas under Windows use of a command prompt isn't necessary thanks to Microsoft's efforts to open up computing to everyone, under Linux the command prompt is vital - many important utilities lack graphical versions, a sure sign of Linux's fragmented development plan.

Shell scripts

Shell scripts are files which contain commands which are run by the Linux shell. In a very similar fashion to VB script (.vbs) files under Windows, shell scripts are often used by hackers to spread viruses via email. Unfortunately, as shell scripts are far more widespread in the Linux world than under Windows, disabling them is not an option, making Linux machines more vulnerable to hacking by default.

Slashdot

Slashdot (charmingly referred to as "/." by its users) is the busiest and longest-running site for Linux users on the web today. The weblog format of this site means that users can post their own comments to the various stories the editors post, and this results in a free-for-all that sometimes produces gems of information, but mainly results in vitriol, abuse and outright lies by Linux zealots. During my investigation I attempted to mine the site for Linux information "from the horse's mouth" but received nothing but flamewars and mailbombings from 15 year-old Linux users with no social life or skills.

Source code

The raw instructions which computer programmers create programs. These are written in a programming language and then compiled to create an executable.

Swap

Like Windows, Linux can use a hard disk drive as extra memory. However unlike Windows Linux cannot simply allocate space on an existing drive to use, it must have it's own special "swap" area on its own hard drive, which cannot be changed once you have installed Linux. Additionally, due to design problems caused by the underlying Minix architecture, until recently there was no full virtual memory system and Linux relied on an archaic and inefficient paging scheme.

Vi

A very early text editor for Linux which has unfortunately remained popular with elitist ubergeeks who feel comfortable with its arcane syntax and modal editing. For everyone else, avoid like the plague.

Virtual memory

A modern operating system technique in which space on a hard drive is used as extra RAM, allowing users to run more programs than they otherwise could. Linux now has a full virtual memory system in version 2.4.10, but previously it used an antiquated swapping system based upon old Minix code. However, the virtual memory code is still very much in alpha, and should not be used in a production environment.

Window managers

Because of Linux's origins as a text-based operating system and the opposition of its designers to graphical user interfaces there is no standard GUI system available for Linux. Instead there are several different programs, called window managers, which implement a graphical user interface in their own manner, and GUI software is written for a specific window manager and is incompatible with the others. The more common window managers are X windows, KDE and GNOME, and all share a common flaw in that programmers (especially arrogant Linux zealots) have no idea about user interfaces, and so their window managers look like children's toys and have all the usuability of a wet paper bag.

WINE

Since Linux suffers from a vast lack of useful applications the WINE project was started to provide a way of running Windows applications under Linux. Despite several years of trying barely half of Windows programs work under WINE as we speak, and the ones that do tend to be the smaller, less useful applications.

X windows

X windows is the original window manager for Linux, based on an older design used on commercial Unixes. While it is free to use it lacks any but the most basic of GUI functionality, and has largely been superceded by KDE and GNOME.

Zealot

A Linux zealot (or alternatively an open source zealot) is one of the many people for whom their choice of operating system or software license has moved beyond practical considerations into an ideology. Most of these people practically worship Richard Stallmann, who exemplifies the zealot with his wild-eyed stare and Biblical prophet look and odor (trust me, I've smelt it!). These are the people that will flame you at even the slightest suggestion that alternatives might be possible, even when they are blatently wrong. The sad thing (for Linux that is!) is that if these people spent even a tenth as much time contributing to Linux as they did attacking Micro$oft, it might already be a truly enterprise-ready operating system that could displace Windows as the choice for tech-savvy professionals.

	o (none / 0) (#11)
	by tkatchev on Mon Feb 11th, 2002 at 12:26:31 PM PST

	:) -- Peace and much love...

	good article (none / 0) (#12)
	by PotatoError on Mon Feb 11th, 2002 at 12:30:40 PM PST

	yea for once an article which speaks mainly truth - the only parts I disagree on are mainly with some of the authors opinion but this is ok. But all the factual stuff here is generally correct. There was no "A compiler is a hacker tool invented to kill people" and no "Apache is an illegal server used by hackers". A welcome change. When describing KDE.... "However it still suffers from inconsistency across different parts of the interface and different applications, and has a very annoying dependancy to lock up entirely on occasion." ...You could have also been describing Windows :) Ive never seen a blue screen in Linux :) <<JUMP! POGO POGO POGO BOUNCE! POGO POGO POGO>>

	Blue screens (5.00 / 1) (#14)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Feb 11th, 2002 at 12:45:00 PM PST

	No blue screens in KDE. You just sit there, and wait, and wait, and wait, wondering what the hell your machine is doing, or not doing, as so often occurs. I hate blue screens, but at least they tell me I'm pooched.

	enter the holy command line (1.00 / 1) (#23)
	by budlite on Mon Feb 11th, 2002 at 03:39:49 PM PST

	"ps -ax \| grep <processname>" and "killall <processname>" (or "kill -9 <pid>") are really superbly useful when things go wrong...

	Holy secret NVIDIA drivers Batman! (5.00 / 1) (#43)
	by Anonymous Reader on Tue Feb 12th, 2002 at 02:40:01 AM PST

	"ps -ax \| grep <processname>" and "killall <processname>" (or "kill -9 <pid>") are really superbly useful when things go wrong... You have no idea how much I would love to be able to type that when my machine locks up solid...

	Still a chance. (none / 0) (#47)
	by The Mad Scientist on Tue Feb 12th, 2002 at 05:31:46 AM PST

	You have no idea how much I would love to be able to type that when my machine locks up solid... Maybe Xs just decided to lock your console. A solution is simple - do without. Take another machine, ssh or telnet to the locked one, kill the process in question. Another chance is to use a VT52 terminal connected to the serial port; a Nokia Communicator cellphone with (I think) bterm will do, any old (can be very old) laptop with terminal emulator is even better. Good old terminals. Why do I have to live in the world where the mouses are getting better each year but the keyboards are made more and more crappy...

	Er, pal... (none / 0) (#56)
	by Anonymous Reader on Tue Feb 12th, 2002 at 07:19:04 AM PST

	We're talking about the entire machine freezing up. I have a SSH connection over ethernet. I have a serial port console. I have the magic SysRq key turned on. They're all dead. It's STILL FROZEN. The Amiga, in the same case as the PC, is still running. It doesn't need drivers for its display, mouse or keyboard, so it actually works and doesn't freeze up all the time. `ping`ing the PC end of the ethernet umbilical cord simply times out. TCP/IP on the PC is dead. I open Term, the finest terminal emulator known to man. There's no response from the serial console that I lovingly configured into the kernel. I paid good money for a null modem cable with a DB25 connector on one end and a DB9 connector on the other, just for these sort of occasions. Connecting to the SSH server on the PC end with AmTelnet simply times out. Pressing Alt-SysRq-K does nothing. Holding down Alt-SysRq-O does nothing. In my machine's normal operation, Alt-SysRq-O really would turn the machine off. I configured that in deliberately, too. My machine is locked up solid. Do you understand what that means? There have been occasions when the mouse or keyboard have stopped working (usually because they've come out of the socket), but I simply grab the Amiga's keyboard, turn on the TV, and make a SSH connection into the PC. One `su root` and `/etc/init.d/gdm restart` later, everyone's happy. However, when the evil NVIDIA drivers of doom lock up my machine, they really do lock it up. Perhaps you'll believe me, next time!

	Arrrrrrrrrrgh! (none / 0) (#61)
	by The Mad Scientist on Tue Feb 12th, 2002 at 08:42:45 AM PST

	We're talking about the entire machine freezing up. I have a SSH connection over ethernet. I have a serial port console. I have the magic SysRq key turned on. They're all dead. It's STILL FROZEN. Arrrrrrgh! Sorry, thought it's less cataclysmatical sort of crash. Looks like it goes right to the hardware. There have been occasions when the mouse or keyboard have stopped working (usually because they've come out of the socket), but I simply grab the Amiga's keyboard, turn on the TV, and make a SSH connection into the PC. Exactly what I was suggesting. So now I see it wouldn't help. Eww... However, when the evil NVIDIA drivers of doom lock up my machine, they really do lock it up. Oh, the virtues of closed-source proprietary drivers. Perhaps you'll believe me, next time! Hey! I believe you!

	I knew this was coming: (none / 0) (#65)
	by elenchos on Tue Feb 12th, 2002 at 11:04:14 AM PST

	Oh, the virtues of closed-source proprietary drivers L... ...F... ...T!!!!!!!!!! Woo hoo! Why not just get a computer that works? I do, I do, I do --Bikini Kill

	Heh. (none / 0) (#70)
	by The Mad Scientist on Tue Feb 12th, 2002 at 03:21:59 PM PST

	L... ...F... ...T!!!!!!!!!! Woo hoo! Hey - give me source and I'll stop bitchin'. Or at least gimme the specs. Why the hell a hardware manufacturer has to keep the art of talking with their hardware a secret??? Do they have anything to hide? Regarding hardware and specs - when you have full specs, you can do all sorts of black magic; once I assisted in a project whose part was a custom device. Its core was a microcontroller and one of its interfaces was an off-the-shelf ISA VGA card, whose signals were driven by the microcontroller itself - together with a monitor it came out cheaper than a necessary LCD display. (Good old ISA - PCI has too many various signals and too high speed and is harder to play with on this level. Reminds me I should learn USB interfacing... sigh) Was cheaper and faster than designing an entire display output from scratch. This sort of magic would be impossible if the complete card's specs wouldn't be available... Why not just get a computer that works [link to Apple]? Price? Compatibility? Special hardware like electronics development tools - chip readers/writers, later a digital 'scope card, that don't have Mac support? Lack of specs (together my paranoia about devices whose function I don't understand to the lowest level)? No el-cheapo parts to play with? No userbase here, no friends I could ask for help when in troubles (and I somehow can't believe they are trouble-free, having seen too much of electronics already)? Not knowing about any place around here where any Mac-related experience would be useful? Maybe they're good machines. But until they'll become more common - or I'll decide to do professional graphics, which is about as probable - I will not care much about 'em.

	The Cost-Effectiveness of Killing: An Overview of (none / 0) (#90)
	by Anonymous Reader on Wed Feb 13th, 2002 at 12:24:38 PM PST

	The Cost-Effectiveness of Killing: An Overview of Nazi "Euthanasia" http://www.haciendapub.com/article21.html

	Well... (none / 0) (#91)
	by The Mad Scientist on Wed Feb 13th, 2002 at 12:32:43 PM PST

	Please list for us the various levels of effectiveness possible when something is killed. The first known-to-me large-scale application of electronic computers was calculation of tables for artillery fire. With more accurate tables, more accurate fire was possible. With more accurate fire, less shells were spent to achieve the same amount of kills, thus it was more effective. Generally, there are various parameters regarding the effectivity of killing, and various classes of weapons, optimized for these parameters. A sniper rifle, optimized for long distance, high accuracy, and single targets. A machine gun, optimized for shorter distance, less accurate and allowing more targets in short timespan. A neutron bomb, optimized for distance attack, minimal damages on installations, and maximum kills. A rock, whose advantage lies mainly in affordability; its effectivity can be greatly increased by a slingshot...

	Satanic (3.00 / 2) (#15)
	by walwyn on Mon Feb 11th, 2002 at 12:58:57 PM PST

	The author is misinformed concerning the antecedence of 'bash'. This is an acronym joke for the 'Bourne Again SHell' and displays the heathen nature of the system.

	it's "perl", btw (1.00 / 2) (#18)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Feb 11th, 2002 at 02:18:57 PM PST

	...Pathologicall Eclectic Rubbish Lister

	Gimmie gimmie gimme (none / 0) (#71)
	by elenchos on Tue Feb 12th, 2002 at 03:45:22 PM PST

	In a free country, no one has to give you anything for free, Comrade. All of this wonderful technology was created by capitalism, and we aren't about to throw that all away now and revert to your "to each according to his need" system. If that works so good, why not use a Soviet computer? They come pretty cheap, I'm told. So source code is shared or not shared as a business decision, not because it is the Mad Scientist's birthday and he can have his wish. Nor because private property was abolished. So if hardware manufacturers decide to give free beer to Lunixists, it will be because there is profit in doing so, not because they are under some obligation to help make Lunix work. Go on working with your el-cheapo parts and go on shaking your fist at companies that don't give away what you need to get your cheap toy working. Go on wondering why they don't give you everything you want for free. No one else is confused as to why they aren't wasting their money helping you, and if you are confused, well, sorry. Hey... why are you even asking? I thought you hackers just steal eveything you want? I do, I do, I do --Bikini Kill

	...what I have the right for. (none / 0) (#77)
	by The Mad Scientist on Wed Feb 13th, 2002 at 02:25:37 AM PST

	All of this wonderful technology was created by capitalism, All od this wonderful technology was created by military. Yes, the original purpose of computers was to make killing more effective and more accurate. and we aren't about to throw that all away now and revert to your "to each according to his need" system. Better than heartless money-driven one. I remember that before the Revolution people still had time for their families. And if you wanted a scientific book, the Russian ones were perfect; one-stop source for all data you needed, everything compiled together with no "copyrights" limiting access. But this apparently had to be destroyed... If that works so good, why not use a Soviet computer? They come pretty cheap, I'm told. Cheap and hard to come by. And if built from MILSPEC parts, pretty damn reliable. I still have skeletons of some Russian technology here; fitted with Taiwanese boards, but the chassis and the power supplies and in some cases the interface boards are original. 20+ years in service. So source code is shared or not shared as a business decision, not because it is the Mad Scientist's birthday and he can have his wish. Nor because private property was abolished. Property? When I checked last time, it was technically impossible to own an idea. It's like to own an air, or to own the sky. But this is apparently a conflict between cultures. Maybe even a "cultural cold war". So if hardware manufacturers decide to give free beer to Lunixists, it will be because there is profit in doing so, not because they are under some obligation to help make Lunix work. Opening specs is the cheapest way to get drivers ported to all the architectures where they are necessary, without additional costs. There are people that are willing to spend weeks of their own time if they get desperate enough. I prefer to sit and code over crawling the wall because I have a problem and don't have the specs to solve it. Go on working with your el-cheapo parts and go on shaking your fist at companies that don't give away what you need to get your cheap toy working. There is better thing to wave than the fist: the debuggers and disassemblers. But it's a time consuming hassle. In the case of NVidia not important enough to be done as alternatives are in place. Go on wondering why they don't give you everything you want for free. No one else is confused as to why they aren't wasting their money helping you, and if you are confused, well, sorry. I don't want them to waste their money. I want them to give out the registry and addressing descriptions for the boards they are making. Ie, I want a digital oscilloscope card. I am not asking for complete Linux support for it - what I want is the descs how to set up the data capture modes, the rest I'll write on my own. Maybe I'll have to contact a friend, the one that built a device for complete I/O monitoring for computer interface cards, and just tear the specs out myself. Hey... why are you even asking? I thought you hackers just steal eveything you want? Because it's easier to ask before. The process of liberating the specifications is tedious and time-consuming (though efforts are underway to bring together visualisation systems for chemistry and molecular biology together with the disassemblers, thus dramatically lowering the time requirements for gaining orientation in unknown complex systems). If there's no alternative, it will be done. DVD players are a good example. The demand brings the supply. If you worry if a proposed solution is legal, your problem apparently isn't too serious.

	Please (none / 0) (#81)
	by Anonymous Reader on Wed Feb 13th, 2002 at 06:52:29 AM PST

	was to make killing more effective Please list for us the various levels of effectiveness possible when something is killed.

	Wrong (none / 0) (#106)
	by Anonymous Reader on Thu Feb 14th, 2002 at 02:32:39 PM PST

	Your comment, and the one above it, does not answer the question. You wrote: All od this wonderful technology was created by military. Yes, the original purpose of computers was to make killing more effective and more accurate. In response, I asked: Please list for us the various levels of effectiveness possible when something is killed. I did not ask about anything at all about the method or the weapon to be used for the killing, only about the effectiveness of the killing itself. What I would like for you to do is show me an example of when something was killed less than effectively. You will need to show that an organism was killed, but not completely, I suppose. Or that it was killed but continued to move about, ot something like that. In the first example you gave you mentioned the use of computers to calculate changes in the position of a gun. The speed with which the changes could be calculated was improved by the application of technology but that only improved the gun itself. The killing that it did was still at the same level of effectiveness, the people who dies before a computer was used were just as dead as those who died after. This question is particularly interesting to me as I have been doing extensive research with predators. If asked to name the worlds greatest predator people will mention loins, sharks, cheetahs, even human beings. Their preceptions of a 'great predator' often typically have quite a bit to do with the amount of violence imparted to the victim of the killing, or the athletic prowess the animal shows during the attack. I was just wondering if you were following a similar vein in thinking that the military had adpoted new technology that made it some wonderful predatory machine.

	Wordplays. (none / 0) (#107)
	by The Mad Scientist on Thu Feb 14th, 2002 at 04:14:25 PM PST

	<I>I did not ask about anything at all about the method or the weapon to be used for the killing, only about the effectiveness of the killing itself. What I would like for you to do is show me an example of when something was killed less than effectively. You will need to show that an organism was killed, but not completely, I suppose. Or that it was killed but continued to move about, ot something like that.</I> <P> Effectivity is the ratio of investments vs gains. If you measure effectivity as material cost per kill, then the adversary killed with a single headshot with a 7.65mm round is killed more effectively than the same person killed with a long burst, but which is still more effective than using a much more expensive anti-tank grenade. The death is the same in all three cases (the Gain), but the cost of achieving this objective varies (the Investment), thus determining the effectivity. <P> This is a simplified example - in Real Life [tm] you have to count with more variables - time spent, risk, etc., but illustrates my point. <P> <I>In the first example you gave you mentioned the use of computers to calculate changes in the position of a gun. The speed with which the changes could be calculated was improved by the application of technology but that only improved the gun itself. The killing that it did was still at the same level of effectiveness, the people who dies before a computer was used were just as dead as those who died after.</I> <P> The killing was still the same, but achieved with less amount of both shells and time. Thus more effective. <P> Your objections seem to be based on just a misunderstanding. :)

	uh nope (none / 0) (#108)
	by Anonymous Reader on Sat Feb 16th, 2002 at 02:03:02 PM PST

	All of this wonderful technology was created by capitalism, All these wonders were created by funding from mostly the US government. There was more innovation in 5 years during that time than 20 years now. Why did the US government drop out? They figured organisation could control themselves. Also it could no longer spend the necessary money. Most of it was due to 80s cold war over spending, and politicians screaming "less government". Was there money to be made? HELL YEAH there was. A company could develop a technology, the government would fund it if they released it in the public domain or were willing to license it to any and everyone willing to pay for it. The government had a few basic guidelines. Open standards, open source or open licensing, and no military comtracts awarded without a Unix offering. Might be why Microsoft offers software on Unix platforms. Think about it. For more information I suggest that you read The Origins and Future of Open Source by Nathan Newman. You can follow the link or read it when it's published this fall.

	Hey! (none / 0) (#82)
	by Anonymous Reader on Wed Feb 13th, 2002 at 08:34:21 AM PST

	Why not just get a computer that works? I've got a computer that works, thank you very much! It's the other computer I've got, which is thousands of times faster but doesn't work properly, that is the problem!

	An excellent informative article (none / 0) (#13)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Feb 11th, 2002 at 12:33:59 PM PST

	I commend your knowledge and your gift for sharing it. Keep up the good work!!!

	Ha Ha Ha! (none / 0) (#124)
	by Anonymous Reader on Tue Feb 19th, 2002 at 01:22:04 PM PST

	You must be joking, right?

	Factual and mostly true (1.00 / 1) (#16)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Feb 11th, 2002 at 01:17:45 PM PST

	+1 FP, oh shit I rememvered I am not on K5.

	Concerned question (none / 0) (#19)
	by John Wainright on Mon Feb 11th, 2002 at 02:23:51 PM PST

	Isn't the dissemination of Hacker material and information such as this article a blatant violation of the DMCA?

	Hacker Material (none / 0) (#79)
	by Peej on Wed Feb 13th, 2002 at 06:27:42 AM PST

	John, I too was concerned about the potential negative effects of the hacker information portrayed in the article. Everyone knows that most hackers are young easily influenced adolescents that could take the above information and use it for evil. Until now most hacker information has been encrypted with some kind of "techojargon" preventing our children from understanding it, but with the "demystifying" of this material as demonstrated in this article, I fear for the safety of ourselves and our children on and offline. Hopefully AOL will soon be configured to sensor this and other such illegal and damaging information, but until that time I believe we should be careful of the subject matter published on the Interweb.

	It Seems to Me... (1.00 / 1) (#20)
	by doofus on Mon Feb 11th, 2002 at 02:27:22 PM PST

	that adequacy doesn't need yet another GNU/BSD-Linux article. Yoshi and osm (and many others, I'm sure) have been very thorough and informative in discussing technical topics in the past. I suggest more articles on torture, pornography and skinning baby seals and diary entries on getting drunk and naked in front on one's friends. I quite enjoyed that one.

	I don't think you understand (none / 0) (#25)
	by Jon Erikson on Mon Feb 11th, 2002 at 04:35:46 PM PST

	While there have been other well-documented and informative articles on similar subjects on this fine website, this is aimed at a different audience; people who may be interested in open source software and Linux, but don't know where to begin. It's nay-sayers like you that put Joe Sixpack off of exploring open source and ensure that Linux will remain the domain of long-haired hippies with body odour problems and a bad attitude. Jon Erikson Senior consultant, NPO Technologies

	I Stand Corrected (none / 0) (#26)
	by doofus on Mon Feb 11th, 2002 at 04:44:06 PM PST

	Yes, I suppose I lost sight of the original intent with this article. I apologize for my initial comment. Perhaps as a follow-up you can write a primer on internet architecture, including such cutting-edge technologies as Gigabit QoS Token Ring Ethernet and Layer-1 switching.

	a few precisions (1.00 / 2) (#21)
	by manux on Mon Feb 11th, 2002 at 03:16:13 PM PST

	I really appreciate this attempt at clearing things up for newcomers. It is doubtless that existing documentations and support about Linux don't help its popularity among non-programmers, and that the Free Software world is full of fanatics (and I write this as a mostly satisfied Linux user). However, there are some important inaccuracies in some your definitions, and I allow myself to correct them for exactitude's sake: Bash is the name of a shell. As noted above, its name stands for "Bourne Again SHell", a harmless word play because it is the successor of the "Bourne Shell", written a while ago by Steve Bourne. Talking about C, the term functional language is improper: functional programming is a style fundamentally different from C's (but I agree this is academic talk beyond the purpose of this article). CVS actually means "Concurrent Versions System", and it is used by developpers in the whole Unix world and beyond it (including in Windows environments). A daemon is any program performing background tasks in a system. Although it is often known be non-Unix users, FreeBSD is not, even remotely, a Linux distribution. The proper spelling is kernel. It is actually the system's core, and it does not include any kind of GUI. The name of the creator of the Linux kernel is Linus Torvalds. He is actually the one who wrote (from scratch) the initial kernel's source code, without taking anything else than well-known concepts from Minix. The name of Larry Wall's programming language is actually Perl, for "Practical Extraction and Report Language". Samba is the name of Linux's implementation of the SMB protocol, which is actually the primary way for Windows workgroups to communicate. Sed is a tool used to process text automatically, not binary data. About graphical interfaces: Gnome and KDE are not a window managers (though KDE contains one, named kwm), but desktop environments. X-Window is the underlying display system, used by both of them. There are other inaccurate comments due to the expression of the author's opinons, and I won't argue about them because I surely don't want to start again the same old ideologic discourses. I just wanted to express these corrections for the article's credibility. And yes, this article by itself was not absolutely necessary, as judged by the plenty of similar ones on this site.

	Psst... (2.50 / 2) (#97)
	by Anonymous Reader on Thu Feb 14th, 2002 at 12:14:16 AM PST

	Well, first off I'd like to add to this list that both Apache and Perl are extremely popular on non-Linux systems all over the world. But more importantly, a clarifying response to this article was entirely unneccessary. This is largely due to the fact that all of the problems with this article are intentional. I am pretty sure that the editors of Adequacy are not idiots. As are most articles on Adequacy, it was most likely written because (a) it amused the author very much to write, (b) it amuses us to read it, (c) it amuses us to read posts by people who are deeply offended by or wish to correct the article, (d) It amuses us to play along with the author and make fun of anyone who doesn't get it, (e) It amuses us to see posts by people who reply to people that play along explaining why all of this is a fun joke (Like, uh, this one). The possibilities for entertaining oneself and misinforming people less bright than you are are nearly endless. I expect this response to be deleted in short order so as not to disillusion too many people. Either that, or it'll stay here because I've missed the point entirely and I am, in fact, the butt of the joke. Either way, isn't Adequacy great? God this site is fun.

	Not bad, but... (1.00 / 2) (#22)
	by budlite on Mon Feb 11th, 2002 at 03:33:11 PM PST

	There were a few minor issues with that post. First, the factual errors. 1) "Pearl" is in fact Perl. There is another totally different language called Pearl. 2) The acronym Bash actually expands as Bourne Again Shell, and isn't the only Unix command interpreter, just a popular, friendly (if mildly bloated) one. Look up sh, csh, tcsh, ksh (Korn shell), probably loads more I've not heard of. 3) Your description of cron is mostly accurate, but it's not normally used for running daemons. daemons are run on startup by the kernel itself, by running scripts stored in /etc/rc.d/rc.x (where x = a number indicating runlevel). 4) FreeBSD isn't a Linux distribution, it's a wholly different operating system, a descendent of Berkeley Unix. 5) There are numerous journaling file systems njow available to Linux - ReiserFS, ext3 (which has the advantage that it can be mounted as ext2 in an emergency), and more I can't remember right now. In fact, Red Hat 7.2 uses the ext3 filesystem by default, although it can be changed during installation. 6) the GNOME team did not object to KDE per se, however they DID object to the GUI toolkit used to build it - Qt, which isn't GPL'ed. 7) Perl is available under a vast majority of operating systems - Linux for starters, most Unix variants (they have it at this University on the SunOS machines), Amiga, and most importantly to you, Windows (in various forms). 8) The lack of a GUI on many Linux programs comes from the fact that Linux is based on Unix, an operating system from way back when modern GUI's like todays were but a pipe dream. Frontends are available for a significant number of the more arcane commands. 9) I can't remember ever hearing of a shell script being used to spread viruses via e-mail, especially as most Linux/Unix clients don't automatically run attachments. 10) Yes, Vi is arcane, but most people now use vim, (Vi iMproved), which is much friendlier and more advanced (but still arcane). 11) Window managers are actually 10-a-penny. X-Windows isn't actually a window MANAGER, it's what defines areas of the screen in which a program is running into windows - a window manager (such as KDE's window manager kwin, or twm, X's default window manager) is what draws the window decorations (titlebars, resizing handles, buttons, etc.). GNOME is actually a desktop manager - it actually uses other compatible window managers to provide window decorations, typically BlackBox, Sawfish, or IceWM. The best thing about all of these is that they are completely customisable, so you can design your own theme based on how you want it to look. 12) A fair number of Windows applications DO work through WINE. Microsoft Word and Excel. Microsoft Visual Basic versions 5 and 6. Various versions of Delphi. Those are the larger pieces of software I've tried, all work fine apart from a few font issues. You also lay into people who call Microsoft "M$", "Microshaft" etc., calling them childish. It's just as childish to start calling Linus Torvalds "Lunis Torrvaldez", a Soviet hacker, and to be surprised that people you'd like to call your equals are not using Windows and not complaining about that. That's all for now, otherwise pretty neutral and well-informed, and I agree - RedHat is a pretty damn good distribution.

	*Is there one shred* of evidence...** (5.00 / 3) (#24)
	by elenchos on Mon Feb 11th, 2002 at 04:05:24 PM PST

	...that Linux Torvalz (Tor von Alt, in the original German) even existed before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany? Where was this mystery man during the Soviet Era? And how do you explain the way the German Nazi Tor von Alt family fled the advancing Allies at the close of WWII into the welcoming arms of Stalin's KGB? Maybe you can trick yourself into believing some innocent explanation, but I'll connect the dots in the most common sense way I can: Nazi scientists go to work for the Soviets. Their son Linux sees which way the wind is blowing at the collapse of the Evil Empire, and realizes that if Communism is to survive, it must abandon it's dying host, Russia, and move into cyberspace, where it can attract a new generation of dupes to advance the scheme of world domination. Can it work? Well, can Communist technology ever outpace the creations of freedom-loving people working democratically? Sure, I suppose, and maybe Lunix will be the one instance of that happening, and it will show the world, once and for all. But I ain't betting on it. They don't even have a Communist GUI that works, do they? I do, I do, I do --Bikini Kill

	Dear elenchos (none / 0) (#30)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Feb 11th, 2002 at 07:15:01 PM PST

	Hmmmm... You better hurry now, or you'll be late for your lobotomy appointment...