Okay, so you have this old computer system hanging around and you’re not quite sure what to do with it. Maybe you’re a small company and you think disposing of it might be a waste yet the idea of paying an extraordinary amount of money in new software licensing isn’t appealing. Perhaps you’re an individual and you want to pass along your old laptop to one of your kids. Maybe you’re a non-profit and need to make use of every resource you have. Regardless, you have a very simple need: you want this computer functional so that it’s easy to use, can browse the Internet, edit common office documents, instant messaging, and can read email – and you don’t want to pay an arm and a leg to do it. Certainly it can’t be that hard to turn this old worthless machine into something useful again?

And in fact, it’s not. Here’s a practical approach to creating an Open Desktop using free solutions that you can download today from the Internet.

1. Operating System. Download Ubuntu Desktop Edition.

2. Internet Browser. Download Mozilla FireFox.

3. Productivity Application. Download OpenOffice.

4. Email Application. Download Mozilla ThunderBird.

5. Instant Messaging Application. Download Jabber.

A full 32-bit operating system, Ubuntu is quick and easy to install, performs better than Microsoft Windows ®, and you don’t need a degree in computer science to be able to use it. It comes with a familiar graphic user interface and a friendly wizard-driven setup process.

OpenOffice is a free productivity suite capable of handling word processing, spreadsheets, database, and presentation graphics, and is fully compatible with Microsoft Office ® documents.

Meanwhile, ThunderBird is a simple to use email client that has similar capabilities to Microsoft Outlook Express ®.

Mozilla FireFox and OpenOffice comes with Ubuntu so no extra downloading is necessary; you can get the latest versions by downloading them directly from their respective websites after installing Ubuntu.

Finally, Jabber is a cross-platform instant messaging solution. Use Jabber if you have multiple instant messaging accounts with the likes of Google Talk, Yahoo! IM, or MSN Messenger to bring all of that messaging into one place.

Through installing these applications in the order presented, you can turn that doorstop of a computer into something useful again. Bear in mind that the Open Desktop won’t be able to run some of your favorite Microsoft applications, but if you want something that connects to the Internet and performs some very rudimentary functions, this configuration is easy to implement. We’ll see you online!

Russell Mickler works a technology consultant in Battle Ground, WA, USA. With over fourteen years of experience, Mickler teaches for numerous colleges and universities. Mickler holds a CISSP, MCSE, and Masters’ Degree in Information Technology. His website can be found at http://www.micklerandassociates.com he can be contacted at mickler@micklerandassociates.com

Author: Russell Mickler
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Creditcard Currency Conversion Fee

Are you old enough to remember the 1992 Janet Jackson song entitled The Best Things In Life Are Free? Or maybe you are so old that you can remember the 1956 Hollywood movie of the same name. In any case we do not guarantee that you will find Damn Small Linux and our associated tutorials to be among the best things in your life. But we do guarantee that they are both completely free. Well, wait a minute. They are both free, but…

You may have to shell out some of your hard-earned cash to learn Linux, especially if you are downloading the software and running the tutorials on your home computer. Yes, you will have to pay for an Internet connection at least during the time devoted to downloading the files. Now by today’s bloated standards Damn Small Linux is really small; it weighs in at a mere 50 Megabytes. So downloading this software distribution is fairly quick, especially if you have a high-speed connection. And yet as we all know, sometime during the following month your Internet Service Provider will want money.

Once you have downloaded Damn Small Linux you won’t need the Internet to run it. But you may want to activate one or both of the Internet browsers that are part of this distribution. And you may want to download additional applications; there are lots of them and since this version of Linux is so small, you should still have scads of disk space available.

Your Linux costs don’t end with the Internet. I don’t think that the electricity that powers your computer is free. And the longer your days and nights spent in front of the computer the higher your light and heat bill. Furthermore, the more time you spend on Linux the more money you may end up spending on snacks, new eyeglasses, and taxis when you miss the bus to work because you just couldn’t tear yourself away from the computer in time. I think you get my drift. But we repeat. Linux, this website, and many of the references on the web are free. Should you outgrow Damn Small Linux the larger versions of Linux are free, or at least quite inexpensive when compared to ostensibly similar versions of Microsoft Windows.

Most people don’t run operating systems for their features but for the applications they enable. Reason number two: Damn Small Linux provides lots of free applications.

Author: Levi Reiss
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: PCB Prototype & Manufacturing

When it comes to the environment do you want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem? If you don’t want to be part of the problem avoid tossing that supposedly outdated computer onto a landfill. Did you know that your outcast computer remains will take decades to biodegrade and leach scads of poisonous chemicals into the environment during the process?

Several years ago the Utah Department of Environmental Quality estimated that by 2004 more than 300 million computers would be considered obsolete, generating well over 1 billion pounds of lead, 2 million pounds of cadmium, 1 million pounds of chromium, and 400,000 pounds of mercury. Municipal incineration is the largest point source of dioxins into the US and Canadian environments and among the largest sources of heavy metal contamination of the atmosphere. Of course the year 2004 is long gone, and these horrible numbers have undoubtedly been far surpassed in spite of efforts such as corporate trade-in programs.

Why do people toss their computers? That’s simple; given the computer industry’s unending performance advances there is a widespread perception that you can no longer DO anything worthwhile with your old computers. This dangerous assumption is simply not true.

Do you really need Giga-everythings to get your work done and have your fun? Microsoft seems to think so. I remember when 128 Megabytes was a lot of memory. Of course I also remember when “Why would anyone ever need more than 640 Kilobytes of memory?” was the official party line expressed by none other than William Gates III himself.

I’m told that Damn Small Linux requires only 50 Megabytes of disk space, a 486 processor (do you remember what that is?) and 8 Megabytes of RAM. If you want to browse the Internet, you’ll have to move up to 16 Megabytes of RAM and use the Dillo browser. The popular Firefox browser requires additional memory. Frankly, I wouldn’t use such an underpowered computer for moderate or heavy Internet usage. But you can run Linux commands and learn how operating systems work on such computers. And you can play a multitude of games.

For every individual trying to resuscitate a 486 computer there are dozens trying to know what to do with an old Pentium such as my Pentium III 450 Megahertz computers with 128 Megabytes of memory purchased in 1999 or more powerful computers purchased several years later. Without extensive upgrades many of these computers won’t run Windows Vista and may not run Windows XP. But they will run Damn Small Linux or other Linux versions alongside a full range of today’s applications. Let’s put them to work, learn Linux, and do our bit saving the environment.

We next see how Linux lets you control the computer, “obsolete” or not.

Author: Levi Reiss
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable Pressure Cooker

There are several options when it comes to choosing an operating system for your computer. Of course Windows is the overwhelming heavyweight in the market place and it isn’t a bad choice in some ways, especially for those not interested in the nuts and bolts of things. Also looking for users are Linux, BSD and Leopard.

1. Windows

The good side of Windows is that it is made to operate programs. The rich variety of software that works here is a huge selling point. You don’t have to be a programmer or even a techie to be a user. Everything comes from a disc or a download. Click the install button and away you go. Word processors, Spreadsheets, Games, Synthesizers, Photo Editors, Art Creators, Email Handlers, Bookkeepers and Website Makers are some of the most common. Then there are the not so popular yet also intriguing out of the mainstream volumes such as File Converters, Iso File Makers, Virus Hunters, Adware Killers and endless utilities you may discover once you start looking. There is a small utility that saves clips (as many as you want) that can be pasted anywhere so you don’t have to retype all the time.

That’s the good side of Windows. Just so you know it’s not all roses and candlelight you should know there are some drawbacks too. Everything you do on Windows should be backed up regularly. Why? Because just about the time your five week project is within a few paragraphs of completion, Windows will have a hiccup and lose the whole thing or some virus will erase your hard drive, or you’ll press the delete button accidentally. Boom, it’s all toast. Another thing about Windows is that it’s already programmed, you have to accept it as it is. If it doesn’t have a feature you need, you’re out of luck. If the button arrangement is not convenient (although there is some flexibility), you must adapt. Don’t need all the bells and whistles? Your stuck with them. Then there are the slow days when it all just seems to sit there and mock you taking it’s sweet time. It’s no wonder someone occasionally tosses one out the 10th story window.

2. Leopard

So, what are the other options? Well, first is Leopard which is the Macintosh operating system. Macintosh is made by Apple Computers. If you don’t know who Steve Jobs is, you must live in a dark and deprived world. Macs, as they are known, cost a little more than others systems (about twice the price of a Windows machine). I will tell you right here that I have yet to meet a Mac user that has a bad word to say about his or her machine. If you get one, you are practically guaranteed to love it. They are the choice of graphic artists almost universally. The local ad sheet for the city is made on them, so they make commercially viable tools.

The negative side. Not a lot really. There isn’t as much software made for them, but the ones you get are extremely well made. A lot of the less popular stuff doesn’t exist for Macs. That along with the higher price are the main hitches.

3. Linux

Another option is Linux. The Linux operating system is actually free at this time so the price is right. There are many flavors (versions) of Linux, so you don’t have to use the same thing everyone else has. Some that I know of are:

* Red Hat
* Ubuntu
* Suse
* Damn Small

Each one has advantages and limitations because they are geared toward a certain area such as games or internet or servers. They have a ways to go to become popular, yet are making great strides in market share. Also, if you can do the programming, Linux offers wonderful access to the code. In the last year or so, it has become quite easy to obtain and install Linux on any computer. In fact it will coexist right alongside Windows, so now there is little excuse for not trying it out. They offer a GUI similar to Windows and Leopard which is fairly intuitive. Some software is quite comparable to the bigger fish. OpenOffice will take Office on and come through looking pretty good. Gimp has a learning curve, but can do much of what Photoshop does for free.

The downside is that Linux is just not as developed. It is a terrific platform for geeks that love to swim through code and troubleshoot glitches. The creative potential is unlimited which is the main drawback at the same time. Most people want something ready to go, not something they have to create before they can operate. The number of programs (though growing) is quite limited.

4. BSD

The last of our operating systems to consider is BSD. Just like Linux, it is free (though there is a commercial version). The major selling point is that it is the most modern system. It doesn’t have the backward compatibility issues of Windows. So many advances in hardware have been made since windows was introduced that you wouldn’t believe some of it. BSD was created to take advantage of these advances. It has the most potential of all these systems because of it’s modern design. It is quite compatible with and similar to Linux, just more modern.

That at the same time is it’s largest problem. Most of the accessories that go with an operating system (software and interface) are lacking at this time. It’s like having a Ferrari engine and framework without the rest of the drive train.

Author: Dean Walden
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Smart cooker

Regular Ubuntu Linux Users and the (Lack of Use of the) root User

When you install Ubuntu Linux, you create a user, which is the “first” user and you can also create more users if you need to. When you create the “first” user, you assign this user a password – and this one is very important!

It is required to log in to the desktop (at the Linux GUI login prompt) as the “regular” (non-root) user – and this password is also required to be able to do the equivalent of logging in as the root user – when you’re working at the Linux prompt a terminal emulation window on the desktop.

By default, the root use is not “enabled” (not available) in Ubuntu and so you can’t log in as this user – which is an innovative thing – as it stops anyone from logging in to the desktop as this user – which should never be done!

Example of Running the Linux sudo Command – To Start Working as the root User

You type in: sudo -i and then press Enter to change from working as a “regular” user to working as (the equivalent of) the root user in Ubuntu (and variations or derivatives, such as Kubuntu – see more on this further below).

And then you provide the password of the first user that was created on the system. After running the Linux sudo command, the prompt changes from a dollar sign to a number or hash sign (press Shift 3). To “go back” to working as a “regular”, run the exit command by entering the command name and pressing the Enter key.

This Linux version has its own “derivatives” (variations), and many of these end in “ubuntu”, such as Kubuntu.

Linux Commands Training Tips: The “K” in Kubuntu stands for “KDE” – it is the “K” in “KDE”, for the KDE desktop.

The Ubuntu distro uses the GNOME desktop by default and Kubuntu uses the KDE desktop by default.

Ubuntu Linux and it’s derivatives are some of the few distributions that require the use of the sudo command with the -i option as shown above – as opposed to using the su command with the – “dash” option and then typing in the password of the root user.

Author: Clyde E. Boom
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Electric Pressure Cooker

In this article we examine some programming languages used to build dynamic websites that interact with databases. These server-based languages are a major step up from traditional web page development languages such as HTML which run on the client computers. The Open Source product is PHP (which stands for Hypertext Preprocessor). The Microsoft competitors are ASP (Active Server Pages) and ASP.NET (Active Server Pages in the Microsoft .NET environment.) ASP.NET is more expensive, more complicated, and more powerful than its sibling. For simplicity’s sake we refer to Microsoft’s offerings as ASP.

As you know PHP is free. ASP is also free but to run it you may need Microsoft’s IIS (Internet Information Server) which is not free. Uploading, downloading files, encrypting passwords, and sending emails from web pages will probably cost you much more money with ASP than with PHP. As discussed in our previous article (Reason 5 Linux, Apache, and MySQL) LAMP’s database management system is either free or quite inexpensive when used with massive databases. In contrast Microsoft’s SQL Server is pricey. I should let you know that my Internet Service Provider usually charges for MySQL accessibility. When available SQL Server access will you cost more. We have been through the monetary issues before. Let’s compare some other aspects of these two web programming languages.

Perhaps not surprisingly ASP resembles Microsoft’s popular Visual Basic programming language. PHP is based on the C++ programming language, a much more professional solution than Visual Basic. For technical reasons PHP programs tend to run faster than their ASP counterparts, even if the latter requires more powerful hardware. Because it is open source, PHP has access to a wider range of individuals who increase its functionality. PHP talks to a wide range of databases, but focuses on MySQL databases. In contrast ASP works best with SQL Server. While you can mix and match you are usually best off to combine components on the same side of the LAMP/Microsoft fence. After all, they were built to work together.

Despite Microsoft’s unbelievable clout, PHP is the most popular web programming language. Some reasons for its success are speed, increased security, and ease of programming. Once again in my opinion, whenever there is a real contest Microsoft comes up short. An ever-increasing number of computer specialists agree with me.

Maybe you are not interested in learning three or four products. (Who can blame you?) What you really would like to get the most out of an old computer that’s collecting dust in the basement. Here Linux really wallops Windows as seen in our next article.

Many people find that Damn Small Linux is an excellent tool for mastering Linux commands and running the Linux operating system. But what if you have no interest in becoming a computer nerd; can this software still be useful to regular people? The answer is a resounding yes. You can use this tiny operating system whether or not you want to learn the sometimes gruesome details of operating systems. This article presents several free games that are immediately available once you have downloaded and installed Damn Small Linux.
To access these games either click on the DSL button in the lower-left hand corner or on the Apps icon toward the top of the screen. Then open the Games: there are eleven; Canfield, Freecell, Golf, Mastermind, Minesweeper, Pegged, Slide_Puzzle, Solitaire, Taipei, Thornq, and Xtris and Taiedit which is not a game, but a game editor. This article looks at the first six games; a companion article examines the rest of them. As with any gaming systems, be careful not to get addicted.
Canfield is a relatively complicated single-deck solitaire card game. If you are not familiar with this game you’ll have to go to a source such as Google to find out how to play it. There is no help function. And sometimes the cards move fast, too fast to learn what is happening if you don’t know the game.
Freecell is a relatively complicated single-deck solitaire card game. I think that it’s easier to win than Canfield but maybe that’s because I am an ex-semi-Freecell-addict. It’s a lot easier to get addicted to the Window’s version of Freecell because it includes a seed number that lets you replay the same game. There is no such seed number in this version of Freecell.
In spite of its name, Golf is yet another card game one that is fairly well known. For more information about this game access http://www.delorie.com/store/ace/docs/golf.html.
Mastermind is a game in which you use a mouse to drag colors from the palette (on the left) to the empty cells in the guess row. When the four cells in the guess row are full, right-click on the right of the screen to see how you did. There will be one black peg for each cell that is the correct color, and one white for a color that is not in the correct sequence. Keep going and sooner or later you can figure out all the colors in the row. If that’s your thing.
Some people will remember Minesweeper from the days of Windows 3.1. The goal is to clear a field of mines by clicking on a square that has no mines and right-clicking on a mined square to deactivate it. The screen indicates how many mines are adjacent to a square that has been deactivated or clicked on. One false move and you lose. When you start the game you can choose from four levels by enter 1 (the easiest), 2, 3, or 4. I vaguely recall that Windows 3.1 gave me additional options, but still Damn Small Linux’s Minesweeper is a good time waster.
Pegged is a field of thirty penguins and thirty-one spaces. Initially one space is empty. A move consists of one Penguin jumping over another generating an additional empty space. You win if at the end of the game there is a single penguin. You really win if the solitary penguin is in the center square. Some would say that you really, really win if you close the Games menu and get back to work.

Damn Small Linux can be an excellent tool for learning Linux commands and running the Linux operating system. But what if you are not interested in becoming a computer nerd; can this software still be useful to regular people? The answer is a resounding yes; you can make use of this tiny operating system whether or not you want to learn the sometimes gruesome details of operating systems. This article presents several free games that are immediately available once you have downloaded and installed Damn Small Linux.
To access these games either click on the DSL button in the lower-left hand corner or on the Apps icon toward the top of the screen. Then open the Games: there are eleven; Canfield, Freecell, Golf, Mastermind, Minesweeper, Pegged, Slide_Puzzle, Solitaire, Taipei, Thornq, and Xtris and Taiedit which is not a game, but a game editor. We will look at the games in order starting with Slide_Puzzle. As with any gaming systems, you must be careful not to get addicted.
Do you remember a hand-held non-electronic game that contained fifteen movable tiles and sixteen squares? By moving the tiles correctly you could reconstitute a series of numbers. Slide_puzzle is similar but even more challenging. First you load an image, a graphics file such as a jpg file. I didn’t have one readily available so I opened Firefox went to google images and downloaded into the /home/dsl directory the first crayfish image that Google offered me. Then I loaded it into the game which chopped it into little pieces to be reassembled. Left-click on a tile to slide it into the adjacent empty space. Right-click to see the original image. If you are really good you won’t have to take a peek at the original image. It helps if you selected an image that’s easy to reconstitute. I don’t recommend crayfish.
Solitaire is the good-old Klondike solitaire card game. While testing it for this article I won twice in a row and even came close the third time. This is the solitaire that I fondly remember as a kid. Watch out, it’s moderately addictive.
Taipei is a very addictive game in which you try to remove pairs of corresponding tiles. Of course whenever one tile is covered by another tile you must first remove the covering tile. To find out if a tile may be removed right-click on it. If it changes colors it may be removed by clicking on its available partner. The partner tile is usually a copy (9 and 9, Heart and Heart) but any of the direction tiles may be paired with any other direction tile, and any color tile may be paired with any color tile.) The numbers in the lower left hand corner of the screen indicate how many tiles remain and how many tiles are presently removable. In one game I started with 144 and 12. By judiciously removing two tiles I went to 142 and 15. I lost that game, like I lose most of the time. If the rules sound a bit complicated, they are. But you can learn by playing. And you can always press the Backspace key to undo your latest tile removal. The last time I played I was blocked, pressed the Backspace key, and went on to win. Some would say beginner’s luck. The instructions claim that every game can be won. I don’t believe it.
Taiedit lets you modify the game of Taipei. Good luck, this application looks moderately sophisticated.
Thornq is yet another solitaire card game. For more information about this game access their website at www.delorie.com/store/ace/docs/thornq.html .
You may not believe me, but I won this game without knowing how to play it. Beginner’s luck. The point is that Damn Small Linux offers a wide variety of solitaire card games. The final game offered with the system is xtris, a version of Tetris, a game in which you arrange falling blocks. This version offers a few controls including the possibility of playing several games at once. One at a time is more than enough for me.

Just to set the record straight, we must tell you that Microsoft Windows comes with plenty of free applications. The most widely used freebie is Internet Explorer. To find most of the others go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, and start clicking. Why don’t you take a look right now? Outside of Internet Explorer how many free Windows applications do you actually use? When you feel like word processing do you fire up Notepad, Word Pad, or Microsoft Word? Guess which two of these word processors are free.

Equipping an office with the standard Windows applications is an expensive activity. Some Microsoft applications make you purchase the software itself and then pay additional licensing fees when you connect your Microsoft client computer to a Microsoft server computer.

Damn Small Linux applications are free. Some of them are included with the initial download while others have to be downloaded and installed subsequently. There are several reasons for this seemingly intricate procedure. Not everybody wants to use the same applications. Furthermore, the very strict selection of the applications in its base package helps the Damn Small Linux distribution to respect the hard to believe 50 Megabyte limit. Once you have installed Damn Small Linux you can download Open Source (free) versions of Office and run them under Linux. Please note that you can download and run these programs under Microsoft Windows as well.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Well Jack doesn’t have to worry if he’s running Damn Small Linux. It comes with lots of free games. Somehow we have the impresssion that you will not need any tutorials to get the games running.

Some Linux applications are not only free but are actually superior when compared to the corresponding Windows applications. For example, have you ever heard of an e-mail client called Sylpheed? This application is part of the basic Damn Small Linux distribution. It has several advantages over those extremely popular (perhaps we should say unpopular) Microsoft e-mail offerings, Outlook and Outlook Express. Sylpheed handles spam much better than do its Windows counterparts. And Sypheed allows you to process threads of e-mail messages. For example, you correspond with several people about wholesale wine purchases. Sypheed makes it easy to process those messages while ignoring unrelated ones.

Since we’re talking about email, what about it’s cousin the Internet? That will be the subject of our next article in this series.

Linux and Windows share many characteristics. For example, most people have little interest in knowing how they work. These operating systems make the computer available for the applications that people want to apply; such as running an Internet server, browsing the Internet, creating and accessing data bases, writing programs, playing music, or, or, or. These tasks are coordinated by the operating system and require specialized programs that drive hardware efficiently and correctly. We’ll talk about Linux’s closely integrated “friends” and compare them to the similar but oh so different Microsoft offerings.

The Linux group is called LAMP, an acronym standing for Linux, Apache, MySql, and PHP. There is no similar Microsoft acronym for their set of interacting products. Could that be a symptom of their relatively low level of integration? In contrast Linux is closely integrated with the other LAMP components. In a sense these companions grew up together. Improvements to one component are easily transmitted to the others. These programs are all Open Source meaning that the actual code for all components is readily available. When a problem such as a security breach occurs (don’t let anybody tell you there are no security breaches in Linux and friends) people work on the problem and may post corrections rapidly. Now let’s look at the other LAMP components.

Apache is a highly regarded web server. It has been the most popular web server on the Internet since April, 1996. Believe me, if Microsoft with its virtually unlimited resources cannot dislodge Apache from the top of the pack this software must be doing a lot of things right. Of the four LAMP components Apache is the one that non-specialists are least likely to try to learn. But if you want to play with it, guess how much it costs. You can download a version which will run under Windows but it is unlikely to contain the full functionality. At the time of this writing the Windows version of Apache has some problems concerning its cryptographic functions. Apache is undergoing constant development; its new features, security enhancements, and bug fixes will be available first on the Open Source (LAMP) version. And then filter down to the Windows version.

MySQL is the most popular Open Source Database Management System. The MySQL Community Server is free. The more powerful MySQL Enterprise Server starts at $595 per server per year, a very reasonable price for a commercial product. Microsoft’s competitive database management system is Microsoft SQL Server. Licensing of this software is fairly complicated and believe me, costs a lot, lot more than does MySQL Enterprise Server. Microsoft often makes you pay for purchasing the server and client software and then pay annual server licenses and client licenses for system access.

MySQL runs on a wide range of hardware in conjunction with various operating systems. You can guess from its name that Microsoft SQL Server runs only under Windows. Both of these database management products are constantly upgraded and many technical features that once were available only on SQL Server now run on MySQL. In the past SQL Server clearly surpassed MySQL for enterprise-level systems, while itself often losing out to Oracle or other database management systems. Today’s reality is more complicated and MySQL Enterprise Server manages many huge database systems.

Talking about size, we didn’t finish discussing LAMP components in this article. PHP is the subject of the next one in this series.

And here is our technology history lesson for today. In spite of what you may think, Bill Gates and Microsoft did not invent the Internet. In fact, these visionaries jumped aboard the information highway fairly late after vainly trying to counterpose their own MSN to the Internet.

In contrast Unix computers have been accessing the Internet and what’s more running the Internet for decades. Unix and the Internet have had plenty of time to evolve together. Of course you can access the Internet from Windows with Internet Explorer, Firefox, and numerous other browsers. Many sites do use Windows-based Internet servers. Whether you are a casual Internet user or an Internet Service Provider you probably want to know the concrete differences for you and your associates to help choosing between Linux and Windows for meeting your Internet needs. (Actually Internet Service Providers tend to know the differences and have made their choice, which is usually Linux. In the interest of fairness I must tell you that their choice is definitely not Damn Small Linux ‘ it’s just too small.) Let’s examine some important differences between Linux and Windows in respect to the Internet.

Linux browsers are much less likely to stall than their Windows competitors. This increased stability reduces those annoying Internet browser restarts and even more annoying operating system restarts. This latter advantage is particularly important for Internet Service Providers but is also important for individual Internet users.

The Linux Internet experience is much less likely to be interrupted by Adware, in which intruders foist their junk on unwilling victims. As far as I’m concerned Adware is theft of my time and energy. In spite of their claims I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m not the 10 millionth visitor to their site and even if I were there is no way that I won any free vacation to Las Vegas or Never-Never Land. Linux systems clearly surpass Windows when it comes to blocking these criminals and letting me do my Internet work or have my Internet fun.

I don’t want anybody snooping around my stuff, whether on the computer or not. Spyware is often a major problem with Internet browsers that run on Windows computers. Linux systems are more resistant to Spyware than their Windows competitors. But in the interest of fairness I want to refute those silly claims that Linux computers are completely resistant to Adware, Spyware, hacking, viruses and the like. Whatever some people can build, others can tear down or worm their way in.

This brings up our next subject, computer viruses. Do you think you can guess which operating system is better equipped to combat this major problem?

Unlike Windows, Linux users must have an account. This account is accorded permissions such as reading and writing files and executing programs. Accounts are combined into groups to simplify their management. Users who are members of a given group may be assigned additional permissions that smooth the process of accessing common files. Let’s take a closer look at how Linux handles these users. A future article examines permissions and groups.

Linux provides two categories of users, ordinary users essentially restricted to working with files of their own creation, and the superuser, or root, who administers the system and is allowed to do almost anything. The real situation is of course somewhat more complex. For example, ordinary users may be accorded restricted access to additional files deemed to be of interest to everyone. The superuser can assign some privileges to deputies reducing an otherwise crushing workload.

The root user is the only one authorized to run the adduser or the more complicated useradd command. If you have downloaded Damn Small Linux you can test these commands on your Windows computer. In response to the adduser command Linux requests the user name, the password, and then a few optional fields that may be skipped. An organization with many users has or should have a policy for composing user names.

The password is a key element in protecting the computer’s security. We could easily write an article discussing the password and password selection. Remember that Linux distinguishes between lower-case and upper-case letters. If you’re new to computing you may try working with easily remembered passwords at first. But protecting your account and account information depends on your unguessable passwords.

When Linux creates your account it also creates a directory whose name is easy to remember. If your account name is lucy then your working directory is /home/lucy . I’m leaving it up to you to find out the location of lucy’s working directory for Windows systems.

Damn Small Linux shares an interesting feature with many other Linux systems. The system administrator can provide new users with copies of some directories and folders by placing them in the /etc/skel directory before launching the adduser command.

How is the system administrator supposed to handle creating dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of new users, for example at the beginning of the semester? He or she won’t have the time to undertake this backbreaking task. And there is no way that the root password should be revealed to the employee who is assigned this task. The answer is simple: write a program to create these new accounts. This program can even spiff up the account creation interface and perhaps grab some necessary information from sources such as the student registration file.

Of course we don’t want to create users without the possibility of removing them. The live process is fairly complicated and includes removing the user’s password from the /etc/passwd directory, removing all files from the user directory, and other activities such as making backups of essential information. The next article discusses the related concepts of permissions and groups.

A shell is the command interpreter program that serves as an interface between some users and the operating system itself. We say some users because most users rely on the graphical user interface. The Windows shell is the DOS command line interface accessed by clicking on Run and then entering the cmd command. The Windows graphical user interface is Explorer. This article describes the Damn Small Linux shell interface and several utilities, useful programs that may be launched from the shell. A subsequent article will describe the corresponding graphical user interface.
Why would anyone want to bother with a shell when the prettier, easier-to-learn and easier-to-use graphical interface is available? The answer is: It depends who you are and what you want to do. For system administrators or their associates it’s often much less cumbersome to use the shell rather than the graphical user interface. While Damn Small Linux commands may be quite arcane, they can be very powerful. And efficient. The Linux tools for performing administrative and other technical tasks admittedly take time to learn and master. But it does the job and does it well. In all fairness, many Windows systems administrators often apply command-line utilities. But they don’t have a powerful shell to help them do their work.
Historically Unix used the Bourne shell, the C shell based on the C programming language, and the Korn shell. Linux’s most widely used shell is Bash, also spelled BASH, the (Bourne-Again Shell). Damn Small Linux offers many shells but most people go with Bash both to communicate interactively with the operating system and to write programs known as shell scripts. If you program in Linux no matter which programming language you use you should learn some Bash specifics.
Utilities enable you to handle some very sophisticated processing. You can think of them as commands or as prewritten programs. Unix-Linux people often send the output of one command or utility to another command or utility for further processing. For example, the ps command displays active processes. It tends to generate voluminous output, especially in a busy system. Let’s say that you are interested only in the processes associated with a given terminal. You send (the technical term is pipe, expressed by the | character) the output of the ps command to the grep utility which looks for patterns within the input. You code a single line, multipart command to obtain the list of processes associated with that particular terminal. Unix and Linux are well known for elegant solutions. In contrast the Windows solution to this information need is much more clumsy.
The grep utility has many other uses including validating e-mail addresses. Let’s say that your web site asks potential subscribers to furnish their e-mail accounts when signing up for a newsletter. A sophisticated but relatively short statement coded in grep could validate e-mail accounts.
Other Damn Small Linux text processing utilities include the related egrep and fgrep commands, mawk a pattern scanning and text processing language, sed an editor that handles large files, and diff a utility that compares files. DSL provides utilities that compress and archive files, and a wide range of other utilities. If you need them, these Linux utilities can be quite useful and time-saving.
Our next subject is Linux programming support.

Can you remember the 1992 Janet Jackson song entitled The Best Things In Life Are Free? You might even remember the 1956 Hollywood movie of the same name. In any case do not guarantee that you will find Damn Small Linux and our associated tutorials to be among the best things in your life. On the other hand we do guarantee that they are both completely free. Well, wait a minute. They are both free, but…

You may have to shell out some of your hard-earned cash to learn Linux. This is particularly true if you are downloading the software and running the tutorials on your home computer. Yes, you will have to pay for an Internet connection at least for the time spent downloading the files. By today’s bloated standards Damn Small Linux is really small; it weighs in at a mere 50 Megabytes. Downloading this software distribution is really quick, especially if you have a high-speed connection. And yet as we all know, sometime during the following month your Internet Service Provider will want money.

After downloading Damn Small Linux you won’t need the Internet to run it. But you may want to activate one or both of the Internet browsers that are part of the Damn Small Linux distribution. And you may want to download additional applications; there are lots of them. Because Damn Small Linux is so small you should still have scads of disk space available.

Your Damn Small Linux costs don’t end with the Internet. I would be surprised to learn that the electricity powering your computer is free. Surely the longer your days and nights spent in front of the computer the higher your light and heat bill. Furthermore, the more time you spend on Linux the more money you may end up spending on snacks, new eyeglasses, and taxis when you miss the bus to work because you just couldn’t tear yourself away from the computer in time. I think you get my drift. But we repeat. Damn Small Linux, this website, and many of the references on the web are free. Should you outgrow Damn Small Linux the larger versions of Linux are free, or at least quite inexpensive when compared to ostensibly similar versions of Microsoft Windows.

Most people don’t run operating systems in and of themselves but rather for the applications they enable. Reason number two: Damn Small Linux provides lots of free applications as discussed in our next article.

Let’s start by mentioning a few facts that can be very disconcerting to die-hard Linux and Unix fans. Serious computer viruses appeared first in Unix systems. And arguably the worst computer virus attack in history occurred on Unix systems about twenty years ago. The good news is that the lessons learned from this attack were integrated into the constantly evolving Unix and Linux systems. Of course, to some extent they have been integrated into protecting Windows systems, and that’s also good news.

One reason that Linux surpasses Windows for virus resistance is that Linux is open source. When an attack occurs hundreds or perhaps thousands of techies start working on solutions and post them to the Internet. You won’t have to wait for an anti-virus company to come up with something.

What other factors make Linux systems more virus resistant? For a virus to take effect it must be part of a running program. Simply opening an attachment in the Microsoft Windows environment does the trick. The last time (pun intended) I opened an electronic greeting card on my Windows computer I was rewarded with a nasty virus. It took quite some time to remove it even with the aid of technical support. Linux systems won’t launch the virus unless the user reads the email, saves the attachment, modifies the appropriate permission assigning execution permission to the attachment, and then explicitly executes the attachment. Unless all these steps happen the virus remains in quarantine. While an educated Linux user could carry out all these steps unleashing the virus this unhappy state of events doesn’t occur often in properly organized systems.

Another limits virus impact in the Linux world. Ordinary Linux users don’t have permission to do a lot. Even if they unleashed a virus it usually wouldn’t go very far. Getting beyond the individual computer requires administrative power – the kind held by Root Users in Linux and Administrators in Windows. Regular users of Linux are usually not accorded root permission. In contrast, a newly installed Windows system automatically creates the first user as an Administrator. In our mind this is asking for trouble.

Just think – a regular Windows user has permission to install files that can run amok and destroy lots of good things. It seems that in Windows the operating system, the applications, and the data are inextricably intertwined. As if they were asking for trouble.

I have read that bananas are in danger. It looks like biodiversity is a thing of the past in banana-land or at least in the commercial banana world. So there is some chance that one powerful banana virus will make banana splits a thing of the past. The very diversity of Linux systems offers some protection. And it’s a LAMP onto the world as discussed in the next two articles.