[Basic knowledge] Linux Novice series of the second _unix Linux

　　Novice to Linux [Series II]

OK, your first question is: What is Linux and what is the difference between it and UNIX? The reason for this question, most of you are still in freshman time to go to the laboratory, see the senior students in a large screen machine for the problem, you look at him with envy, asked: "What is this computer ah, so advanced?" And he said proudly, "This is Unix". And then you know a lot about it, and it's the sun workstation that runs Solaris, which is UNIX. Now you hear that Linux is also UNIX, what's going on?

Short answer: Go to a book, the street a lot of Linux books The first chapter is about their history and kinship.

Long Answer:unix is a 20 or 30 years ago by several graduate students in the lab and then a big company commercialized it in an operating system. Carefree matter, it grew and occupied the market. At that time it was only running on expensive machines that only university could afford to buy one or two of units. Later, more machines, more companies, know more people, the separation, and the name "UNIX" because of legal relations, who can not say that their operating system is "UNIX" and can only be said to be "UNIX-compatible" system. So now the "UNIX" system does not exist, there is only a distant legend. So what are those solaris,aix,iris now? Those are commercial UNIX that companies make on their hardware flat, these systems all follow a weird standard called POSIX, right, this standard, is later Unix too much chaos, everyone programming interface and even commands are different, so there is no way to negotiate a deal.

So what is Linux? Linux is a UNIX-compliant system based on PC (supported by other platforms), and it is no more remote than any other UNIX-compliant system in relation to UNIX. So if you have the idea that Solaris is Orthodox unix,linux just compatible, I'm sorry you're wrong, at least you have to beat the people who support AIX, and they think Aix is legitimate UNIX. So with Linux you can learn about UNIX, and most of this knowledge is available on other commercial UNIX. Of course, its core ideas are absolutely the same. So, three years ago, only your PhD counselor had a chance to learn about the baby sun in the lab, and you can now practice on your PC, isn't it a wonderful thing?

　　The second question : I want to install a Linux, the latest version, I have heard of Xxxlinux,yyylinux, there is a domestic company launched the Zzzlinux, which is better?

First you need to understand that Linux is not windows, it is not a software maintained by a commercial company, only one package. Linux is something that can be freely packaged in any package. Any person, a company can follow their own ideas, such as adding a little function, add Chinese support, as a Linux out. These Linux, although the core is the same, but they bring the various software, the default configuration is not the same. The difference is that with a Linux release (different Linux we call different releases) maybe the hardware is well configured, the software is well installed, the other one may be fast, and one may support Chinese better. In short, there is no free lunch, under Windows take for granted things under Linux may need you stay up late to get. So from the beginning to choose distribution must be very careful, or because they just follow a magazine to get a Linux release will assume that all the same start installation, such as hard disk data destroyed, or the network crying days stumbled also not worthy of the time, it is late. No kidding, I know. Windows install the driver is the mouse point a few, but under Linux, in order to drive a network card, tossing one night is not strange-of course, I think it is worthwhile.

So, in the face of so many Linux distribution, which one should you choose?

The more famous Linux distribution are:

RedHat: The latest version of 6.2, 7.0beta. Since the Redhat company has been listed and has received a lot of commercial support, it is very good in hardware and software compatibility. In fact it is already the industrial standard of Linux. Imagine if you were the boss of a manufacturer like Oracle, you need to develop a version for Linux, and different Linux dist need to be developed separately for maintenance, and for cost you will naturally look for only one Linux.

Slackware (7.1). Linux is very early, there are many old loyal users, but now more and more.

SuSe Linux, made by Germans, is popular in Europe and has some driving advantages.

In addition, there are debian,corellinux and other dist, not one of them introduced.

And you will see the domestic media touts a variety of "Chinese Linux", their advantages are mainly Chinese processing. However, as mentioned in the previous article, it is best to use Windows 2000 in Chinese. In fact, I think one of the older 7-word seniors told me it was good: "It's a strange thing to see Chinese on a computer." You can't avoid reading English documents if you are here for the purpose of learning a computer. Even in Microsoft's documentation, the most up-to-date documentation on programming is all in English. Of course, to BBS, to see Chinese web pages, and so on, with the English dist can do.

As a personal (personal point of view, you don't have to believe me), I only use redhat, because I need it as an operating system to enable me to master and learn what I want to learn rather than to fight a stupid NIC or sound card. Although these struggles for learning Linux is also very useful, but for a novice, if the system is not installed, can not configure, how to talk about how to learn?

Again,this is own opnion, and I could to be wrong.

In this series, I will talk around Redhat 6.2来.