Linux in a Nutshell, Fourth Edition

What This Book Offers

Originally based on the classic O’Reilly & Associates quick reference, Unix in a Nutshell, this book has been expanded to include much information that is specific to Linux. These enhancements include chapters on:

• Package managers (which make it easy to install, update, and remove related software files)

• The KDE and GNOME desktops and the fvwm2 window manager

• Boot parameters

• The CVS version control system

The book also contains dozens of Linux-specific commands, along with tried-and-true Unix commands that have been supporting users for decades (though they continue to sprout new options).

This book does not cover the graphical tools contained in most distributions of Linux. Many of these, to be sure, are quite useful and can form the basis of everyday work. Examples of these tools include OpenOffice (the open source version of the StarOffice suite distributed by Sun Microsystems), Evolution (a mail, calendar, and office productivity tool from Ximian), Mozilla (the open source cousin of the Netscape web browser), and the GIMP (a graphic image manipulation program and the inspiration for the GNOME project). But they are not Linux-specific, and their graphical models do not fit well into the format of this book.

While you can do a lot of valuable work with the graphical applications, the core of Linux use is the text manipulation and administration done from the command line, within scripts, or using text editors such as vi and Emacs. Linux is still mostly a command-driven ...