Fred Palma | Computer Scientist

• Linux — a free open source operating system created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds. The hearth of the system is Linux Kernel, originally constructed by Torvalds, then surrounded by graphic shells such as KDE and GNOME (now with also novell 3D window managers Beryl and Metisse), and also many applications: office, programming, multimedia, etc. Despite a thousand individuals and many companies participate the project after 1991, Linux Kernel is maintained by Torvalds till now. Commencing the last 1990′s Linux project is sponsored by bulky corporations such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Novell, and others. Linux distribution, in contrast to other operating systems on sale without applications, provides as possible complete set of applications accessed to such a kind of operating system. This is why once installed on computer, Linux doesn’t require additional software in most cases (despite any additional program or update can be installed). There are many distributions of Linux, generated from the source code by different teams of developers. The distrbutions differ by installation method and set of programs. We present only a few main Linux distributions most popular between corporate users and individuals.

  • Debian — the largest of Linux distributions started in 1993 by Ian Murdock. Debian distribution includes almost all (a few thousands) applications developed for Linux. Debian is available as stable, testing, and experimental versions. Debian stable is highly reliable: once set up on a computer it never require re-installation. This is why Debian is most popular among the internet servers.

  • Knoppix — a live Linux system on CD/DVD created and maintained by Klaus Knopper on the basis of Debian. Knoppix-Math — a related project by a few Universities in Japan — is containing much additional science software, and is oriented to scientists. Knoppix can work direct from CD/DVD or be installed on hard disk. Yet Knoppix DVD is the solely live Linux systems which contain complete set of TeX tools including, aside for teTeX, the perfect TeX editors such as Kile, TeXmacs, and many others (all the applications are allowed to install on hard disk).

  • Ubuntu — “humanity to others” (an ancient African word) — a Debian based project started by Mark Shuttleworth, and sponsored by his Canonical Ltd. Being a perfect configured system in one live CD or DVD alloved to install on hard disk, Ubuntu is fast-to-run. A large number of additional software can be downloaded from Ubuntu/Debian repository. Ubuntu Linux has modifications different by user interface: Ubuntu (GNOME), Kubuntu (KDE), Xubuntu (Xfce) and Edubuntu (school-related project). CD versions of those can be ordered for free shipping throughout the world from the Ubuntu web-site.

  • Mandriva — formerly Mandrake Linux started by Gaël Duval — a French-made distribution of Linux currently sponsored by Mandriva Co. Mandriva Linux is most eqipped by fresh versions of hardvare drivers and multimedia software. Owing to the fact Mandriva is much popular between individuals. Mandriva is accessed as live CD and 4CD (1DVD) install sets.

  • SUSE — a German-made distribution of Linux (now — sponsored by Novell, USA). High quality of the distribution and many features oriented to everyday use get SUSE Linux attractive to individuals.

  • Fedora — a follower of the famous RedHat Linux, sponsored by RedHat Inc. Being truly experimental system, Fedora joined most fresh versions of Linux software (a drawback is that the lack of support for multimedia).

  • Slackware — a “Linux consisting of bricks”, created in 1993 and maintained till now by Patrick Volkerding. The main advantage of such a construction is that one can build Linux system by his own while installation, doing choose for its system components. The complicate installation process, oriented to experienced users (not recommended to beginners), pays for system configuration satisfying any of bizzare requirements.

  • Gentoo — an unique Linux distribution created by Daniel Robbins. Gentoo Linux consists of just source codes, which should be compiled to executable binary files while installation (the other versions of Linux present pre-compiled executables). Gentoo is good to experts (not recommended to beginners).

• WineHQ — an open source program shell running MS Windows applications on top of Linux and Mac OS X. WineHQ is a completely free alternative implementation of the MS Windows applications consisting of 100% non-Microsoft source code.

• ReactOS — It is an open source NT kernel OS, planned to be compatible with NT 5.x and possibly with NT 6.0 (Vista/2008) in the future. ReactOS aims to achieve complete binary compatibility with both applications and device drivers meant for NT and XP operating systems, by using a similar architecture and providing a complete and equivalent public interface. ReactOS is the most complete working model of a MS Windows like operating system, consisting of 100% non-Microsoft source code. Beta version will not appear before 2009, while first production alpha – before 2008. (see ReactOS Roadmap).
  

Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD, sometimes called Berkeley Unix) is the UNIX derivative distributed by the University of California, Berkeley, starting in the 1970s.

Historically, BSD has been considered as a branch of UNIX — ‘BSD UNIX’, because it had shared the initial codebase and design with the original UNIX by AT&T and collaborated on the development in the pioneer days of UNIX. It was widely identified with the versions of UNIX available for workstation-class systems, that can be attributed to the ease with which it could be licensed and the familiarity it found among the founders of many technology companies during the 1980s. The familiarity often came from using similar systems — notably DEC‘s ULTRIX and Sun‘s SunOS — during their education. Though BSD itself was largely superseded by the System V Release 4 and OSF/1 systems in the 1990s (both of which incorporated BSD code), the modified codebase as open source — mostly derived from 4.4BSD-Lite have seen increasing use and development recently.

Today, the term of “BSD” is often non-specifically used to refer to any of the BSD descendants, e.g. FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD, which forms a branch of Unix-like operating systems.

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