|
|
|
|
Welcome to the world of GNU/Linux, liberating the computing desktop from the shackles of proprietary interests.
The aim of this book is to get you up to speed with GNU/Linux and to deliver a fun and productive environment. It guides you through the many different regions of a GNU/Linux system with a focus on getting your desktop environment to do what you want it to do. It is comprehensive with basic support for the user who installs and maintains the system themselves (whether in the home, office, club, or school). It provides insights and step-by-step procedures that deal with specific tasks in setting your system up and maintaining it. The book covers many of the core features of a GNU/Linux system and you will gain the knowledge to enjoy and use one of the most comprehensive and useful developments in the history of computing.
The details in this book are presented in the context of Debian GNU/Linux--the most open of the GNU/Linux distributions and the distribution setting the standards for free software and collaborative developments. In general the details translate directly to RedHat and other standard distributions of GNU/Linux. A growing number of the applications (including StarOffice, AbiWord, The Gimp, Dia and gPhoto, to name just a few) are cross-platform developments and run also under MS-Windows. The chapters that cover these applications in this book will also generally apply to those versions.
The structure of this on-line version of the book is basically alphabetical. Each individual chapter aims to be a standalone reference. The book includes an overview of GNU/Linux and its history, a guide to installing GNU/Linux, introductions to the suite of GNU/Linux desktop productivity tools, and recipes for tuning specific parts of a GNU/Linux system.
The book begins with an introduction to the world of GNU/Linux, Free Software, and the Open Source Software movement. Free software equals, and often surpasses, the commercial offerings for the same or equivalent functionality. We present historical and philosophical perspectives. Chapter 3 briefly reviews GNU/Linux, the various distributions, the licensing issues, and the freedom that GNU/Linux delivers.
There are many ways of obtaining GNU/Linux and we only cover the most common approaches. Chapter 4 provides an overview of installing Debian with detailed examples for a number of hardware platforms. Chapter 5 is a brief introduction to some of the essential GNU/Linux utilities that you are likely to come across soon. The Debian packaging system used to manage (and take all of the hard work out of maintaining) packages is described in Chapter 3.4. Setting up the X Window System is covered in Chapter 92. By this stage you will have a system ready to take full advantage of. On a more technical level Chapter 49 shows how simple it is to compile your own kernel to suit your hardware requirements.
The remaining alphabetical chapters cover the Desktop Environment and Debian GNU/Linux administration.
All of the major classes of desktop tools are covered, including word processing, spreadsheets, personal information management, graphics, databases and, of course, games. Also included are chapters covering some of the tools for developers, including emacs and glade. The aim is to set you well on the road to using these tools at a level that is sufficient for many users. Of course, each tool itself deserves, and often has available for it, a book or extensive manuals.
The administration chapters cover very many different topics that let you tune your GNU/Linux system to suit your needs. Not everything here is relevant to everybody, but it brings together many recipes for many of the typical tasks that users sometimes need to know about, again without going into exhaustive detail (which is available elsewhere if you need it or are interested).
So sit back and enjoy the freedom of free software and become part of the community that is making computers and the applications they run a benefit to society world wide, rather than a costly privilege.
Conventions Used Throughout The Book
Typography
Screen shots from the Galeon web browser are based on Galeon at 700x600.
What's In A Name
The phrase Microsoft Windows (and less informatively just Windows) usually refers to the whole of the popular operating systems, irrespective of which version of Microsoft Windows is being run, unless the version is important. But Microsoft Windows is just one of many windowing systems available, and indeed, Microsoft Windows came on to the screen rather later than the pioneering Apple Macintosh windowing system and the Unix windowing systems. We will simply refer to all varieties of Microsoft's windowing systems (Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP) as MS-Windows. If the particular version is important it will be referred to as MS-Windows/XP, for example.
We use the phrase GNU/Linux to refer to the GNU environment and the GNU and other applications running in that environment on top of the Linux operating system kernel. Similarly, GNU/Hurd refers to the GNU environment and the GNU and other applications running in that environment on top of the GNU Hurd operating system kernel.
Debian is a complete distribution which includes many applications based around a particular choice of operating system kernel (usually either GNU/Linux or GNU/Hurd). Where the particular kernel is not important we will refer to whole system as Debian.
The common windowing system used in Debian is a separate, but integral, component that we will refer to as the X Window System.
Screen Shots
Through out the document screen shots are presented using a variety of Gnome and KDE themes. The theme specifies what things look like inside the windows that an application displays, and now also tend to specify what the window frame looks like--that is, the area immediately surrounding the application's window. There is an endless variety of themes to suit your own preferences. Some favourites include the E-efm-GTK+ Gnome theme and the QN-X11 and Crux Sawfish themes. Refer to the discussion of themes in Chapter 87 for details, if interested.
About This Book
The book is copyright by the author
(
) but released under a license
which allows it to be available somewhat freely. You are welcome to
read it on-line and even to download and print the whole book
yourself. You can also download the book (either PDF or HTML) to have
a local copy of the book on your system and make it available for
others to access either locally or even globally. However, you are
required to retain the copyright attributions and you are required to
give appropriate attribution for any material you use from the book.
Also, by taking a copy, or even simply using the book, you should feel
obliged to contribute to the book in some way, by sending corrections,
comments, updates, suggestions, or even whole new chapters, to me at
.
Citations
The following provide links into the book:
