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Linux Pocket Guide
book

Linux Pocket Guide

by Daniel J. Barrett
February 2004
Beginner content levelBeginner
200 pages
5h 40m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Linux Pocket Guide

What’s Linux?

Linux is a popular, open-source computer software environment that competes with Microsoft Windows and the Apple Macintosh. It has four major parts:

The kernel

The low-level operating system, handling files, disks, networking, and other necessities we take for granted.

Supplied programs

Thousands of programs for file manipulation, text editing, mathematics, typesetting, audio, video, computer programming, web site creation, encryption, CD burning… you name it.

The shell

A user interface for typing commands, executing them, and displaying the results. There are various shells in existence: the Bourne shell, Korn shell, C shell, and others. This book focuses on bash, the Bourne Again Shell, which is often the default for user accounts. However, all these shells have similar basic functions.

X

A graphical system that provides windows, menus, icons, mouse support, and other familiar GUI elements. More complex graphical environments are built on X; the most popular are KDE and GNOME. Throughout this book, we discuss programs that open their own X windows to run.

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780596806347Errata Page