Introduction to Linux

And Fedora Core

What will be covered?

Intended usage of Fedora Core

Factors to consider

Hardware support

Familiarity with Unix-like environment

Introduction to the movement

Started by Richard Stallman with GNU

Linus Torvalds got cheeky one day

Others contributed with:

Perl, Python, X.org, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, and many more packages

Red Hat one of the first “distributions”

Fedora is the community spin-off

Intended usage

Desktop (i.e. workstation)

Server

End-users

Power users

Factors to consider

New user?

Migrating user?

Microsoft Windows environment?

Mac OS X or Classic environment?

Different tools to achieve similar tasks

Know how to use a word processor, rather than using a word processing application

Principles are similar

Hardware Support

Sound cards

Video cards

Winmodems

Printers

Scanners

USB devices

CDROM drives, NIC cards, are generally no problem

Device drivers are required

Familiarity with a Unix-like environment helps

Used Unix before?

This is the command line interface

We have many available applications in the default distribution, to achieve things in the GUI

Many things done quicker & easier via scripts

Thank You!

Colin Charles, Nah Soo Hoe, William Wong

byte@aeon.com.my, nsh@pop.jaring.my,

wengyeew@yahoo.com.sg

http://training.bytebot.net/linux/

To learn more about the GNU's Not Unix (GNU) movement, you can read more at http://www.gnu.org/.

The history of Linux in general is written out very nicely at Linux International (http://www.li.org/linuxhistory.php)

Linux Journal, in 2002, wrote up a fairly accurate time line of Linux-based history at http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6000.

Remember, Linux itself is just a kernel (http://www.kernel.org/) - a distribution is what makes Linux usable for the average user.

Red Hat & Fedora

Red Hat Linux has become very popular, and one of the first distributions to survive all the years. They always provided a free download-able copy, with no support.

To avoid confusion (it was basically a marketing decision), the Fedora Project was created.

A history of Red Hat releases: http://fedora.redhat.com/about/history/

Good set of objectives, only for high quality software to be included: http://fedora.redhat.com/about/objectives.html.

Linux scales – be it if you need to be using it on the desktop as a complete end-user for a simple task as reading e-mail, or if you want to run a server that will serve an entire company their e-mail!

This course is designed for end-users and managing end-users, and will not cover administering your system or even running services.

So, notions that Linux is console-based (i.e. text) alone isn't very useful any longer – we have very good graphical environments that users find very easy to use.

Usability studies have shown that it's no harder to master a Linux-based desktop than it is to learn Windows XP. So if you were a new computer user with no prior knowledge, it's all going to be a genuine learning curve.

If you or your users are upgrading, there are some good articles that will benefit.

IBM's Windows to Linux series: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-roadmap.html

Tom's Hardware Guide Migration: http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20040329/index.html

Linux pre-installation checklist: http://members.tripod.com/~algolog/lnxchk.htm

In terms of requirements, Linux generally likes averagely new hardware. Minimum requirements of a Pentium II class processor, with at least 64MB of RAM and about 2.5GB of hard disk space would be appropriate – but for comfortable usage, at least 128MB of RAM must exist (256MB and above better), with more disk space so that all the other packages can be installed.

A good place to check for hardware compatibility is the Red Hat Hardware Compatibility List at http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/.

Most sound cards work out of the box, as do video cards – Nvidia make their own drivers for video cards (these are proprietary binary only modules). Winmodems are also supported but downloading drivers might be necessary.

Tuxfiles has a CLI introduction: http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/cli.html

Mandrake Linux Command Line reference: http://www.mandrakeuser.org/docs/mdoc/ref/cmdline.html

Linux Shell Scripting Tutorial: http://www.freeos.com/guides/lsst/

And there are many more...

Colin Charles

2004-04-03T23:34:29