Running Linux, 5th Edition - Matthias Kalle Dalheimer [8]
Special thanks to the following people for their contributions to the Linux Documentation Project, technical review of this book, or general friendliness and support: Phil Hughes, Melinda McBride, Bill Hahn, Dan Irving, Michael Johnston, Joel Goldberger, Michael K. Johnson, Adam Richter, Roman Yanovsky, Jon Magid, Erik Troan, Lars Wirzenius, Olaf Kirch, Greg Hankins, Alan Sondheim, Jon David, Anna Clark, Adam Goodman, Lee Gomes, Rob Walker, Rob Malda, Jeff Bates, and Volker Lendecke.
For the third edition, we thank Phil Hughes, Robert J. Chassell, Tony Cappellini, Craig Small, Nat Makarevitch, Chris Davis, Chuck Toporek, Frederic HongFeng, and David Pranata for wide-ranging comments and corrections. Particularly impressive were the efforts put in by an entire team of Debian developers and users, organized for us by Ossama Othman and Julian T. J. Midgley. Julian set up a CVS repository for comments, and the book was examined collectively by him, Chris Lawrence, Robert J. Chassell, Kirk Hilliard, and Stephen Zander.
For the fourth edition, we thank David Collier-Brown, Oliver Flimm, Phil Hughes, Chris Lawrence, Rich Payne, Craig Small, Jeff Tranter, and Aaron Weber for their reviews.
For the fifth edition, we thank Ben Hyde, Cheridy Jollie, Chris Lawrence, Ellen Siever, and Jeff Tranter.
Kalle would like to thank Valerica Vatafu from Buzau, Romania, for lots of help with the chapter about LAMP. He would also like to thank his colleagues in his company Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB — Michel Boyer de la Giroday, Tanja Dalheimer, Steffen Hansen, Jesper Pedersen, Lutz Rogowski, Karl-Heinz Zimmer, Tobias Larsson, Romain Pokrzywka, David Faure, Marc Mutz, Tobias Larsson, and Till Adam — for their constructive comments on drafts of the book as well as for being general "Linux thought amplifiers."
Part I. Enjoying and Being Productive on Linux
This part of the book introduces Linux and brings you to the point where you can do all the standard activities people do on other systems: emailing, web surfing, playing games, watching videos, and so on.
Chapter 2 is worth reading even if you plan to install Linux from an easy-to-use distribution. Fundamental considerations, such as how much disk space to devote to different parts of your system, indicate that some planning lies behind every installation.
The vast majority of Linux installations go well and make the features discussed in this part of the book available to system users. If you have trouble, though, the more advanced material in other parts of the book can help you, along with online documentation and more specialized texts.
Chapter 1: Introduction to Linux
Chapter 2: Preinstallation and Installation
Chapter 3: Desktop Environments
Chapter 4: Basic Unix Commands and Concepts
Chapter 5: Web Browsers and Instant Messaging
Chapter 6: Electronic Mail Clients
Chapter 7: Games
Chapter 8: Office Suites and Personal Productivity
Chapter 9: Multimedia
Chapter 1. Introduction to Linux
Welcome to Running Linux, Version 5! When we wrote the first edition of this book, Linux had barely arrived on the scene. Our task seemed simple: help readers learn the basics of a new operating system that required a pretty fixed and predictable set of tasks. Few if any observers expected Linux would become a best-of-breed operating system, supported by the vast majority of hardware and software manufacturers on the planet. Who would have known that Linux would grow from a small user base of 30,000 people in 1995 to hundreds of millions only 10 years later? People use Linux everywhere on the planet and in some cases in outer space and under the ocean.
To the casual observer, Linux looks like a fairly simple personal computer desktop built on the same chassis as any IBM PC. People