LINUX

FUNDAMENTALS

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX

COURSE OUTLINE
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX

Lessons
• Linux History
• Distributions
• Licensing
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Linux History

• 1969
 All modern operating systems have their roots in 1969
 Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson developed the C language and the Unix
operating system at AT&T Bell Labs
 They shared their source code (yes, there was open source back in the Seventies)
with the rest of the world, including the hippies in Berkeley California
 By 1975, when AT&T started selling Unix commercially, about half of the source
code was written by others
 The hippies were not happy that a commercial company sold software that they
had written
 The resulting (legal) battle ended in there being two versions of Unix: the official
AT&T Unix, and the free BSD Unix
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Linux History

• 1980s
 Companies started developing their own Unix:
 IBM - AIX, Sun - SunOS (later SunSolaris), HP - HP-UX and about a dozen other
companies did the same
 The result was a mess of Unix dialects and a dozen different ways to do the same
thing
 And here is the first real root of Linux, when Richard Stallman aimed to end this era
of Unix separation and everybody re-inventing the wheel by starting the GNU
project (GNU is Not Unix)
 His goal was to make an operating system that was freely available to everyone,
and where everyone could work together (like in the 70s)
 Many of the command line tools that you use today on Linux are GNU tools
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Linux History

• 1990s
 The Nineties started with Linus Torvalds, a Swedish speaking Finnish student
 Bought a 386 computer and wrote a brand new POSIX compliant kernel
 He put the source code online, thinking it would never support anything but 386
hardware
 Many people embraced the combination of this kernel with the GNU tools, and the
rest, as they say, is history
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Linux History

• 2015s
 Linux runs on
- Today more than 97 percent of the world's supercomputers, including the
complete top 10)
- More than 80 percent of all smartphones
- Many millions of desktop computers
- Around 70 percent of all web servers
- A large chunk of tablet computers
- Several appliances
o DVD players o Routers
o Washing machines o Self-driving cars
o DSL modems o Space station laptops
o Etc…
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Linux History

• 2015s
 By far the most commonly used Operating system in the world
 Linux kernel version 4.0 - released in April 2015
 Its source code grew by several hundred thousand lines (compared to version 3.19
from February 2015)
 Contributions of thousands of developers paid by
 Hundreds of commercial companies including Oracle, Google, AMD and even
Microsoft (and many more).
o Red Hat o Texas Instruments o Nokia o Even Microsoft
o Intel o IBM o Novell o Many more…
o Samsung o Novell o Qualcomm
o Broadcom o Qualcomm o Nokia
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Distributions

• A Linux distribution (or DISTRO) is a collection of (usually open source)

software on top of a Linux kernel
• A distribution can bundle:
 Server software
 System management tools
 Documentation
 And many desktop applications

in a central secure software repository

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Distributions

• A DISTRO aims to provide

 A common look and feel
 Secure and easy software management
 And often a specific operational purpose
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Distributions (DISTROS)

• UBUNTU
 Canonical started sending out free compact discs with Ubuntu Linux in
2004
 Quickly became popular for home users (many switching from
Microsoft Windows)
 Canonical wants Ubuntu to be an easy to use graphical Linux desktop
without need to ever see a command line
 Of course they also want to make a profit by selling support for
Ubuntu.
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Distributions (DISTROS)

• DEBIAN
 There is no company behind Debian
 Thousands of well organized developers elect a Debian Project Leader
every two years
 Debian is seen as one of the most stable Linux distributions
 It is also the basis of every release of Ubuntu
 Debian comes in three versions:
- Stable
- Testing and
- Unstable
 Every Debian release is named after a character in the movie Toy Story
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Distributions (DISTROS)

• OTHERS
 DISTROS like

- CentOS
- Oracle Enterprise Linux and
- Scientific Linux

are based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and share many of the same
principles, directories and system administration techniques
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Distributions (DISTROS)

• OTHERS
 DISTROS like

- Linux Mint
- Edubuntu
- and many other *buntu named distributions

are based on Ubuntu and thus share a lot with Debian

 There are hundreds of other Linux distributions.
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Distributions (DISTROS)

• WHICH TO CHOOSE
DISTRO NAME REASON(S) FOR USING
Red Hat Enterprise (RHEL) You are a manager and you want a good support contract
CentOS You want Red Hat w/out the support contract from Red Hat
Fedora You want Red Hat on your laptop/desktop
Linux Mint You want a personal graphical desktop to play movies, music and games
Debian Common favorite for Servers, laptops, and any other device
Ubuntu Very popular, based on Debian
Kali You want a pointy-clicky hacking interface
others Advanced users May prefer Arch, Gentoo, OpenSUSE, Scientific
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Distributions (DISTROS)

• WHICH TO CHOOSE
DISTRO NAME REASON(S) FOR USING
(Latest) Mint or Fedora When you are new to Linux in 2015 and Going forward
install one Debian server and/or If you want to practice the Linux command line
one CentOS server
(without graphical interface)

• LINKS
 distrowatch.com
 redhat.com
 centos.org
 debian.org
 www.linuxmint.com
 ubuntu.com
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Licensing

• About Software Licenses

 There are two predominant software paradigms:
- Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and
- Proprietary Software
 The difference between these two is based on control over the
software
- Proprietary software, control tends to lie more with the vendor
- Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) more weighted towards end
user
 Different paradigms but use the same copyright laws to reach and
enforce their goals
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Licensing
• About Software Licenses
 From a legal perspective
- FOSS can be considered as software to which users generally receive
more rights via their license agreement than they would have with a
proprietary software license, yet the underlying license mechanisms are
the same.
 Legal theory states that
- The author of FOSS has not given up his rights on his work
- FOSS supports the rights of the author to impose FOSS license
conditions
- The FOSS license conditions need to be respected by the user in the
same way as proprietary license conditions
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Licensing
• About Software Licenses
 Always check your license carefully before you use third party software
 Examples of proprietary software are:
- AIX from IBM
- HP-UX from HP and
- Oracle Database 11g

o You are not authorized to install or use this software without paying a
licensing fee
o You are not authorized to distribute copies and
o You are not authorized to modify the closed source code
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Licensing
• Public Domain Software And Freeware
 Software that is original in the sense that it is an intellectual creation of
the author benefits copyright protection
 Non-original software does not come into consideration for copyright
protection and can, in principle, be used freely
 Public domain software is considered as software to which the author
has given up all rights and on which nobody is able to enforce any rights
 This software can be used, reproduced or executed freely, without
permission or the payment of a fee
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Licensing
• Public Domain Software And Freeware
 Public domain software can in certain cases even be presented by third
parties as own work, and by modifying the original work, third parties
can take certain versions of the public domain software out of the public
domain again
 FREEWARE is not public domain software or FOSS
 It is proprietary software that you can use without paying a license cost
 However, the often strict license terms need to be respected
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Licensing
• Public Domain Software And Freeware
 Examples of freeware are
- Adobe Reader
- Skype and
- Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun (this game was sold as
proprietary in 1999 and is since 2011 available as freeware).
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Licensing
• Free Software or Open Source Software
 Both the Free Software (translates to VRIJE software in Dutch and to
LOGICIEL LIBRE in French) and the Open Source Software movement
largely pursue similar goals and endorse similar software licenses
 Historically, there has been some perception of differentiation due to
different emphases
 Free Software movement focuses on the rights (the four freedoms)
which Free Software provides to its users
 Open Source Software movement points to its Open Source Definition
and the advantages of peer-to-peer software development
 Recently, the term Free And Open Source Software or FOSS has arisen
as a neutral alternative.
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Licensing
• Free Software or Open Source Software
 A lesser-used variant is FREE/LIBRE/OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE (FLOSS),
which uses libre to clarify the meaning of free as in FREEDOM rather
than as in AT NO CHARGE

 Examples of free software are:

- gcc
- MySQL and
- gimp
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Licensing
• GNU General Public License
 More and more software is being released under the GNU GPL (in 2006
Java was released under the GPL)
 This license (v2 and v3) is the main license endorsed by the Free
Software Foundation
 It’s main characteristic is the copyleft principle
 This means that everyone in the chain of consecutive users, in return for
the right of use that is assigned, needs to distribute the improvements
he makes to the software and his derivative works under the same
conditions to other users, if he chooses to distribute such improvements
or derivative works.
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Licensing
• GNU General Public License
 In other words, software which incorporates GNU GPL software, needs
to be distributed in turn as GNU GPL software (or compatible, see
below)
 It is not possible to incorporate copyright protected parts of GNU GPL
software in a proprietary licensed work
 The GPL has been upheld in court
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Licensing
• Using GPLv3 software
 You can use GPLv3 software almost without any conditions
 If you solely run the software you even don’t have to accept the terms
of the GPLv3
 However, any other use - such as modifying or distributing the software -
implies acceptance
 In case you use the software internally (including over a network), you
may modify the software without being obliged to distribute your
modification
 You may hire third parties to work on the software exclusively for you
and under your direction and control
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO LINUX
 Licensing
• Using GPLv3 software
 But if you modify the software and use it otherwise than merely
internally, this will be considered as distribution
 You must distribute your modifications under GPLv3 (the copyleft
principle)
 Several more obligations apply if you distribute GPLv3 software. Check
the GPLv3 license carefully
 You create output with GPLv3 software: The GPLv3 does not
automatically apply to the output