Welcome to the world of GNU/Linux, liberating the computing desktop from the shackles of proprietary interests.
The aim of this book is to get you up to speed with GNU/Linux and to deliver a fun and productive environment. It guides you through the many different regions of a GNU/Linux system with a focus on getting your desktop environment to do what you want it to do. It is comprehensive with basic support for the user who installs and maintains the system themselves (whether in the home, office, club, or school). It provides insights and step-by-step procedures that deal with specific tasks in setting your system up and maintaining it. The book covers many of the core features of a GNU/Linux system and you will gain the knowledge to enjoy and use one of the most comprehensive and useful developments in the history of computing.
The details in this book are presented in the context of Debian GNU/Linux--the most open of the GNU/Linux distributions and the distribution setting the standards for free (as in liberty) software and collaborative developments. In general the details translate directly to Red Hat and other standard distributions of GNU/Linux. A growing number of the applications (including OpenOffice, AbiWord, The Gimp, Dia and gPhoto, to name just a few) are cross-platform developments and run also under MS/Windows. The chapters that cover these applications in this book will also generally apply to those versions.
The structure of this on-line version of the book is basically alphabetical. Each individual chapter aims to be a standalone reference. The book includes an overview of GNU/Linux and its history, a guide to installing GNU/Linux, introductions to the suite of GNU/Linux desktop productivity tools, and recipes for tuning specific parts of a GNU/Linux system.
The book begins with an introduction to the world of GNU/Linux, Free/Libre Open Source Software (as in liberty or free speech, not price or free beer), and the Free and Open Source Software movement. Software covers computer applications that equal, and often surpass, the commercial offerings of the same or equivalent functionality. However, the freedom we are talking about here is more the freedom to choose between the offerings, not necessarily the lack of a purchase fee for the software.
In this book we present historical and philosophical perspectives. Chapter 3 briefly reviews GNU/Linux, the various distributions, the licensing issues, and the freedom that GNU/Linux delivers, and the considerable attack on our freedom represented by software patents and the incredible invested interests and wealth behind the push for software patents.
There are many ways of obtaining GNU/Linux and we only cover the most common approaches. Chapter 4 provides an overview of installing Debian with detailed examples for a number of hardware platforms. Chapter 5 is a brief introduction to some of the essential GNU/Linux utilities that you are likely to come across soon. The Debian packaging system used to manage (and take all of the hard work out of maintaining) packages is described in Chapter 3.5. Setting up the X Window System is covered in Chapter 102. By this stage you will have a system ready to take full advantage of. On a more technical level Chapter 50 shows how simple it is to compile your own kernel to suit your hardware requirements.
The remaining alphabetical chapters cover the Desktop Environment and Debian GNU/Linux administration.
All of the major classes of desktop tools are covered, including word processing, spreadsheets, personal information management, graphics, databases and, of course, games. Also included are chapters covering some of the tools for developers, including emacs and glade. The aim is to set you well on the road to using these tools at a level that is sufficient for many users. Of course, each tool itself deserves, and often has available for it, a book or extensive manuals.
The administration chapters cover very many different topics that let you tune your GNU/Linux system to suit your needs. Not everything here is relevant to everybody, but it brings together many recipes for many of the typical tasks that users sometimes need to know about, again without going into exhaustive detail (which is available elsewhere if you need it or are interested).
So sit back and cherish the liberty of free software and become part of the community that is making computers and the applications they run a benefit to society world wide, rather than a costly privilege.