Overview of Linux

more recent podcasts with a little a listener mail. And this listener mail comes from my friend Ari Edney, who befriended me on Facebook, and she's swell, and she has bugged me quite a bit. I mean, she has been after me quite a bit to talk about a specific subject, and so let me just read. I'm just gonna read a little bit of her email, which is much longer than the X that I'm going to do right now.

Could you please put together a podcast extolling the virtues of Lennox as a cheap perin free in peren alternative to a Mac and recommend your favorite flavors. I have used Red Hat and Sues in the past, and if I missed if I didn't pronounce that right. I'm sorry. I don't know much about this stuff, but my favorite so far has been Ubuntu's Jaunty Jackal Loop. Thanks a whole lot. It would save us all some grief. Smiley face. I love the podcast. Erry Edney. Then, actually, we've She's

not the only person who's asked us to talk about learnings. No, We've received many, many requests to talk about Lenox, and the only reason we haven't spoken about Lennox is because Chris just hates that operating system so much. He's been just yelling like every time I'm like, hey, Chris, do you want to do Lenox? I mean, it's really cool, and he says no, No, No one uses that only losers these linex M all right, Okay, truth be told. I knew nothing about Lenox other than the very bare basics.

I've been a Windows and Mac us are pretty much my entire life. I mean Doss before Windows even and Apple before that. But I was the one who was holding us back because I just didn't have the experience or the knowledge base really to talk about it. So I know a little bit more now, but I'm gonna let Chris take the controls here and I will I will pipe in with smartass comments whenever appropriate. Uh. Well, I felt like we should probably start with a little

maybe just a little bit of history. It's funny because every time we start talking about computer history, all of a sudden, we're twenty six minutes into the podcast and we haven't gotten at the topic, right, UM, So just a little bit of history. UM. It's a derivative of Unix UM, which was an operating system originally planned in the nineteen sixties. Is a you know, a robust operating system that would be uh worked on by ultiple companies and everybody was going to come together and use this

this operating system. UM. It didn't quite work out that way. UM. Actually it ended up at Bell Labs and the project actually initially UM was called something entirely different UM. But Unix is uh you know, it was actually called Multics at first UM and UH but and then the coalition

of companies that we're gonna do this fell apart. The whole reason behind that was at that point in the in the nineteen sixties, they had all these giant computers and none of them could talk to one another because they didn't they all had their own proprietary operating system,

which is exactly like it is now. Oh um oh anyway, UM, so the coalition between the companies fell apart, but Bell Labs UM some some guys that were Bell Labs in the murray Hill, New Jersey office, UM Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Doug McElroy and jf Osana basically kept working on it because basically their bosses felt like it was a worthwhile use of their time. I guess um and and it basically panned out for them because the more they worked

on it, UM and they basically started for scratch. Once the Multics thing fell apart and the new project ended up being called Unix. UM started about spring nineteen sixty nine. We uh have a belated happy birthday to to Unix and birthday birthday to Unix. That's all I can do. Otherwise we have to pay rights. Yeah yeah, and you know, I'm sure it would give you a nice greeting in binary in response to that. UM, and we're talking giant computers here, you know, the size the size of bookcases.

Um A PDP seven actually is the first that it ran on UM and the nineteen seventy actually upgraded to a PDP eleven for only sixty five dollars. But that's sort of a test to what Bell Labs thought it could do, because you know, otherwise they wouldn't work over uh sixty five grand, you know for for an operating system UM. January one seventy isn't that what marks the Unix epoch? They had an epic. They count, They count

up from January one, nineteen seventy in seconds. So back in I think it was February thirteenth of this year, we had the moment where the counter reached one, two, three, four or five, six, seven, eight nine zero. Huh, yeah, I had no idea. I remember that it was very special. My wife was upset because I forgot Valentine's Day the next day. So where were you on Unix Day? That's almost that's almost a specialist pie day. However, I knew

I could get in with that UM. But the original Unix UM was written an assembler, a very old and uh robust computer language UM. And then Mr Thompson kept working on it, basically decided he wanted to write a new language for it, which he called be like in the or B and then uh, gradually as he made adjustments. There was a new language called new B and then UH a new one which you may have heard of, called C. So that's where those UH languages come in.

And UM, you know, there's sort of an August history there. So UM, basically, the only the only reason we're bringing up Unix here is because Lennox is a derivative of Unix. UNI.

U Unix is you know, open for people to uh to mess with and uh Lennis Torvold's who was a student at the University of Helsinki in Finland, was kind of interested in one of the derivatives called minics, and then from through he started working on his own UH Unix derived operating system, which essentially, since his name is Lenis he called it. And this is born in officially when the one colonel and so let's talk a little bit about what an operating system is before we go

into Linux, just to give a groundwork. So you're operating system this is UH. It acts sort of as a liaison between your applications and your computer's hardware. It is what facilitates your applications UH and lets them work. Otherwise there's you know, your application Stone just immediately plug into your your computer's processor. UM it also an accident, right, So the operating system is is a liaison. It's also

you can think of it as a foundation. You can think of it as like the ground floor of a building. And the applications are the stories that you you build on top of the ground floor. And uh. And so you know, we're all familiar with various kinds of operating systems. Most of the United States is familiar with Windows, for example,

at least some format of it. Um that you said, the operating system is the ground floor, but there are Windows, and there's Windows Windows being a graphics oriented operating system graphic user interface or can we as we say, uh now, granted when, back when, back when I was starting with computers, UM, I used a command line interface which was much more It required the user to be much more of a kind of a repository of bizarre and obscure commands run C, d LS, tree, so you know you had but you

had to know these different commands in order to to navigate your way around the computer. Now, the nice thing about Gooey's, of course, is that it changes all that into a graphics oriented UH interface. So that's doing all the work for you. You just have to click around to activate stuff, and all the command line things that you would normally do manually is it actually goes on in the background. So the operating system, the very core

of the operating system is called the kernel. This is these are the the core programs that interact with the hardware. It's a seed like a kernel of corn. Yes, it's not a kernel like KFC. It's not that kind of kernel, not Sanders. So so you've got the kernel, and then you have various layers built around the kernel and on top of the kernel to that make up the operating system. The kernel is the important thing to remember here because, uh, the when we talk about the Lenox one point, Oh,

that's we're really talking about the Linux kernel there. And then because Lenas decided that this operating system should be open source, he allowed anyone to look at the code and make changes and make their own derivatives. Um, and that started a pretty uh, pretty robust craze of operating system development, I would say, at least within the open source community. True. Um, So it's funny because it's it really is very much like a tree. Once you start

with Unix. I mean, they're all the other derivatives of Unix other than Lenox, like you know, Berkeley Standard Distribution, which some of you know as b S D or os X, which is not OS ten, the Mac Operating System UM, which was developed for Pyramid communters in early in NINETEENES and q n X, which you know, I know from the connection to the Amiga after they were talking about redoing the Amiga os UH using q n

X as its base. But there are tons of those, and then a lot of these have other derivatives like b s D UM shares some of the kernel with the OS ten operating system for the Mac UM, and likewise Lenox has lots and lots and lots of derivatives UM, some of which we've already mentioned, some of which are for pay. Like red Hat, UM releases different versions, and

you know they're they're certainly welcome to do that. They can package their own Linux operating system and sell it to you if you like, and you can get support from the company, which other versions of Linux you cannot. Right, there's a trade off. There are plenty of free versions of Linux. We and versions in Linux in the Linux community. We call those distribution a distribution of Linux, and so

each distribution is really a version of Linux. So it's somewhere on that that tree, that tree that branches out from the Linux kernel and uh yeah, so some of them are free, some of them you pay for the free ones. You know, there's no investment up front. But the downside of that is if something does go wrong, there's not really a person you can just easily go

to and say, hey, this isn't working. Fix it. You can go to different Linux communities, either online or you know, even if there's a group that meets in person, because there are people who do that. Um, you may be able to go to someone or some community online and and state what your problem is and get some help that way, but it's not going to be as quick as it would be if you had a dedicated helpline.

So that's one downside, um. But the flip side is you've got people who really want this stuff to work, so they're gonna work very hard to fix any problems that that exists on the back end. You know, if it's a user error, that's one thing, but if it's something that's fundamentally wrong with part of the operating system, you can bet there's someone out there working to fix it. Yeah.

And I think it's funny because I've talked to so many people who really love Lenox and they seem a little surprised in some way that Lennox is not more popular UM. And I think I think it comes down to a lot of the In a lot of cases, the people who really really like Lenox UM don't mind

getting their hands dirty a little bit. They they're kind of interested in trying to make it work and figuring out how to bridge gaps that might be bridged otherwise, um by a company operating an operating system, offering an operating system, or you know, the company in between that and the company oper offering I can't talk today offering a a program that you buy. And sometimes you know, you go, okay, well I've got this file, but I'm not sure what player I can use to play this file,

and in some cases there's not one. UM. So you don't call, you don't get on the phone with tech supporter or email somebody. You have to start searching on forums or talking to your friends who know how to use Linux and saying, well, you know, what is this thing? You know learning to program yourself. Yeah, and that's and I think a lot of people, um, you know myself included in in some cases, are just lazy. They just

want it to work and they don't want it. They know that if you want the plug in for so and so, you go to their website and download it or that it's even if your browser is gonna prompt you, hey, I can't play this. You want me to go get the plug in for you? Um, thankfully. Uh. There's tons and tons of software that's cross platform enough, like Mozilla's Firefox.

Firefoxes Firefox regardless of whether you're using it on Mac Windows are Linux, and Firefox is pretty smart and goes, well, you know, hey, I know there's a plug in for this that works for Linux. Would you like me to go get it for you? Um? You know. So that I think that helps. That's going to help adoption more. But I think there's that's why there's that gap, as people just want to turn on their computer and have it work for them. Well, there's the other problem is

that there's not one easily recognizable flavor of Linux. You know, when you when you're talking about Linux, you are talking about hundreds of different variations none that there are a few that are really popular and leap to mind faster than others, Ubuntu being one of the the big ones right now. But uh, you know, if you're talking to someone who just said, you know, you just tell my I use a Linux based machine, and they go when they do a search for Linux, you can get confused

very quickly. You know. When you're talking about Windows. Yeah, there's still a lot of variations. I mean, there's still versions depending on what you know. It is a Windows Vista, is an XP is it? Do you have Windows seven early? What did you do? Um? But you know it's lenox. That problem is compounded because you're talking about hundreds of variations, not just you know, a few, like even even up to a dozen. If you're talking about the Windows ones.

If you're talking about Max, you're talking about you know, leopard or snow leopard or pole cat or whatever the hell they're calling that. Um, I don't know, they've got a cat fixation over there. But uh, yeah, it's I think that's one of the big barriers is that, you know, it's it's there's not an easy thing to point to and say this is what I'm talking about. Like you said, This is one variation of what I'm talking about. I think, um,

there's something else too. People don't trust it because it's free. Well that's so too, you know. You think about, well, if it's free, that must mean that it's somehow inferior, when when really most I would I would think that a lot of Lenox fans would argue that the opposite is true, that because you have this big, open community all dedicated to trying to make stuff that works really well, um, that the products are in some ways superior to the

things that are available on the market. Uh. We were talking earlier before we started recording about the fact that if something if something is is missing a feature or a function, you've got developers out there who may recognize that and will work to go ahead and include that so that the next version of that has that functionality. Whereas if you are purchasing a big name product from Apple or Microsoft, you may have to wait a really long time before they get around to adding more features

and functions because it's whatever the corporation deems important. In Linux, you're talking about what the community deems important, and that's likely to be a whole variety of things. Yeah. Well, and they're gonna be looking at it from a you know, a user and developer standpoint, as opposed to what's going to make money. You know. So, yeah, well I can

I can tell you that. Um, you know, if those people are discounting Linux because it's free, sorry pardon the pun, Um, they're wrong because frankly you can do if you're if you're looking for I mean, this story goes back to the whole low cost thing. Um, You're you're totally getting far more than what you're paying for with it, because basically what you're paying for is the cost of a c D. You download a distribution of Linux, you burn it onto a CD, then use that c D to

boot your computer and install Linux. Actually, in most cases, you can run the distribution right from the CD and you don't even have try it out. Yeah, that's that's one of the really nice things I like about Lenox is that if you are nervous about installing this operating system on your machine, if you think, well, what happens if I don't like it? You know, I've got Windows

pre installed. What am I gonna do? A lot of these allow you to boot directly from a CD, so you can test it out, see if you like it, and then make your decision based upon that experience. So if you decide, you know what this is neat and all, but I prefer the functionality I have with Windows. There's no buyer's remorse or anything. Yea, yea, and you can you could do this. I mean, if you think about

what most people do with their computers. You know, they get online, they check email, they use the web, they use productivity software. Wait we said most people. Yeah, I didn't say that, Uh, just pointing out that that was Jonathan um in case you were listening. Of course, they know what your voice sounds like. Um No. I mean for what most people do at their desks, you know, at at their jobs, you don't need Windows for that at all. You could do Linux and use all free software.

You're just paying for your hardware. You could download a distribution of Linus, and everything you need to do right there is free. You can listen to music, you can chat. All those programs are actually they're all pre installed with some distributions. I installed um Bun two on our test machine and it's get all that stuff pre installed. Now.

There of course, otherre are other issues. For instance, if your Office does not adopt Linux completely, you know, corporate wide, then you may have compatibility issues if they're running other proprietary software depending on what it is, and some stuff like you know, things like basic word documents and things. They're they're Linux programs that will easily open those up

and you can make edits and all that kind of stuff. Well, I mean, open Office is available for Mac, Windows and Linux, and it has its own standard, but it also reads

and writes files in dot doc format. Yeah, that so you can share with Windows people exactly so, But if you are using any other proprietary software, let's let's say that goes beyond just the word processing or spreadsheets or whatever, that might be a problem because it means, you know, if it if it's designed to run on Windows, Uh, it's not going to run on Lenox unless you have either some sort of emulator or someone has built a version of it specifically for Lenox. So there are there

are other barrier. There's the whole software barriers. The same thing in a way that that prevents a lot of people from switching over to Max because they sit there and they'll say, wow, this is a really cool machine. It's very sexy and sleek and pretty, but I can't run blah blah blah on it because it's they don't make it available for Max. Well that that same problem exists for Linux to some extent. Then again, there are

solutions to that too. You could use uh Sun's virtual Box, provided you're not a company, because it's well, I mean you could, you just have to pay for it. But if you are a user at home, you can use virtual box and run Windows and Linux at the same time simultaneously on your machine. Or you can always dual boot, which you are not running them at the same time, but you get to choose which operating system you want to use. True enough, but that does compartmentalize your resources.

So but if you are looking for an easy way to take a computer, even a lower power machine, because Lenox uses many fewer resources than say, I don't know Vista, it's not as big a draw on your computer's hardware. UM. And I'll say why in a second, UM, you could totally use an inexpensive machine UM with less processor requirement and uh you know, in free installation of of Linux and you're pretty much off and running UM. Now, I mean,

that's why it's so popular. With netbooks is because those you know, those machines don't have nearly the process of power that a full sized laptop would have, which is why Lenox is found on some of those. UM The thing is, uh, this and this might affect people, especially uh us Mac users who like everything fancy. Now that we've got to S ten. Uh Yeah, Linux just isn't as pretty in a lot of cases. I mean, there are ways around that too. But actually that's one of

the things that I've read from the Linux community. Two is they're trying there. They want to spice up the uh, the look and feel, the gooey a little bit more. So. They wanna they want to kind of adopt that esthetic approach that Apple has masters. Yeah, and and the reason why if they can get more people and gain critical mass, you know, they could they could take over the world.

And people say the operating system war is over, but I think it's just a matter of time before somebody comes out with something better, and Lenox could very well be that. Well. And you look at some of the other UM operating systems out there that are based on the same sort of stuff. I mean Android, the Android operating system for Google phones, that's got based off the Linux kernel. Well, that's that's true. We didn't talk about

any of the other stuff. There's tons of stuff. You may have something running Linux in your home right now. For example, if you have a Ti Vo, it's got Lenox in it. Lots of things have linings in it. Yep, um, yeah, it's it's it's a very versatile operating system, very robust and uh and like you said, because it demands so compared to other operating systems. The demands are so low for for hard um for processing power. It can run

on lots of different things. Now, granted, even the people who love Lennox say you shouldn't think of Lennox as a way to turn your old machine into a cutting edge like lightning fast computer. That's not that's not going to happen. But it will allow your computer to run and operating system that allows you access to most of the programming that you're accustomed to, even on an older machine. It extends the the useful life of a computer by a few years. Really. Uh, you know, I've got computer.

I've got a couple of computers at my home that probably couldn't run I know, I've got one that couldn't run Windows Vista if I wanted to, it just doesn't have the capacity for it. But it could run a Linux based operating system without too much trouble. Now, again, it's not gonna go lightning fast. It's not going to suddenly turn my machine into this miracle computer. But it is going to work, and it might run Linux fashion

that run Windows. Um. You know, I I just think it's uh it's one of those things that I'm really glad that I tried using a while and it's got some definite advantages um to the Windows operating system. A little while ago for the blog, I wrote about this um uh third party app store for Mac called Bodega. Well, actually, Lennox has something very much like that built in. It's not, uh like exactly like the app store, but it's called

the Synaptic Package Manager. And so say you're looking for something that would run that will play music files, you can go in and search those and see if you can find something. If you say, oh, well, this looks interesting, maybe i'll try that out, you can tell it to go ahead and install it. It will take it will get all the files it needs and install it on your machine for you without you having to search on Google, for example, and look for things. Well, I don't know

which one is the best. You know, you might be able to You'll have all of them right there. And UM, I'm pretty sure that not every piece of Linux software is in it UM. Again, I have somewhat limited experience with Lenox to only a few dozen hours with it, But lots of is in it. And you can generally find programs that you need UM just by looking in the package manager, without having to go online to the web and start fooling around with that. So I think

that's a nice feature. I think that the operating system should help you find software. It's like, well, you know, what do you want to do? You want, you know, to balance your checkbook, while here are some financial programs, try one of these. You want to build a website, here's some cuff for it. I'll help you do that. I think it's it's nice. And it also has UM a version of what the Mac os has, a spaces, basically multiple desktops that you can flip back and forth between.

So it uh, it's sort of like virtually having more than one monitor, and I think that's a very nice feature. I would like to get on my Windows desktop that I use at work. I've got it on my Mac at home. I've got it, you know, on the Linux test machines. I'd like to see Windows do that too, Yeah, yeah, where you can set up different approaches depending on what

you want to use the computer for. Ye yeah, Like I don't necessarily need my Neo Steam uh m m O RPG icon sitting right there on my desktop for my my work layout, but you might need to access it, you know, in between, so you can flip over, you know, to the other to the desktop. I use that sometimes for music when I have the Pandora up and running

in my in my browser. But I may not want to look at that, and I keep you know, and keep sting in the way I can move it to the other desktop backing it again, like as useful, It's very efficient and U I've got to say, if I had a choice between Linux and Windows, you know in general, and probably choose Linux just because I like it a little bit more and the more I know about it, the more I like it. And we should also point out that Linux is also very very popular for things

like on servers. A lot of servers run Linux, and a lot of work stations, so stations that are usually used to to check up on things like servers and server farms. Um. And part of that is because it's it is bust and yet again it doesn't demand too many resources, so more of that machine's resources are dedicated to what it's supposed to do, which is serve content or route traffic or whatever. Um. So yeah, that's that's another one of the more popular uses for for Linux.

In fact, a lot of the really really big data centers are filled when machines running Linux Googles for example. Yeah, and um, you know, if you go hunting for a Linux distro to download, you're going to find your you will find two versions generally, uh on virtually anybody's servers, at least the ones I've checked. You're gonna see desktop or server. Like, well, you know, I'm gonna choose desktop

because that's what I'm going to use it for. But you could get a PC and add the server software on it and you can run your run your own home server, which I've actually considered doing. Yeah, because I've got a couple of machines that are just gathering dust and if everything's in working order, then I might I keep saying this though I talked about turning one of them into a media center many many episodes ago, and now I don't have TV. I went the opposite way.

I went the I went. I don't know how I turned left when I was supposed to go right. It was that darn Albuquerque sign. Always gets me, always gets me. All right, Well, I think we should. I think we should revisit this in the future. And er Andy did ask, like, what what flavors of Linux do you like? Well, I've only used the ubun two and so UM. I liked it, but I have nothing to compare it against UM. I have very little. I admit I have very little too

compared against UM. I considered DSL, which is damn small, Linux a very much smaller distribution. You know what, I have Android. Now that I think about it, I guess I could argue, but it's not the same thing. It's I have the TVO operating system, right, Yeah, androids awesome, But yeah, it's just it just it's just based on the Linux kernels. Um. Yeah, I mean I tried what I thought. It was pronounced susy. The novel actually that that distribution is called is called Susy s U s

E and it's UM from Novel the company. It is free, UM, and I messed with it a little bit. I still prefer one too, a little bit more. UM. And I have used another very very specialized version of Linux, but it is for computers. It's called sugar Stick UM. It basically is a distribution of Linux that is designed to fit on a one gigabyte thumb drive as educational four kids. UM. And the graphics are very very simple so that it

fits on that small drive. But UM, it's it's pretty cool you can boot from this little thumb drive and use the system. Of course it's not you know one too, and that's the one I'm used the most. UM. I did use Kubon too a little bit. UM, but it uh, you know, they're so similar because both of them are from canonical so um, you know, yeah, it's it's my favorite too, But I don't have as many distributions to compare it to, right, So sorry that we haven't experienced

the whole wide world of Lenox. We'll keep playing with it. What we have experience we've enjoyed so far. Yeah, I haven't had any horror horror stories at least so No, Nope. The only the only thing I had in trouble with was installing initially, and that was a few when I actually started using I tried to use the six point four Oh sorry six point oh four, and I had so much trouble installing that. But with uh Gutsy Gibbon and Johnty Jackalope, I really didn't have that much trouble

at all. But I don't think I tried intrepid ibex. Yes, and karmit Koala is due out this fall, so um that the next version of of Ubuntu Linux is not far off if you're ready to switch from Polecat with naming things after animals. Microsoft is not on board with this, and Lenox even has a cool uhge chosen by Lennis Torvald's himself, also open source. You can you can use it's under the CANW so you can use it freely

if you like. Um. No, I was gonna say that Windows ye, Windows seven doesn't follow the animal thing, and yet we can't figure out where the seven comes from. Every time I count up, I don't come up with seven whenever I go through the different versions. So if you know where the seven comes from, Microsoft Windows seven right us tech stuff at how stuff works dot com because we don't know. Yeah, I'm sure there's some weird there's some weird math in there where it works out.

But you know, you just have to ignore this. And Mr Gates, why if it's balmer, then it'll be a very entertaining email with profanity maybe maybe the word developers eighty times. Uh. Well, that's that's everything I've got for for life. You're done, you know. I hope that. I hope that was a good Lenox episode. I really do intend to come back to it. I want to. I want to keep going with it and come back to it because I could use the nap um. All right,

ladies and gentlemen. That brings us to our second installment of Listener more so pleasant. Yes, isn't it nice? So here's our listener mail. This comes from Larry. Just listen to the three D Printing podcast. I can't believe you change the listener mail sound frownie face. Your podcast has never made me this sad before mentioned so pleasant as to risk, sigh as to risk. I was so shocked I couldn't even really listen to the podcast. I guess we'll go back and re listen to it now, Larry,

I'm sorry. We had a lot of people writing us and saying that they found my listener mail delivery very annoying, and the Clackson even more so. In fact, there are people who are saying, keep the way you say listener mail, but get rid of the alarm. So eventually we decided, well, we'll try and and switch it around, and so we did. We we got the new sound effects, and I decided I would do listener mail a little differently and hopefully you'll get used to it and you'll come to love

it the way you love the old one. And if not, I suggest all the people who love the old way go into the thunder dome with all the people who hated the old way, and you fight it out amongst yourselves, and whoever comes out, that's the version I will do from then on. So so eight and seventy five intern one leaves what are stuff? From the B side had an opening? Well, we can ask around. I hear there's some shifting in some of the podcasts, So just keep

your ears open. Techonic stuff technics alright, So if any of you have anything else you want to add, I've already given the email address once but once more. It's tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. Do you want to learn more about various operating systems of other things that make computers go beep? You can check that out at our website how stuff works dot com and Chris and I will talk you again, probably about Linux really soon for more illness and thousands of other topics.

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