Linux

To put it very generically, Linux is an operating system kernel, and UNIX is a certification for operating systems. The UNIX standard evolved from the original Unix system developed at Bell Labs. After Unix System V, it ceased to be developed as a single operating system, and was instead developed by various competing companies, such as Solaris (from Sun Microsystems), AIX (from IBM), HP-UX (from Hewlett-Packard), and IRIX (from Silicon Graphics). UNIX is a specification for baseline interoperability between these systems, even though there are many major architectural differences between them. Linux has never been certified as being a version of UNIX, so it is described as being "Unix-like." A comprehensive list of differences between Linux and "UNIX" isn't possible, because there are several completely different "UNIX" systems.

Install Windows first, if you have not installed either yet. After it is installed, just install Linux to the other partition or disk. Most modern Linux distributions use GRUB, which will detect and automatically configure a menu for you to choose from when you start the computer.

Note: Both Mac OS X and Windows have come out with newer versions as of the writing of this answer. Some details may be different from what is written below, and the answer should be updated accordingly. The best desktop operating system to use depends on what its intended use will be and who will be using it. There is no specific operating system which can be called "the best" overall, and since most current operating systems share most common and advanced features there is much debate on the topic. A few of the most popular operating system, their pros and cons, and some of their best uses are described below. Microsoft Windows: Pros: The largest library of programs and applications. Some commercial games work only with Windows and DirectX. Almost all hardware has drivers which are compatible with Windows. Most widely used. Cons: Prone to viruses, spyware, and adware if proper steps not taken such as installation of internet security software, which reduces performance speed. Requires regular maintenance to avoid system errors and reduced performance. Even with maintenance, issues can slowly accumulate requiring a re-installation of Windows to restore performance and fix software issues. Purchasing a Windows license/install disk can be relatively expensive Windows Vista, the most recent version of Windows, has high system requirements. Notes: Windows Vista has relatively high system requirements compared to its Windows XP and other operating systems. This has caused many individuals and businesses to continue using the older Windows XP. The two most common versions of Windows are Windows XP and Windows Vista. Vista, although it has some issues, does have some new features such as search-as-you-type search and a 3D-accelerated desktop, features up until now only found in Mac OS X and some versions of Linux. With the introduction of Virtual-machine software, Windows has become a popular add-on for Mac and Linux in order allow those computers to support Windows-only software or hardware when needed. The Windows market share has seen some decrease in recent years and months. Best uses: Gamers People who must use Windows-only software for work or school. People or businesses looking for an inexpensive computer yet do not have the ability to use Linux. Mac OS X: Pros: Relatively simple and intuitive interface with many advanced features. Not a target for virus or malware attacks, generally: there are no Mac OS X viruses in the wild, and with its UNIX base, it is fairly resilient. There are a small number of trojans (malicious software) which have been known to take effect through applications running in Mac OS X, though they are almost always found on illegal-content-based websites and are not of significant concern. Apple has begun integrating malware blacklists into Mac OS X to prevent infection. Second-largest selection of software, with many high-quality Mac-only programs in existence, such as those found in iLife. Although at one point software for certain tasks were not Mac-compatible, most software is now either Mac-compatible or has an equivalent that is. Most advanced games have also recently became compatible with Mac OS X. Reliable and high performance. Cons: Limited to Apple-manufactured hardware. Some hardware does not have Mac-compatible drivers, though the number of this hardware has recently become small and negligible. In some cases, it may be difficult to do cross-platform network hardware sharing for a Mac OS X based computer in a Windows network or visa-versa. For example, a printer's Mac driver may not support cross-platform printing to a Windows-connected printer, and replacement drivers may or may not exist. Smaller library of applications in comparison to Windows. Notes: Macs occupy the medium-range to high-end computer market and as such are not sold for the same prices of some low-end PC brands (e.g. the low-end Mac Mini costs $600 USD yet many mainstream low-end PC brand desktops can be purchased for around $400-500). As a result, Macs are popularly considered to be more expensive than PCs, however Macs have been shown to have competitive pricing to comparable PCs (e.g. the Lenovo Thinpad X300 costs about $2,500 while the MacBook Air runs between $1,800 and $2,700 and outperforms the Thinkpad, or the Dell XPS One prices at about $150 higher than a comparable iMac. Additionally, the following factors can cause the total price of owning a Mac to be even less compared than that of a PC: Apple iWork is relatively inexpensive compared to Microsoft Office, PCs experience hardware or software failures more frequently than Macs, increasing service and replacement costs, Macs do not require the frequently expensive internet security software subscriptions. Though Mac OS X suffers from relatively very few real-world hacks, security holes in Mac OS X do exist, just like in any other operating system. Also like in other operating systems, they are fixed with software updates upon their discovery. With a relatively low market share compared to Windows, there are still individual programs which are only Windows compatible. However, virtual machine software with a Windows installation or compatibility layer software can allow those programs to run even on a Mac. The Mac has seen significant market share increases in recent years and months, something which has also increased the amount of Mac-compatible software. Best uses: Students who are not required to use Windows-specific software (though Windows can easily be installed to use Windows software). A recent study indicated that the number of American students intending to purchase Macs has neared that of Windows-based PCs. Home users looking for an easy and reliable computing experience who are willing to pay more than low-end PC prices. Graphic designers and photographers. Scientists. Linux and other UNIX-based: Pros: Low number of viruses and other malware, similar to Mac OS X Usually free Large selection of Linux distributions to choose from. Has a large amount of free and open source software equivalents to commercial Windows and Mac software More easily customizable Can run many Windows programs with the use of a compatibility layer such as Wine. (Programs such as Cedega can be used to run many Windows games) Reliable with good performance and low requirements. Cons: Advanced use and installation of some software may require more advanced knowledge than is required for use of Windows and Mac. Many commercial programs do not support Linux Small commercial game library Notes: There are a few main types of Linux: Debian, Fedora, Red Hat, and SUSE. Ubuntu, a type of Debian, is highly popular among home users, as is SUSE, to a lesser extent. Fedora is more popular among businesses. There are many other (non-Linux) UNIX-based operating systems (with the same UNIX base as Linux), including Mac OS X and SunOS (which are based on Free-BSD). There are also some UNIX-like operating systems. Through customization and software like Beryl, Linux can be made to have advanced desktop effects similar to Aero on Windows Vista or Aqua on Mac OS X. "Dependency hell" can make installation of certain programs on Linux difficult even for advanced users. Best uses: Experienced computer users looking for a good, free operating system. Businesses looking for reliable and affordable computing, so long as they do not need Windows-only software and have a competent IT manager. Bottom line: Though there is no one clear best operating system, each does have its advantages and disadvantages, and different people will be best using different ones. Microsoft Windows is the most common operating system and is a reasonable choice for most people. Mac OS X is second-most popular (and gaining market share) and is an excellent operating system for those who can purchase a Mac. Linux is a very good advanced operating system available for free and is recommended for experienced users. Mobile Operating Systems: Aside from the main question of which OS to use in your home or work computer, lightweight mobile operating systems are also used (and almost always pre-installed or even hard-wired) in mobile devices such as cell phones, smartphones, PDAs, and Internet Notebooks/Superportables (which are similar to downsized laptops with low specifications). There is not a great deal of choice among these, and features differences are based more on the mobile device itself, and less on the operating system. Windows Mobile is usually used in Pocket PCs and Smartphones; iPhone OS (based on Mac OS X) is used in the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch; Symbian is used in Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, and other cell phones; and Linux-based mobile OSes are common both on cell phones and small Internet Notebooks. First off: Freedom. You can do whatever you want as an end user on Linux, including reverse engineering, modifying, and even making copies and selling it to firends. These are things Windows never allows for its users to do. Second off: Lots of choice. Linux has plenty of ways to allow for a user to make use of it. There's several desktop environments, several command line shells, and dozens of window managers, and chances are one *will* find their preferred "desktop" on Linux. On Windows, you're stuck with explorer, even with so-called "shell replacements" which don't replace explorer so much as try to paint over it, and often poorly. Third: Linux is so much more efficient than Windows in many ways: It and its applications take WAY less space than Windows (Linux and applications are perfectly comfortable in 5-20 GiB of hard disk space, you'll generally need at LEAST 120 GiB just for a "light" Windows user.), WAY less RAM (Linux can still work comfortably within less than a GiB of RAM, Windows these days is nigh-unusable unless you have at least 2 GiB), and run WAY faster (Performance benchmarks speak for themselves.). Fourth: Unless you're a gamer, most applications on Linux are a higher quality (And are also available on Windows, such as GIMP, Firefox, and VLC.) than their proprietary Windows counterparts. Fifth: Linux is very stable, provided you use a stable Linux distribution (Debian is legendary for this.)

That is a question that has many different answers, depending on what aspect of Windows or Linux you want to know about. Both are what are known as Operating Systems, and in this case, both are designed to work on the same type of hardware -- PCs, otherwise known as IBM Compatibles. There are enormous differences in the way that they behave at a technical level, but I suspect what you really want to know is how they differ from the perspective of an end user. This makes any answer I give somewhat subjective (users have different preferences and expectations of their computers), but I will do my best to give an answer that is generally accepted by the IT community. Windows was introduced by Microsoft in 1983, and has been the dominant Operating System available for the PC since the early-nineties. As such, Microsoft has enjoyed great financial success, and Windows has had many years and incredible fiscal resources to evolve to meet the demands of the mass-market. There is an staggeringly rich set of features here, from very explicit, step-by-step user interfaces for the first time computer user, to powerful interfaces for the computer professional, and everything in between. By contrast, Linux achieved notoriety a bit later, in the mid-nineties, with a distribution known as Redhat, and although Linux was built on more mature, stable underpinnings (Unix), it did not enjoy nearly the same marketing or development budget that Microsoft threw behind Windows. In fact, the developers of Linux are commonly credited as founding the Open Source Software movement, which is the idea that software can be made better through the free sharing of its source code. In this philosophy, programmers often volunteer their time to develop software for free, as was done with Linux, and Linux is still available for free in its more basic forms. Companies like Redhat only make money by "packaging" Linux with printed documentation, extra software utilities, and setup wizards designed to make the installation of Linux and its subsequent software packages easier. Even so, the amount of money they are able to generate this way is paltry compared to the wealth of Microsoft (which makes most company's financials look paltry). Because of this, the marketing behind Linux has been miniscule compared to that of Windows, and its lack of acceptance among less technical users reflects this. A large reason is because Windows has established a very deeply-ingrained (and some have argued unfairly controlling) relationship with PC hardware manufacturers, ensuring that almost every new PC ships with Windows installed from day one. Given that they must satisfy the demands (though perhaps less than perfectly) of the majority of novice computer users, and add to that the amount of time and money that Windows has enjoyed to make itself accessible to these users, and it is easy to see why Windows is generally regarded as superior to Linux in the area of accessibility to novices. There are graphic user interfaces (abbreviated as GUI) present for almost everything you could want to do, and there is almost always more than one way to do it. In fact, one common criticism of Windows is that so many features have been layered on top of one another over the years, that it has become an overly-complicated, almost labyrinthine user experience. By contrast, some may find Linux to be more streamlined; however, there are still many equivalent features in Windows for which Linux does not provide a GUI, and the user is forced to type textual instructions into a command-line interface, or shell. While many power users consider this a plus, it is unrealistic to demand this of novice computer users, and novice users should bear this strongly in mind. All this being said, Linux still shines brilliantly in some areas that Windows seems to consistently flounder. Because the underlying architecture of Linux is more mature, stable, and secure than Windows, Linux "crashes" and "freezes" significantly less often, and can run continuously without problems for months or even years without being "rebooted". In addition, Linux does not suffer from the same security flaws as Windows, and your chances of contracting a virus, a worm, or some other form of predatory software is much lower. On an more subjective note, I suspect that given the same time and monetary advantages as Windows, Linux might have easily developed into a superior operating system in every regard. As it stands today, they each have pros and cons. Windows is widely accepted everywhere, boasts an enormous plethora of GUIs, and has millions of software packages that run under it. But it is buggier, less secure, and sometimes feels cavernous. Linux is solid and smooth running, and feels more stream-lined to many. But what technical users call stream-lined, novices may interpret as spare, and sometimes barren or just plain missin. There are also fewer software packages available for it currently, though many of those that are available are free. As time goes by, and the Open Software Community develops more for Linux, these differences will shrink, but until there is financially powerful, unifying force (company) behind Linux, this author thinks it is doubtful they will go away all together. Answer there are many differences, one being that all versions of Linux are not the same, with the many distributions about, they all look the same but run a little differencetly, such as the way that the software is installed, one some, they use RPM packages which, with a package manager, install them selves when u ask them, others you would have to unpack the souce code, build the program and then install it... i personally use Gentoo (kinda new to it but loving it) its install system is called portage, with simple commands.. it has an online package database that stores all of the current applications and plugins that the portage people know of (mostly notified by the developers that it exists). To install something, say you wanted to have an mp3 player, you could type in the console emerge -S mp3.... this would search the database for mp3 in the package description and tell u a list of packages that the string was found in, you could tell it to pretend to install it and so on.... there is more information about this on www.gentoo.com I personally swapped to Linux because of all the problems i had with windows, even with a fresh install i was having different problems to what i had in a previous install. Another thing to point out is that the Linux developers develop Linux not for money but as a hobby, making the code great is what they enjoy, creating usefull items wanted by the public. There is a vast network of forums and irc channels dedicated to Linux and you can find the solution to almost any problem there. I will say that it takes longer to set Linux up than windows, but if you look at the time spent maintaining the two OS, you will see that that time is swiftly made up. :D Answer FYI regarding viruses. There's an old joke that asks "why do people rob banks,..ans: that's where the money is!"....the reason why Microsoft gets dinged so much is that windows is probably running on >95% of all consumer desktop computers. Many feel that if Linux ever competes, it will garner the attention of virus hackers, and also be plagued by viruses, worms, trojans, etc. Even now, there are websites (albeit not well known) that track the development of Linux viruses...aka www.viruslibrary.com for instance. Another reason WHY Linux is not affected by viruses, is that its code has been open source for more than a decade, tested by people all around the world, and not by a single development team like in the case of Windows. I mean to say that, probability of finding (and thus fixing) exploitable holes in Linux is very high. So there is extremely enhanced security and lesser chances of exploits. Again, theres one more good reason. Linux was originally meant to be a multi-user OS. Windows was meant for the end-user. After a few years, Microsoft realised the fact and tried to change their primary design goal. After building two floors, if you try to replace bricks, you would end up with high instability. This is what Windows is experiencing. Answer Windows and Linux are two different operating systems. The purpose of an operating system is to: 1. control all the hardware components that are part of your computer. 2. manage a computer's ability to do several things at once 3. provide a base set of services to programs to keep software manufacturers from have to reinvent the wheel a million times for the same thing. The Linux operating system was developed from a base of Unix (another operating system) after the Unix systems stopped being free. The Linux people believe in free and open software, and so they "reinvented" Unix, and improved it slightly to make Linux. Windows is a proprietary operating system owned by Microsoft. It was developed independently from Unix, and its internal details are much different. They should perform the same tasks, however at the deepest levels, details differ, and so a program written to run on Windows will not run on Linux, and vice versa. Widows comes in several "flavors", like Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP, all of which are slightly different, but share enough in common that programs written for one flavor will run on the others 99.9% of the time. Answer Linux is a open-source OS. It's build by "amateurs". people can change code and add programs which will help to use your computer better. It's designed as a reaction on the monopoly position of windows. you can't change any thing in windows. you can't even see which processes do what and build your onw extension. Linux wants the programmers to extend and redesign it's OS time after time, so it beats Windows or at least is as good as windows, but whit open-source, so you can see what happens and you can edit the OS Answer Difference Between Linux and Windows 1) Linux is a open-source OS.People can change code and add programs which will help to use your computer better. It's designed as a reaction on the monopoly position of windows. you can't change any thing in windows. you can't even see which processes do what and build your onw extension. Linux wants the programmers to extend and redesign it's OS time after time, so it beats Windows or at least is as good as windows, but whit open-source, so you can see what happens and you can edit the OS 2) All the flavors of Windows come from Microsoft, the various distributions of Linux come from different companies (i.e LIndows , Lycoris, Red Hat, SuSe, Mandrake, Knopping, Slackware). 3) Linux is customizable in a way that Windows is not. For example,NASlite is a version of Linux that runs off a single floppy disk and converts an old computer into a file server. This ultra small edition of Linux is capable of networking, file sharing and being a web server. 4) For desktop or home use, Linux is very cheap or free, Windows is expensive. For server use, Linux is very cheap compared to Windows. Microsoft allows a single copy of Windows to be used on only one computer. Starting with Windows XP, they use software to enforce this rule (activation). In contrast, once you have purchased Linux, you can run it on any number of computers for no additional charge. 5) You have to log on to Linux with a userid and password. This is not true of Windows. Typically Windows 9x does not ask for a userid/password at boot time and, even if it does, this can be easily bypassed. In general, Windows NT, 2000 and XP do require a userid/password to log on. However Windows 2000 and XP can be configured with a default userid and password so they boot directly to the Windows desktop. Windows XP, 2000 and Linux all support different types of users. Windows XP Home Edition supports Administrator class users that have full and total access to the system and restricted users that, among other restrictions, can't install software. Windows XP Pro and Windows 2000 support additional levels of users and there are groups of system privileges that can be assigned to a particular user. In Linux, the user with full and total access is called root, everyone else is a normal user. The options for Linux security privileges don't seem to me to be as robust as in Windows 2000 and XP Pro, they are focused on files and directories (can you read, update and execute files). Linux has a concept of a group of users that Windows does not, but again the privileges associated with a group are all file/directory related. 6) Linux has a reputation for fewer bugs than Windows 7) Windows must boot from a primary partition. Linux can boot from either a primary partition or a logical partition inside an extended partition. Windows must boot from the first hard disk. Linux can boot from any hard disk in the computer. 8) Windows uses a hidden file for its swap file. Typically this file resides in the same partition as the OS (advanced users can opt to put the file in another partition). Linux uses a dedicated partition for its swap file (advanced users can opt to implement the swap file as a file in the same partition as the OS). 9) Windows uses FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and/or NTFS with NTFS almost always being the best choice. Linux also has a number of its own native file systems. The default file systeAll the file systems use directories and subdirectories. Windows separates directories with a back slash, Linux uses a normal forward slash. Windows file names are not case sensitive. Linux file names are. For example "abc" and "aBC" are different files in Linux, whereas in Windows it would refer to the same file. Case sensitivity has been a problem for this very web page, the name of which is "Linux.vs.Windows.HTML". At times, people have tried to get to this page using "Linux.vs.windows.HTML" (all lower case) which resulted in a Page Not Found error. Eventually, I created a new web page with the name in all lower case and this new page simply re-directs you to the real page, the one you are reading now (with a capital L and W). m for Linux used to be ext2, now it is typically ext3. 10) Windows and Linux use different concepts for their file hierarchy. Windows uses a volume-based file hierarchy, Linux uses a unified scheme. Windows uses letters of the alphabet to represent different devices and different hard disk partitions. Under Windows, you need to know what volume (C:, D:,...) a file resides on to select it, the file's physical location is part of it's name. In Linux all directories are attached to the root directory, which is identified by a forward-slash, "/". For example, below are some second-level directories: /bin/ ---- system binaries, user programs with normal user permissions /sbin --- executables that need root permission /data/ --- a user defined directory /dev/ ---- system device tree /etc/ ---- system configuration /home/ --- users' subdirectories /home/{username} akin to the Windows My Documents folder /tmp/ ---- system temporary files /usr/ ---- applications software /usr/bin - executables for programs with user permission /var/ ---- system variables /lib --- libraries needed for installed programs to run 11) Both support the concept of hidden files, which are files that, by default, are not shown to the user when listing files in a directory. Linux implements this with a filename that starts with a period. Windows tracks this as a file attribute in the file metadata (along with things like the last update date). In both OSs the user can over-ride the default behavior and force the system to list hidden files. 12) Windows started with BAT files (a combination of OS commands and optionally its own language) and then progressed to Windows Scripting Host (WSH) which supports two languages, JavaScript and VB Script. Linux, like all Unix variants, provides multiple scripting languages, referred to as shell scripts. In general, the Linux scripting languages are older and cruder than WSH but much more powerful than BAT files. They tend to use special characters instead of English commands and don't support objects (this only matters to programmers). One scripting language that can run on both Linux and Windows is PHP. It always has to be installed under Windows, it may have to be installed under Linux. PHP is typically found running on Linux based web servers in combination with Apache, but it is capable of running "client side" (on your computer). 13) Every computer printer ships with drivers for last last few versions of Windows (at the time it was manufactured). Running the printer on a very old or too new version of Windows may or may not work. Still, this a far better situation than with Linux which does not support as many printers as Windows. In an environment with many Linux users, shared network printers a tech support staff, this should not be an issue as you can limit yourself to well supported printers. Home users of Linux however, will no doubt suffer from the relatively poor support for printers. 14) Windows allows programs to store user information (files and settings) anywhere. This makes it impossibly hard to backup user data files and settings and to switch to a new computer. In contrast, Linux stores all user data in the home directory making it much easier to migrate from an old computer to a new one. If home directories are segregated in their own partition, you can even upgrade from one version of Linux to another without having to migrate user data and settings. 15) Answer Difference Between Linux and Windows 1) Linux is a open-source OS.People can change code and add programs which will help to use your computer better. It's designed as a reaction on the monopoly position of windows. you can't change any thing in windows. you can't even see which processes do what and build your onw extension. Linux wants the programmers to extend and redesign it's OS time after time, so it beats Windows or at least is as good as windows, but whit open-source, so you can see what happens and you can edit the OS 2) All the flavors of Windows come from Microsoft, the various distributions of Linux come from different companies (i.e LIndows , Lycoris, Red Hat, SuSe, Mandrake, Knopping, Slackware). 3) Linux is customizable in a way that Windows is not. For example,NASlite is a version of Linux that runs off a single floppy disk and converts an old computer into a file server. This ultra small edition of Linux is capable of networking, file sharing and being a web server. 4) For desktop or home use, Linux is very cheap or free, Windows is expensive. For server use, Linux is very cheap compared to Windows. Microsoft allows a single copy of Windows to be used on only one computer. Starting with Windows XP, they use software to enforce this rule (activation). In contrast, once you have purchased Linux, you can run it on any number of computers for no additional charge. 5) You have to log on to Linux with a userid and password. This is not true of Windows. Typically Windows 9x does not ask for a userid/password at boot time and, even if it does, this can be easily bypassed. In general, Windows NT, 2000 and XP do require a userid/password to log on. However Windows 2000 and XP can be configured with a default userid and password so they boot directly to the Windows desktop. Windows XP, 2000 and Linux all support different types of users. Windows XP Home Edition supports Administrator class users that have full and total access to the system and restricted users that, among other restrictions, can't install software. Windows XP Pro and Windows 2000 support additional levels of users and there are groups of system privileges that can be assigned to a particular user. In Linux, the user with full and total access is called root, everyone else is a normal user. The options for Linux security privileges don't seem to me to be as robust as in Windows 2000 and XP Pro, they are focused on files and directories (can you read, update and execute files). Linux has a concept of a group of users that Windows does not, but again the privileges associated with a group are all file/directory related. 6) Linux has a reputation for fewer bugs than Windows 7) Windows must boot from a primary partition. Linux can boot from either a primary partition or a logical partition inside an extended partition. Windows must boot from the first hard disk. Linux can boot from any hard disk in the computer. 8) Windows uses a hidden file for its swap file. Typically this file resides in the same partition as the OS (advanced users can opt to put the file in another partition). Linux uses a dedicated partition for its swap file (advanced users can opt to implement the swap file as a file in the same partition as the OS). 9) Windows uses FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and/or NTFS with NTFS almost always being the best choice. Linux also has a number of its own native file systems. The default file systeAll the file systems use directories and subdirectories. Windows separates directories with a back slash, Linux uses a normal forward slash. Windows file names are not case sensitive. Linux file names are. For example "abc" and "aBC" are different files in Linux, whereas in Windows it would refer to the same file. Case sensitivity has been a problem for this very web page, the name of which is "Linux.vs.Windows.HTML". At times, people have tried to get to this page using "Linux.vs.windows.HTML" (all lower case) which resulted in a Page Not Found error. Eventually, I created a new web page with the name in all lower case and this new page simply re-directs you to the real page, the one you are reading now (with a capital L and W). m for Linux used to be ext2, now it is typically ext3. 10) Windows and Linux use different concepts for their file hierarchy. Windows uses a volume-based file hierarchy, Linux uses a unified scheme. Windows uses letters of the alphabet to represent different devices and different hard disk partitions. Under Windows, you need to know what volume (C:, D:,...) a file resides on to select it, the file's physical location is part of it's name. In Linux all directories are attached to the root directory, which is identified by a forward-slash, "/". For example, below are some second-level directories: /bin/ ---- system binaries, user programs with normal user permissions /sbin --- executables that need root permission /data/ --- a user defined directory /dev/ ---- system device tree /etc/ ---- system configuration /home/ --- users' subdirectories /home/{username} akin to the Windows My Documents folder /tmp/ ---- system temporary files /usr/ ---- applications software /usr/bin - executables for programs with user permission /var/ ---- system variables /lib --- libraries needed for installed programs to run 11) Both support the concept of hidden files, which are files that, by default, are not shown to the user when listing files in a directory. Linux implements this with a filename that starts with a period. Windows tracks this as a file attribute in the file metadata (along with things like the last update date). In both OSs the user can over-ride the default behavior and force the system to list hidden files. 12) Windows started with BAT files (a combination of OS commands and optionally its own language) and then progressed to Windows Scripting Host (WSH) which supports two languages, JavaScript and VB Script. Linux, like all Unix variants, provides multiple scripting languages, referred to as shell scripts. In general, the Linux scripting languages are older and cruder than WSH but much more powerful than BAT files. They tend to use special characters instead of English commands and don't support objects (this only matters to programmers). One scripting language that can run on both Linux and Windows is PHP. It always has to be installed under Windows, it may have to be installed under Linux. PHP is typically found running on Linux based web servers in combination with Apache, but it is capable of running "client side" (on your computer). 13) Every computer printer ships with drivers for last last few versions of Windows (at the time it was manufactured). Running the printer on a very old or too new version of Windows may or may not work. Still, this a far better situation than with Linux which does not support as many printers as Windows. In an environment with many Linux users, shared network printers a tech support staff, this should not be an issue as you can limit yourself to well supported printers. Home users of Linux however, will no doubt suffer from the relatively poor support for printers. 14) Windows allows programs to store user information (files and settings) anywhere. This makes it impossibly hard to backup user data files and settings and to switch to a new computer. In contrast, Linux stores all user data in the home directory making it much easier to migrate from an old computer to a new one. If home directories are segregated in their own partition, you can even upgrade from one version of Linux to another without having to migrate user data and settings. Answer Linux is an open source operating system that, until fairly recently, was only used on servers. Now it is used on Mac OS X computers, and more people are starting to use it on computers that aren't servers. It is very secure, efficient, and flexible. Microsoft Windows is a closed-source operating system created by Bill Gates, supreme ruler of the earth. It is gradually losing it's grip on the market because it is insecure, slow, and wasteful. Answer Linux is generally free software, while Windows is not. People generally prefer Windows due to it's 'ease' of use. I'd guess it's the most popular OS. As a result it's more prone to security flaws, because hackers will focus on the most popular OS. Linux tends to be more secure if set up properly. However, a computer user without experience might be scared off by Linux. Some versions of Linux may require command line (like the C:\ prompt) usage. There are many types of Linux out there. A good starter is Ubuntu just to name one. Answer This question is really too broad. The answer could fill a book, and still not be complete. This question is mostly asked because a "non-techie" wants to know if he/she can replace one with the other. Either system works very well, and can do the almost same job. The difference is in how they do it, and how much you will pay for any additional software - rather than if they can or can't do a particular job. If you are looking for a complete replacement for Windows, there isn't one! Linux can run many Windows programs right out of the box, but Microsoft won't share certain technical information that will allow ALL Windows programs to run smoothly. If they did, you probably wouldn't want to pay for Windows when Linux is free for use. Conversely, Windows cannot run anything "out of the box" from Linux. There are Windows versions of many programs, though. Linux bundles almost everything you need (word processor, chat, etc) all in one package, but with Windows you must download, or buy each of them separately. I'd try them both, and decide for yourself what works best for your situation and budget. I hope that's really the answer you wanted.

L.S. is the abbreviation for the Latinism "locus sigilli", meaning the place reserved for the signatory's unique seal. Most U.S. states have abolished the need for a seal to authenticate the signature. Older documents can be found with a wax wafer melted onto the L.S., impressed with a corporate, government, or private insignia (the seal), perhaps with color-coded ribbons or strings also embedded in the wax under the seal.

Udev is an important device management system primarily used by the kernel and the userspace to more readily detect, manage, and populate your hardware to the system. When you first boot a Linux system, the bootscripts found in the initramfs will use udev to dynamically detect and load drivers for all your hardware and populate /dev with virtual device files. While it is possible to run a Linux system without udev, it is not recommended and is usually only done in mobile or embedded Linux implementations to speed up booting and go easy on memory. Usually they take care to have all drivers compiled into the kernel and make sure all the correct configuration is set in early userspace. Running without udev is not very forgiving.

There are 10 characters in a string for a Unix-style file permission. The format is: dooogggaaa (where d is a directory flag, o indicates the permissions for the file owner, g indicates the group the file belongs to, and a is for everyone else [all]) The permission values breakdown: d is only available on the first character, and if toggled, this means that the file is a directory (folder). - means no permission (or in the case of the first character, it means it's a file and not a directory). r grants read permissions. w grants write permissions. x grants execute (run) permissions, which is generally used on program files. In your case, -rw-rwx-wx means: It's not a folder (the directory flag is not there) The file owner is allowed to read and write to the file The group is allowed full access (read, write, execute) Everyone else is only allowed write and execute permissions. If you find it hard to memorize those, there's a different way to memorize it (as 3 digits). Your file has a value of 673. Like the previous representation of file permissions, the first digit represents the owner's permissions, the second digit represents the group permissions, and the last digit represents the everyone's permissions. To get these numbers: A "read" permission is assigned the number 4. A "write" permission is assigned the number 2. A "execute" permission is assigned the number 1. If you add them together, you'll get a sum for the permissions. For example, your 673: File owner: read + write = 4 + 2 = 6 Group: read + write + execute = 4 + 2+ 1 = 7 All: write + execute = 2 + 1 = 3

chmod is a utility that allows you to change the file permissions. The octal value 654 equals to -rw-r-x-r-- (or drw-r-x-r-- if it's a directory). This means that the file owner can read and write to the file (but not execute), users in the file's group can read and execute (but not write), while for everyone else it's read-only. Explanation The "read" permission is assigned the value of 4 The "write" permission is assigned the value of 2 The "execute (program)" permission is assigned the value of 1 A "revoked" or "rejected" permission has the value of 0 You add these up according to what permissions are granted, except if the permissions for any one of the following categories are revoked or rejected (e.g. 000 [probably not practical or possible] = nobody can access the file). There are 3 digits, and the first digit is for owner, the second is for group, while the last one is for all.

It is "generic" in the sense that it does not have a specific purpose and can be used or adapted to a large variety of uses. It is not "generic" in the sense of uniqueness.

World of Tanks is not officially compatible with Linux. It has been reported to work acceptably under Wine, but this can change as updates are made to the game.

There is no "pack" command in Linux. However, there are numerous compression and archival programs available for use. "tar" is an archival program. It does no compression, but allows you to put multiple files into one. "gzip" is a compression program. However, it can only compress one file. Used in conjunction with tar, it is just slightly better than the ".zip" format. "bzip2" is another compression program with better compression ratios. Like "gzip," it is for compressing single files only. It is usually used in conjunction with "tar." "zip" and "unzip" are programs for the "ZIP" archive format. It performs both compression and archival. Answer: I'm not sure if this is an improvement to the above answer or not. As mentioned above, there is no "pack" command in Linux but, in addition to the excellent answer above, a compiled program may be 'stripped' in Linux with the 'strip' command and this will usually serve to reduce the binary file size. The Linux 'strip' command modifies the binary program's symbol tables.

I presume you mean writing shell scripts that operate under the super user account - scripts are written for any reason to help automate tasks and make them much less error prone than issuing commands as a user. Running as the superuser merely means that the commands in the shell script require superuser priviledge to execute.

too easy. from shell type: apt-get install synaptic viola!

You can distinguish between binary and text files, and for the most part even identify what type of binary file, by using the "file" command. For example: ~$ file unknownfile unknownfile: PNG image data, 155 x 155, 8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlaced This tells you that the file is a PNG file by reading metadata and/or magic numbers in the file. When used on a text file, the command will return "ASCII text" or "Unicode text."

Most programs you can download in source form can be compiled using the following simple steps: 1. Extract the source package (ex. 'tar xzvf programname-version.tar.gz'), this will create directory programname-version. Chdir into it. 2. Run './configure'. This checks the build environment to make sure your compiler works and has the proper libraries installed. 3. Run 'make'. This compiles the program. 4. Run 'make install'. This places the binaries in the appropriate location(s). 5. Depends on GCC version also

ext4 supports a feature called 'journalling' which prevents filesystem corruption in the event of a power failure or system crash. When you are certain you don't need it, you can choose ext2. But for the vast majority of users, ext4 is the best option.

For the most part they are the same but Embedded Linux is tailored for embedded devices that may have particular hardware configurations and limited resources.

Yes and no. Linux will not run Windows applications by itself, however, there are ample tools written for Linux that permit you to run Windows applications on Linux. The open-source WINE software will run a majority of Windows software on Linux. You can even configure Linux to automatically recognize Windows applications and use WINE to run them. Alternatively, there's a wide variety of virtual machine products that permit you to run the Windows operating system as an application under Linux, and, in turn, any Windows applications inside the Windows virtual environment. Finally, some "Windows applications" are written in .Net or Java and can be run directly under Linux using mono and java respectively (albeit, some .Net applications will not yet run under mono).

I want to wish you the best of luck. I would start off Number one by haveing a really good network admin. If your an Admin then you have some work. Number one Microsoft IIS, Oracle 9iAS, and the SQL server should all be stand-alones. You would have to link computers together with atleast a 10-Base-T hub. Call network something and make all Gateways, ISPs for these "servers". You would also need to have the "Servers" auto-handshake ISPs from other computers. HAve the Linux machines and windows machine tied into network. the windows machine would be easier to config. Make sure that you have made the "workgroup" name for the servers. That's going to help the XP machine reconize the "servers". For the Linux boxes, I have not really worked with Linux sence RedHat 5.0 but more than likely you are going to need to get dynamic ips for those boxes and have those dial direstly to the "SERVER" that you need to use at that piticular time. I hope that this helps minimally, Your taking on a task that most Admin would not you have 5 diffrent platforms that you are wishing to use in this network. The easy ones to takle is the "SERVERS" the ones that is going to be hard is the crossing of Linux and XP.

As Linux can be tailored to suit different needs, many contradictory, there is no single distro that is perfectly adapted to all of them. And "best" is a matter of opinion; some may think one looks better than another; some may want more features while others want better performance on lower-end hardware.

== == In a programming context, one usually determines whether a file is a directory using functions that access file metadata. These are dependent on the system you are programming and what language you are programming in. You should consult a reliable reference for the programming language, such as the manpages for C and C++ (in Unix-like systems) or Java's Javadocs (available on the web). To list all files in a directory, a programmer will usually iterate across all members of the directory and print some form of information found in the file metadata, such as the filename. ---- A parent directory is the directory containing the current directory. A child directory is a directory inside of the current directory. A subdirectory is a directory inside of the current directory or any its child directories. ---- In Windows, the most common way to determine if a file is a directory is using the GUI. To do this, right-click the file icon and click "Properites". If it is a directory, then the type of the file should be listed as "File Folder". Alternately, you can use the Command Prompt, which by default (Windows XP) can be accessed via the Start menu, in the Applications folder. Alternately, type "cmd" into the Run prompt (or the search field in Vista). You will be presented with a command line interface. Use the command "CD" followed by a file path to change to the desired directory, then type "DIR /A:D". This will list all files in the current directory with the attribute "directory". Alternately, you can include a path to the DIR command, such as "DIR /A:D C:\WINDOWS", to display the contents of the directory in the path. To list all files in subfolders, use the command "DIR /S". The /S flag will cause subdirectories to be printed as well. Usage of "ls" is explained in full in the manpages, try invoking "man ls" on your system for more information. In Windows systems using the NTFS filesystem, drives are mounted as separate entities and the root folder of a drive is the drive letter, followed by a colon and a backslash (i.e. "C:"). ---- In Unix-like systems, the most common utility is the command "ls". Remember that such systems are case-sensitive, so capitalization matters. To use it, open up a shell emulator, such as bash or csh, and type "cd" followed by a path to change to that directory (or include a desired path to the subsequent commands). Type "ls" to see a listing of all files in the current directory, or "ls /bin" to see a listing of all files in the directory "/bin". By adding in the arguments "l" and "a", as in the command "ls -la", you can additionally see the file permissions (starting with a 'd' if they are a directory), and the "." and ".." directories, respectively. To display the files in all subdirectories, add the argument 'R' to your list of arguments (or just do "ls -R" if you don't require more extensive information). Usage of "ls" is explained in full in the manpages, try invoking "man ls" on your system for more information. If you are using the bash shell, you can use pipes ('|') to chain together several programs to do such things as search or sort your results from the previous program. For example, "ls -l | grep foo" would first list the contents of the current directory (ls), then search through them and print out only those containing the string "foo" (grep). In most of these systems, storage devices are mounted to mountpoints, which are treated as directories within the system's directory tree. The root directory is "/". Every directory has a link to itself (".") and a link to the parent directory (".."). The root directory is special in that ".." also links back to the root directory.

ncomputing using terminal service like we use for vnc (virtual network connection), like windows have remote desktop, on Linux generally using vnc for default remote connection. by ncomputech.com

(ls) means list directory (ls -l) to long list and also used to show file or directory permissions. ========================================================== Tray it ========================================================== [root@localhost /]# ls / ahmedtest boot etc lib media mnt opt root selinux sys usr bin dev home lost+found misc net proc sbin srv tmp var [root@localhost /]# ls /etc/passwd /etc/passwd [root@localhost /]# ls -l /etc/passwd -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1587 May 27 02:30 /etc/passwd [root@localhost /]# ls -l /etc/passwd -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1587 May 27 02:30 /etc/passwd [root@localhost /]# ls -n /etc/passwd -rw-r--r-- 1 0 0 1587 May 27 02:30 /etc/passwd

Because they aren't organized the same way, there is no direct equivalent directory to System32 in Linux. The kernel image in Linux is typically stored in /boot, the system binaries are stored in /bin, and libraries are stored /lib and /usr/lib.

malloc or calloc