Running Linux, Third Edition

Software Features

In this section, we’ll introduce you to many of the software applications available for Linux and talk about a number of common computing tasks. After all, the most important part of the system is the wide range of software available for it. What’s even more impressive on Linux is that most of this software is freely distributable.

Basic Commands and Utilities

Virtually every utility you would expect to find on standard implementations of Unix has been ported to Linux. This includes basic commands such as ls, awk, tr, sed, bc, more, and so on. There are Linux ports of many popular software packages including Perl, Python, the Java Development Kit, and more. You name it—Linux has it. Therefore, you can expect your familiar working environment on other Unix systems to be duplicated on Linux. All of the standard commands and utilities are there. (Novice Unix users should see Chapter 4 for an introduction to these basic Unix commands.)

Many text editors are available, including vi (as well as “modern” versions, such as vim), ex, pico, and jove, as well as GNU Emacs and variants, such as XEmacs (which incorporates extensions for use under the X Window System) and joe. Whatever text editor you’re accustomed to using has more than likely been ported to Linux.

The choice of a text editor is an interesting one. Many Unix users still use “simple” editors such as vi (in fact, the authors wrote this book using vi and Emacs under Linux). However, vi has many limitations ...