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AAIGLX: A variation of the
XOrg system, merged into the core
XOrg with version 7.1. It is used in conjunction with
Compiz to provide amazing graphical special effects and fluid
desktop rotation etc. Relies on OpenGL
Driver support.
Amarok: This is a
KDE based media player that is very popular - the other big name music player is
XMMS.
Amarok runs in the task bar, has a small player window if you want to view it, and opens up a large playlist library window as well. The playlist/library window allows you to view the playlist and manage your music library. It is also skinable. It supports a number of different "backends" for playing back your music (
Helix and
Xine being the most popular). Be warned, most
distributions supply a castrated version of the player, which can't play MP3 for legal reasons. Most also have additional
repositories where you can download the full version, but the full version won't usually be officially supported by the
distribution.
Akregator: An RSS feed utility that integrates into the
Kontact PIM, providing information about websites that you are watching that have been updated.
Alsa: (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) Introduced around the turn of the century, it provides a standard interface to sound cards and chipsets for software. Previous attempts at standardising had mixed success and had sporadic
Driver support.
ALSA is much better and has reasonable sound support - although sometimes manufacturers are slow to come up with
Drivers for their new kit.
If you are thinking of purchasing a new sound card for your PC, it might be worth checking out the
<<ALSA hardware compatibility list>>.
APT: (Advanced Packaging Tool)
APT is a text-based
package management tool used by many
distributions to install new applications from online
repositories. It was originally created for the
Debian project, but has since been adopted by many others. (see also
package manager,
repositories)
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Bbash: (Bourne Again SHell) The Bourne shell (named after its creator) was one of the classic, and powerful shells created for
Unix. When the Linux project got off the ground, the Bourne shell was resurrected as bash. It is usually the standard command line shell installed in most
distributions. You can switch to other shells, such a csh if you so wish.
It is a simple and powerful command line interface, with command history and a simple scripting language. (See
<<The BASH online manual>> for more information.)
Binary Drivers: (Proprietary
Drivers) are bad
Seriously though, the Linux
Kernel is written under the
GPL, which declares that the source code must be made available, and if code is written that uses that
GPL code directly (i.e. directly links into that code), then the resultant code must also be released under the
GPL.
For "trade secret" reasons, many companies will only release binary
Drivers (pre-compiled) and will not let anyone outside the company see the source code. This can cause major problems when trying to debug the Linux
Kernel as bugs cannot be traced into the
Drivers. Also, because the
Drivers have to link directly into the
Kernel, they violate the
Kernel programmers' copyright. Therefore binary
Drivers are technically illegal if they link directly into the
Kernel itself - such as graphic
Drivers and some wireless, modem and ISDN
Drivers.
This means, that for legal reasons,
distributions cannot now come with the binary
Drivers in the installation. It is up to the user to locate and install the non-binary
Drivers - although this is usually no harder to do in practice than installing the
Drivers under Windows. For example nVidia and ATi provide their
Drivers on their website and they run as a text based wizard in much the same way as the Windows versions.
For many of the devices, basic
open source Drivers are available - E.g. there are
open source Drivers available for most ATi and nVidia graphics cards, they just don't provide all of the features of the binary versions from the manufacturers.
Bootloader: The
Bootloader is a small program that gets called by the PC when it starts up. The
Bootloader 's job is to find the operating system and load that up. If the user decides to install more than one operating system on their machine, the
Bootloader will allow the user to select which operating system to start.
NOTE: If you are going to dual-boot between Windows and Linux
always install Windows first. It doesn't play well with others and will ignore any other operating systems which may be installed. Linux
Bootloader s on the other hand will usually recognise Windows and automatically add it to the boot menu. Some
distributions, such as
SUSE, are better than others, in that they will also recognise other Linux
distributions that may be installed on the machine as well.
Brasero: This is the CD and DVD burning suite for
GNOME. It will burn audio, video or data CDs and DVDs. To burn audio CDs, it does require that the relevant
codecs are installed for reading your ripped music collection.
BSD: BSD is a derivative of the original Berkley
Unix.
BSD is not a version of Linux, it is a version of Unix. BSD has a long and proud heritage dating back to the 1970's. Linux on the other hand was started in 1991 by
Linus Torvalds and is a ground-up re-write to make an operating system which uses the same sorts of system flags and principles as
Unix, but is not a direct
Unix derivative (see Grocklaw/SCO).
Browser: See
Web BrowserBugzilla: Bugzilla is a bug tracking database. Most
open source projects have a Bugzilla database for tracking errors in their project, most
distributions also have their own Bugzilla. If you find a problem with a
package, then you should find the relevant Bugzilla and lodge a ticket with it.
If the application is part of your standard
distribution, then you should raise the ticket with the
distribution's Bugzilla. If you have installed a separate 3rd Party application, then you should report the bug directly on their Bugzilla.
Because the projects are
open source and open to everybody, the developers are usually very happy if you can provide information on bugs you find so that they can fix them and improve the application. Remember that they are there and use them.
Many users will log onto unofficial support forums and rant about how a program keeps crashing and what a pile of junk it is. This might be the way things work for many Windows applications, but in the
open source world, the way to get something done isn't to bellyache on a public forum, but to tell the developers directly by using the Bugzilla. The developers are often too busy to frequent too many forums, so if somebody complains on a forum, it is very unlikely the developer will hear about the problem and be able to fix it.
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CCathedral and the Bazaar, The: A watershed essay by
Eric S. Raymond in which he contrasts two different methods of software design. Includes the now ubiquitous Linus' Law: "
given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow".
CentOS: (Community Enterprise Operating System) This is a
distribution of
Red Hat Enterprise Server, which has been reworked and
open sourced. While RH costs a small fortune, CentOS is free to use. It is designed specifically for use on servers.
CLI: (Command Line Interpreter) Equivalent of cmd.exe in Windows. It uses the
BASH program (see above) to interpret the commands by default. It has two main modes, the full screen mode of the
console windows, or it can be accessed through a "terminal" window on the
desktop.
Codecs: (COder / DECoder)
Codecs are the libraries that are required to play multimedia files, such as music and video. Many of these formats are covered by patents and trade secrets and therefore they cannot be distributed for free, because the
distribution would need to pay a license fee for each and every copy of the operating system in use! Therefore the
distributions usually come without the
codecs for proprietary formats, such as MP3, AVI, WMV, MOV, DIVX etc.
There are 3rd party libraries for each of these available from "other sources" and you may use them at your own risk. The projects that have made these
codecs have often spent a lot of time and effort to bring these formats to Linux for you, but because they don't have official sanction, and they don't pay the licensing fees, they are not legal.
Libdvdcss is probably the most notorious, it. It is the only library that enables DVD playback, but it has been made illegal in most countries by the movie industry, because it broke the region encoding on DVDs to allow playback or ripping and did it for free.
compiz: <<Compiz>> is a
desktop manager for Linux which will work under
GNOME and
KDE It allows special effects, such as window zooming, transparency, rotating cube
desktops, randrop effects, thumbnail previews of applications etc. It is very impressive, although such effects are not to everybody's taste. Most people play with them for a couple of hours and then switch most of them off...
Console: When Linux boots up, it boots up into text mode and processes everything until it starts the graphics session.
Distributions such as
SUSE and
Fedora put a graphical image over this, much like the Windows XP boot screen. Pressing the escape key allows you to view the progress of the boot process.
When the system boots to
Run Level 3, it leaves you at a login prompt in text mode.
Linux uses several text
consoles. Using the Ctrl+Alt+Fn keys allows you to swap between the text
consoles. F1 through F6 give you text
consoles, F7 and F8 give you access to two possible
X session - usually only the first will be active. F10 gives you access to the message log, showing all the system messages that are being generated.
CUPS: (Common
Unix Printing System) This is the standard used by most
distributions to allow applications to print. It has been used by Apple in OSX since version 10.2 in 2002 and was bought by them in 2007. It manages the queues and handles the translation using
Drivers.
There are a huge number of supported printers, see the
<<Linux Printing>> website. The system makes it fairly simple to set up and manage the printing under Linux. Some hardware manufacturers are not as helpful as others unfortunately, which means that you have to be more careful when selecting hardware under Linux.
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Ddaemon: A
daemon is a process running under
Unix/Linux which doesn't have an associated
console or window. These are similar to services in Windows and are used for things like automatic updater, mail server, anti-virus scanner for windows shares,
Samba etc.
Debian: One of the original big names in Linux. Set up in the early 90's,
Debian was one of the first
distributions to be released. It is seen (mistakenly) as a little "old fashioned" in these days of graphic installers and
desktop Linux. It is a very powerful and stable system which is ideally suited to server operations, but the slow evolution of the product, its fairly old "stable" applications
repository and its love of command line configuration tools instead of GUI based tools mean that it is an acquired taste and not ideally suited to the convert from Windows. Saying that, it is fast and stable, which are the main things that count when setting up large servers.
Desktop: The
desktop is the graphical environment in which you will normally work - if you aren't a command line fan. Under Windows or OS X, you have one
desktop. This makes things simple, but less flexible. If you don't like the way the
desktop works under Windows or OS X, tough, you are stuck with it. Under Linux there are several projects out there which have different principles, different levels of bloat and there will probably be one out there to suit you.
The big two are
GNOME and
KDE (see below). They provide a complete
desktop experience, with associated tools and utilities, but also a fair amount of bloat. If you are running on lesser hardware, try looking at
Xfce, Fluxbox, Windowmaker etc. They provide fewer frills, but they are lean and fast, and will usually let you still run the relevant applications from
KDE or
GNOME.
Distribution: This is where things start to get complicated under Linux... Linux is the
Kernel, although it is often mis-used to refer to the whole package of the
Kernel, utilities and applications.
A distribution is a complete package of the Linux
Kernel, the GNU tools, some applications and a
package management and configuration system customised and given a "corporate" identity. Well known distributions include:
Debian,
DSL (Damned Small Linux),
Knoppix,
Red Hat (and its community project
Fedora), Novell
openSUSE,
Mandriva (formerly Mandrake) and
Ubuntu (with its derivaties
Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu). There are hundreds of specialist distributions out there as well, such as
Gentoo (very complex, but infinitely configurable) or Linspire (as close to the Windows experience as they can make it).
Each distribution takes a similar core set of
Kernel and GNU tools and then they add their own "value" to it to make it unique. There are often branch distributions along the way as well - such as
Knoppix and
Ubuntu/
Kubuntu, which are based on
Debian.
Although there seems to be an overwhelming number of distributions out there, the choice for the
desktop user is much smaller.
<<Distrowatch>> currently lists over 1000 distributions, but many are specialised, such as those in Netgear routers, in navigation systems, aircraft flight systems etc. For general
desktop versions, there is a much smaller list, and depending on your hardware, you will probably be better off looking at one of the main distributions, such as
openSUSE,
Fedora, (K)
Ubuntu or
Mandriva. These are all fairly friendly distributions which will give the new user a relatively painless view of the world of Linux.
Each distribution has its nice bits and its foibles. It is up to you to find one which suits you. I've tried most of them, but I always come back to
SUSE because it is the one that suits me best - that is one of the advantages of having a spare machine to play around with though
Dolphin: File browser built into the
KDE4 project and replaces
Konqueror. Similar in concept to
Nautilus or Windows Explorer. Allows the user to browse through the directories, copy, rename, delete files etc.
Drivers: Drivers allow higher level software to communicate with the hardware; you will need drivers for your hardware. Most of the common devices will come with at least a basic driver to get them working. E.g. video cards will show a
desktop and be perfectly usable, but until you download the proprietary drivers form the manufacturers website you might not get all the features, such as 3D or dual head. OSS projects such as the Radeon driver project have, however, started to achieve much closer parity with the company's own drivers.
Unlike Windows, Linux usually comes with thousands of drivers pre-installed,
although only those that are open source, which means that there is a good chance that you can plug the device in and go. If the manufacturer isn't as Linux friendly and hasn't either written an OSS driver or released enough information on their products to allow the community to write a driver, you might have to go to their website and download the relevant driver, or if you are very unlucky, you might have to dump the device and find one whose manufacturer supports their users.
When buying new hardware, always check before splashing the cash, that the manufacturer supports Linux. A lot of people buy hardware because it is a cheap bargain, only to find out, that because it is a cheap bargain with little margin for the manufacturer, they don't write Linux drivers for it. Lexmark are notorious for this with their cheap products, whilst their professional products are some of the best supported...
As an example, I bought an HP Photosmart PSC2610 a while back. Windows needed 45 mintues to install the drivers to use it properly. Conversely I plugged it into my
SUSE box and it said "aha, you have an HP printer, do you want to print to it?" Then "aha, you have connected a scanner, do you want to test it?" Then, when I plugged in a CF card into the printer,
SUSE said "aha, you've plugged a CF card into the printer, do you want to view the contents?"
DSL: (Damned Small Linux) was a
distribution designed to be very light and work with older kit - it also worked with most modern kit. It was very basic and only had a lightweight GUI, but it was enough to make use of an old machine that didn't have the horsepower to run Windows or a full-blown Linux
distribution. Unfortunately the project stalled and the community dispersed. For a good alternative, try
Tiny Core LinuxDVD Playback: DVD-Video is encrypted using the Content Scrambling System (CSS). They won't let anyone produce an
open source library for reading DVD's, because the information on the region coding is "secret". Therefore most free
distributions don't come with DVD support. A few will supply it for a charge, and I believe PowerDVD is available in a Linux version. VLC will also play DVDs.
There is a library called
libdvdcss which you can look for, which will allow DVD playback for free, but it is illegal to own and use in most western countries. Therefore you won't find a link for it here. Mm-mm not us - we would never suggest such a thing. Naughty!
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EEclipse: Eclipse is a platform independent development platform, sponsored by IBM, all of the Rational development tools now plug into Eclipse.
Emacs: A very powerful, feature-rich extensible text editor used in
Unix, Linux, MS-DOS, Windows etc.. One of the two chief protagonists in the editor wars, it was started by
Richard Stallman in 1976 and as of 2010 is still very popular in its 23rd version. Can be extended to function almost as an Integrated Development Environment.
Evolution: Evolution is a powerful PIM and email client for
GNOME. It is the preferred tool for some
distributions, although it tends to look a little clunky if run under
KDE. It is powerful, supports pop, smtp, imap and there is a plug-in for Microsoft's Exchange Server. It has To Do, Calendar and other normal functions of a PIM.
It is the
GNOME equivalent of Outlook for want of a better explanation (that is Outlook, not Outlook Express).
Ext: (EXTended file system) The standard file system for Linux. It is currently in its fourth version (ext4). Both ext3 and ext4 are journalling file systems which, to cut a long story short, means they're more crash resistant and you don't have to defrag them.
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FFedora: Fedora is a community project offshoot of the original
Red Hat project. It is free to download and there is an active community working on the project to make it better. Basically
Red Hat use it as a testing ground for their enterprise variants.
Firefox: An
open source Web Browser, available on most platforms these days. It is the biggest competitor currently to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. It is fast becoming the de facto
web browser under Linux. Nearly every
distribution installs it as their standard
web browser.
Free Software Foundation: Originally set up by
Richard Stallman to employ developers for the
GNU Project, it owns the coyright for the
GPL and now mainly maintains many documents and features that define the Free Software Movement. It still maintains the
GNU Project but is now also a very prominent campaign organisation.
Taking a much more zealous line than the
OSI and others, it insists that software should be built according to moral and ethical imperative, rather than technical merit.
F-Spot: The
open source communities answer to iPhoto. It is controversial because it uses C#, a language developed by MS.
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GGAIM: See
Pidgingcc: The GNU C Compiler is the core compiler for the Linux system. If you want to build an application from source, you will need the compiler and associated tools installed. The same goes for things like the nVidia and ATi proprietary
Drivers, the install script calls the compiler and linker.
Gentoo: A very powerful and complex
distribution, that has several levels and provides probably the best performance for any machine, but that is because most of the system is built from scratch. It is really aimed at the advanced user who enjoys taking days compiling their own system.
You can get various stages with various parts pre-compiled, and it is a very good
distribution, but not really aimed at the beginner. You have to make a lot of choices, so you need to understand much of the basics of Linux in order ot make these decisions.
GIMP: (GNU Image Manipulation Program) It is the dominant open-source high-end graphics editor and as such is often mistakenly billed as a competitor to Photoshop. It is used for production and modification of bitmap images and photos. Whilst it may not have the top-end professional tools of Photoshop, it is by far the best choice for the intermediate to advanced user. Despite its understandably unpopular interface, in terms of "bang-per-buck" it is simply unbeatable and has a huge fan base and support community.
(tb)GNOME: (GNU Network Object Model Environment) One of the Big Two
desktops for Linux. It is friendly and well designed, but lacks a little in flexibility. It is easy to use and the standard for many
distributions.
However in its attempt to make it easy to use, many think it has gone too far. In many themes one cannot, for example, change the window colours if they are not to one's liking; one has to switch to a whole different scheme instead. This keeps things simple, but can also be very frustrating.
That said, there isn't anything major wrong with it: give it a try, OSS is all about choices after all
GNU Project: An open-source, mass -collaboration project, it initiated the GNU (GNU's Not
Unix) operating system. The system was started in 1983 by
Richard Stallman, the founder of the Open Source movement and the
GPL (GNU General Public License). It is a collection of tools and utilities tied into a
Kernel. In the 1990's it switched to using the Linux
Kernel, hence the
distributions these days are called GNU/Linux in general.
GPL: (GNU General Public License)[/url] is the main license under which the Linux
distributions are released. It specifies, basically, that the availability of the source code for inspection is as high a priority as the distributed binary itself. Therefore each
distribution must make the source code available (although they can charge for access).
Groklaw: (
<<Groklaw.net>>) is a website that offers
a place where lawyers and geeks could explain things to each other and work together. It is famously tracking the fiasco that is SCO's attempt to sue IBM and others over their inclusion of SCO's proprietary
Unix code in Linux. The fact that SCO released the code, still offers some of that code for free on its servers and can't point out the exact bits which were stolen doesn't seem to phase them, but Groklaw turns it into a fun read at times.
Grub: (GRand Unified Bootloader) This is the default
Bootloader for most Linux
distributions, having taken over from
LILO several years ago. It starts up a simple menu which allows you to start whichever operating system(s) you have installed on your machine. It also allows the input of some basic boot parameters - for example if the graphic environment isn't working properly, you can issue the option "3" at boot time and the machine will only boot up until
Run Level 3 (networking and multi-user, but without a graphical environment). (see also
Run Level)
GTK+: A cross-platform toolkit, (framework and set of library routines) which is the basis of
GNOME,
Xfce and large numbers of free applications such as The
GIMP.
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Linux Glossary by David Wright and Jim Chew is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Popular examples include Mozilla Firefox, Google Chromium and Epiphany
