Intro to Linux talk

This is an Intro to Linux talk. It covers basic information including an overview of Linux, the command line, using X, and basic system maintainence. The presentation of this material runs about 3 hours, and typically includes some hand-on trial of the various material covered in the talk.

For the HTML version of the talk, go to http://www.linux.ncsu.edu/lug/lectures/intro/intro_html/.

You can get the whole talk in html format in a tar ball here: intro-to-linux.tar.gz

For the Open Office format, click here: Intro to Linux.sxi.

Some materials related to the lecture:
hello_world.tar.gz
LinNeighborhood-0.6.5.tar.gz

Some things that should be added to the talk:

• Virtual Terminals - pressing ctrl+alt+F2 through ctrl+alt+F6 will talk you to additional command line login sessions. ctrl+alt+(F7 or F8) will return you to your X session.
• vi - some additional commands.
  :q! - quit without over-writing file
  :w - write out file (without quitting)
  :wq - write out file and quit.
• tab completion - if you type the beginning of any command, then tab, bash (the shell) will complete as much of it as possible. Hitting tab again will print a list of all your possibilities for finishing the command.
• find - find is another utility that can be used to find applications. It will search recursivley and print out all the matches it sees.
• lpd - another system daemon. It runs in the background and accepts print requests from applications. You use 'lpr' to print to it (or the print button in a gui application), then it goes to a directory (a spool), to wait to get printed. 'lpq' prints the queue waiting to get printed, and 'lprm' will remove a job waiting to get printed
• It should be noted that many of the commands in the talk require parameters, or arguments, in order to function. Ie 'lpr' really needs the name of a file to follow it, 'lpr filename'.
• modprobe - will guess at a modules options. Otherwise you have to specify them manually or in /etc/modules.conf
• initrd - In some cases modules the kernel needs to boot have to be loaded before the filesystem is loaded. The initrd is a ram disk image that has the basic modules built into it, so that the kernel can get to the point where it can mount the file system and finish booting
• Running Windows applications - there are a variety of applications that allow one to run certain Windows applications under Linux. The are:
  • wine - http://www.winehq.com. A windows emulator.
  • crossover - http://www.codeweavers.com. A cleaned up version of wine with an installation utility.
  • vmware - http://www.vmware.com. Creates "virtual machines" that you can install any OS on, on top of Linux.
  • win4lin - http://www.netraverse.com. Another windows emulator.

For questions, you can email Pam Huntley at pam_huntley@pobox.com.