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LinuxWell Linux is a UNIX like operating system which has been developed and distributed using the open source model and released under the powerful and famous GPL licence. To understand what this is and how it works a quick review of the history of Linux and of the Free Software Foundation . So why Linux? Well cos its free. "Free how exactly?" You may say. Well really its free as in speech, and in many cases free as in beer as well. The FSF site has a good deal to say on The why and the wherefore of free and open source software. Whats interesting to note is that much of the fears and reservations about closed source software expressed in the mid '90 have come true, with bells on! I first became aware of Linux in about 1995 through conversations with some of my more computer savvy friends. I found the idea of an Open Source operating system fascinating, but at that time I had neither the hardware or the technical skills to do anything about it. One must remember that at this time modems ran at 28,8 and CD burners were as rare as rocking horse poo! It was in 1998 that I actually got around to installing Linux on my P133(MMX). The install was a cut down version of a Caldera distribution which shipped with book on Linux. Installing it was a bit of a task and required good deal of messing about with configuration files. As a result I pestered my afore mentioned geek friends so much that a copy of Red Hat 5.x arrived in the post one day, so that at least they knew I was asking about a system with a fairly sane environment. In early 1999 I started at Bath Uni doing a PhD and took the oppertunity to install Linux as my primary OS on both my home and work machines. From this point on most of my useful work was done under Linux. This process has culminated in the production of my PhD thesis exclusively using Linux, and with a few minor exceptions open source software, demonstrating the maturity and capability of the operating system in a desktop environment To date the distros I have had the most usage from are Red Hat on my work machine and either SuSE or Mandrake . Of the three I have to say that I would now favour SuSE as I like the way it lays out its file system and its configuration files. Also the people who put the SuSE distro together error very much on the side of caution, favouring stability over newness. In addition to running a Linux desktop machine I also have an old Compaq network computer running as a router/firewall for my ADSL connection. Due to the restrictions of the hardware and a few glitches in the support for the cable modem setting this took a bit of cludging but the net result is a trouble free net connection which serves the two other machines in the house. Tweaks and fixes:Now, good though modern distributions a certain amount of tweaking is still required to get my system running tickity-boo, particularly if one wants to get the most out of your hardware.
SoftwareGetting stuff done: Its all good and well having a nicely set up, stable OS but at the end of the day you need to get some work done on the thing. A long standing gripe about Linux is that there was no workable office applications available, and that there was a lack of desktop applications in general. While I must admit I struggled back in 1999 when I first migrated to Linux I find this complaint to be increasingly less valid. What follows is a list of applications which in the course of my work I have found to be of great use in my day to day work, and some discussion of my experiences with them. Firstly, the office suite that I have been using is OpenOffice.org 1.0.2, which is the open source branch of Staroffice. Though I have to say that I find the spreadsheet application to be weak by comparison with Microsoft Excell the word processing and presentation applications are outstanding. OpenWriter (the word processing application) is particularlly good at handling large multi section documents and the manner in which bibliographic refrences are managed is excelent. A futher advantage of the Openoffice.org suite is its use of XML in its save file format and the high quality of HTML produced on exporting documents to HTML.Much of the slack in the spreadsheet department was taken up by gnumeric, particularly in the area of stastical analysis where data sets tended to be large. Secondly, development and development enviornments! I reaquanted myself with programing Mac OS XUnder the very shiny bonnet Mac OS X is a UNIX OS, closely related to Free BSD I beleive Links to some good Linux resources.
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Created and maintained by
Brian P Casey
