Linux is a UNIX© clone operating system created and managed by Linus Torvalds based on Minix. Linus Torvalds has released version 0.02 in 1991, version 1.0 in 1994, version 2.6 (current) in 2003.

For the more than a decade, Linux has been one of the most commonly used and most reliable operating systems for servers in the market, no matter what paid third-party reports that are plaguing the internet indicate.

Most distributions of Linux include a collection of programs that run on the Linux kernel like X, KDE, Gnome and OpenOffice. Under the Linux umbrella, you can get RHEL (paid subscription, enterprise licensing), Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Debian, Slackware, Novell SUSE (paid subscription, enterprise licensing), Turbolinux, Yellow Dog, Linspire (paid subscription, licensing), aLinux and many others. You can buy the disks for any Linux distribution from the developers or third party vendors or you can also download most versions of Linux from many sites legally, thanks to various open source licenses or you can buy them.

Installing Linux

Before trying to install Linux, get a full inventory of what your computer has. You might have to help the installer recognize the hardware. Also make sure that your hardware manufacturer supports the distribution of Linux of your choice.

There are many ways to install Linux (from a CD-ROM, FTP, HTTP, NFS, a DOS partition, etc). If you are a beginner or lazy (as I am), do the installation from a CD-ROM. Just put the disk in the CD-ROM drive, wait and boot. Do not forget that the installation will erase the partition where you install the operating system. If you want to test Linux without doing any changes or erasing your hard drive, get a copy of any live disk like Knoppix or Gnoppix.

A simple way to install Linux is to create two main disk partitions, a swap and a system native. As a rule of thumb, make the swap partition (virtual memory, written to disk) twice the RAM that your machine has. For example if the machine has 256 MB of RAM, assign 512 MB for swap. Allocate the remainder of the hard drive for the root partition, type 83 (Linux native). Make sure that the root partition is primary and bootable. You can also create a partition for user accounts (/home) and a partition for user installations (/usr). Neither of the latter two partitions are destroyed when upgrading the operating system. To create the partitions, refer to the manual included with the system that you are installing. A good technical reference is the downloadable Slackware Book even if Slackware (one of my favorites) is not your distribution of choice.

Then again, if you want to install Linux easily and painlessly with mere questions to configure the system, you can try Ubuntu based on Debian. I have been running Ubuntu for a couple of years already without any complaints other than installing the codecs to play discs.

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