Unix / Linux FAQ: with Tips to Face Interviews

8.   Bibliography

Frequently Asked Questions with Answers

2. What Makes Linux So Popular?

Here are a few of the reasons - though obviously every Linux user will have his/her own reasons to add.

It's Free

Linux is free. Really and truly free. One can browse to any of the distributors of Linux, find the download link and download a complete copy of the entire operating system plus extra software without paying any thing. One can also buy a boxed version. For a nominal price, the CDs are available, manuals get door-delivered, plus there is telephone or online support. In comparison, home versions of popular commercial OS would cost thousands of rupees.

With Linux, we also don't have to worry about paying again every time we upgrade the operating system - the upgrades are obviously free too. With commercial OS, upgrades also have to be paid for every time one is announced.

It's Open Source

This means two things: First, that the CDs (or the download site) contain an entire copy of the source code for Linux. Secondly, the user can legally make modifications to improve it.

While this might not mean much to non- programmers, there are thousands of people with programming capability who could improve the code or fix problems quickly. When a problem is found, it is sent off to the coordinating team in charge of the module in question, who will update the software and issue a patch. What all this boils down to is that bugs in Linux get fixed much faster than any other operating system.

It's Modular

Commercial Operating Systems normally get installed as a complete unit. One can not, for example, install them without their Graphical User Interface, or without its printing support -- install everything or nothing.

Linux, on the other hand, is a very modular operating system. One could install or run exactly the bits and pieces of Linux that are needed. In most cases, the choice is on one of the predefined setups from the installation menu, but is not compulsory. In some cases this makes a lot of sense. For example, while setting up a server, one might want to disable the graphical user interface once it is set up correctly, thus freeing up memory and the processor for the more important task at hand.

It also allows the users to upgrade parts of the operating system without affecting the rest. For example, one could get the latest version of Gnome or KDE without changing the kernel.

It's got More Choices

Also due to its modularity, there is more choice of components to use. One example is the user interface. Many users choose KDE, which is very easy to learn for users with Windows experience. Others choose Gnome, which is more powerful but less similar to Windows. There are also several simple alternatives for less-powerful computers, which make less demands on the hardware available.

It’s Portable

Linux runs on practically every piece of equipment which qualifies as a computer. It can be run on huge multiprocessor servers or a PDA. Apart from Pentiums of various flavors, there are versions of Linux (called ports) for Atari, Amiga, Macintosh, PowerMac. PowerPC, NeXT, Alpha, Motorola, MIPS, HP, PowerPC, Sun Sparc, Silicon Graphics, VAX/MicroVax, VME, Psion 5, Sun UltraSparc, etc.

It’s got lots of Extras

Along with the Linux CD, normally quite a lot of software gets thrown in, which is not usually included with operating systems. Using only the applications that come with Linux, one could set up a full web, ftp, database and email server for example. There is a firewall built into the kernel of the operating system, one or more office suites, graphics programs, music players, and lots more. Different distributions of Linux offer different extra programs. Slackware, for example, is quite simple (though it still provides all the commonly needed programs), while SuSE Linux comes with seven CDs or a DVD-ROM!

It is Stable

All applications can crash, but in many systems, the only recourse is to switch off and reboot (and with some new soft-switch PCs, even that doesn't work - we have to pull out the power cable).

In comparison, Linux is rock-solid. Every application runs independent of all others - if one crashes, it crashes alone. Most Linux servers run for months on end, never shutting down or rebooting. Even the GUI is independent of the Linux kernel.

It’s got Networking

The networking facilities offered by Linux are positively awe-inspiring. One can use terminal sessions, secure shells, share drives from across the world, run a wide variety of servers and much more. The user can, for example, connect XWindows to another Linux PC across a network. If there is more than one computer, one does not have to physically use the screen, keyboard and mouse connected to each computer - from any computer connect to any other computer, running applications etc., as if they were on the local system.

Salient Features of Linux

Here are some of the benefits and features that Linux provides over single-user operating systems and other versions of UNIX for the PC.

3. Is Linux is UNIX?

Officially an operating system is not allowed to be called a UNIX until it passes the Open Group's certification tests, and supports the necessary API's. Nobody has yet stepped forward to pay the large fees that certification involves, so we're not allowed to call it UNIX. Certification really doesn't mean very much anyway. Very few of the commercial operating systems have passed the Open Group tests.

Unofficially, Linux is very similar to the operating systems which are known as UNIX, and for many purposes they are equivalent. Linux the kernel is an operating system kernel that behaves and performs similarly to the famous UNIX operating system from AT&T Bell Labs. Linux is often called a UNIX-like operating system. For more information, see http://www.UNlX-systems.org/what_is_UNIX.html.

4. Who Wrote Linux?

Linus Torvalds and a loosely knit team of volunteer hackers from across the Internet wrote (and still are writing) Linux from scratch.

5. What are different Linux Distributions?

Here are some of the more popular distributions of Linux.

6. Can I run Multiple OS’s on a PC?

Dual options like having Windows as well as Linux are possible and one could select which one of them to load every time you switch on. Linux can read Windows' files -it supports the FAT and FAT32 file system’s, and sometimes NTFS, so it's quite easy to transfer files from one operating system to the other.

Generally, Windows applications cannot run under Linux, though there is a module called WINE which runs various small Windows programs in Linux. However, Open Office - an open source product loaded on to the Linux system— can read and write MS-Office files. There are also other office suite options like Star Office, KOffice, GnomeOffice, WordPerfect Office, etc.

Can Windows and Linux machines interact via network? Definitely. We can use SAMBA to share files or connect to shared directories or printers. With SAMBA, the Linux computer could be set to function as a full NT server - complete with authentication, file/printer sharing and so on.

7. Is Linux to replace Windows?

No. It is an alternative and Freely available.

8. Does Shell programs runs under Windows?

Yes.

Bash shell has been ported to versions of Windows implementing the Win32 programming interface. This includes Windows 95 and Windows NT. The port was done by Cygnus Solutions as part of their CYGWIN project. For more information about the project, look at the URLs

http://www.cygwin.com/

http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin

9. When someone refers to 'rn(l)' or ’ctime(3)', what does the number in parentheses mean?

It looks like some sort of function call, however it is not. In UNIX arena, manual pages are organized in a specific way called as sections. These numbers refer to the section of the UNIX manual where the appropriate documentation can be found. We can type man 3 crime to look up the manual page for crime in section 3 of the manual.

The traditional manual sections are:

1. User-level commands

2. System calls

3. Library functions

4. Devices and device drivers

5. File formats

6. Games

7. Various miscellaneous stuff - macro packages etc.

8. System maintenance and operation commands

However, some UNIX versions use non-numeric section names. For instance, Xenix uses C for commands and S for functions. Some versions of UNIX require man -s# title instead of man # title, where # is the section number. In general each section has an introduction, which we can read with man # intro where # is the section number.

For instance, our system may have time(I), a manual page about the 'time' command for timing programs, and also time(3), a manual page about the 'time' subroutine for determining the current time. We can use man 1 time or man 3 time to specify which time man page we are interested in.

We will often find other sections for local programs or even subsections of the sections above - Ultrix has sections 3m, 3n, 3x and 3yp among others.

10. What does {some strange UNIX command name} stand for?

UNIX contains many commands out of which some names are little cryptic. However, many have some expansion and of course some are linked with peoples sentiments. Don Libes' book Life with UNIX contains lots more of these tidbits.

For Example:

cat = CATenate

catenate is an obscure word meaning to connect in a series, which is what the cat command does to one or more files. Not to be confused with C/A/T. the Computer Aided Typesetter!!!.

awk = Aho Weinberger and Kemighan

This language was named by its authors, Al Aho. Peter Weinberger and Brian Kemighan.

grep = Global Regular Expression Print

grep comes from the ed command to print all lines matching a certain pattern

g/re/p

where re is a regular expression.

fgrep = Fixed GREP.

fgrep searches for fixed strings only. The f' does not stand for fast - in fact, fgrep foobar * .c is usually slower than egrep foobar * .c".

Fgrep still has its uses though, and may be useful when searching a file for a larger number of strings than egrep can handle.

egrep = Extended GREP

egrep uses fancier regular expressions than grep. Many people use egrep all the time, since it has some more sophisticated internal algorithms than grep or fgrep, and is usually the fastest of the three programs.

nroff = New ROFF

troff = Typesetter new ROFF

These are descendants of roff, which was a re-implementation of the Multics runoff' program (a program that we use to "run off' a good copy of a document).

tee = T

From plumbing terminology for a T-shaped pipe splitter.

bss = Block Started by Symbol

Dennis Ritchie says:

Actually the acronym (in the sense we took it up; it may have other credible etymologies) is Block Started by Symbol. It was a pseudo-op in FAP (Fortran Assembly [-er?] Program), an assembler for the IBM 704-709-7090-7094 machines. It defined its label and set aside space