In addition to steadfast stalwarts like Fortran and C/C++, many scripting and other computer languages are at home on (or were even designed to work best with) Linux. The Linux kernel must be able to interact with them in standard ways. It is the scheduler that must select the …

The module data structure is marked as DELETED and it is unlinked from the list of kernel modules. Most licenses of the proprietary software systems are expensive and should be renewed every year. These range from simple memory protection schemes to complex page hierarchies. You don't need to spend tons …

It would not matter to me which distro was being advocated as long as the advocate is not dumping on another distro as a means to favour their own distro of choice. The IDE subsystem registers IDE controllers and not disks with the Linux kernel. I used a proprietary package …

Therefore Linux adds a call to a tidy up routine which will restore the original blocked mask onto the call stack of the signalled process. If your computer came with a copy of Windows, then you paid for it, even if the store didn't tell you about that. This credit-card …

The character % introduces a job name. At kernel initialization time, the address families built into the kernel register themselves with the BSD socket interface. Both are very different from proprietary software (also commonly called commercial software), which is software that is controlled by a company or an individual. Source code …

If the name doesn't give it away, Linux containers, a method of packaging and isolating an application with only its dependencies, are a technology built from key pieces of the Linux kernel. Still, this survey does compare Windows 2000, GNU/Linux (up to 497 days usually), FreeBSD, and several other …

Workspaces is a feature I would never trade for anything else. Not only you earn more capabilities as a developer, you also learn (sometimes the hard way) how to solve issues, monitor your machine for potential problems, configure different components and more. Putting morals before convenience and ease may be …

Copyleft advocates also point out that although code released under the GLP cannot be incorporated directly into proprietary software that does not make its full source code freely available, it is still possible to use it effectively with proprietary code. If the substring matches more than one job, bash reports …

The receiving IP layer uses that protocol identifier to decide which layer to pass the received data up to, in this case the TCP layer. Kernel modules, like the kernel itself, are usually written in C. When Linux fixes up that page fault it finds the vm_area_struct data structure describing …

Windows implementation is very high-level. In the event of a total implosion, much of the software can be reinstalled with batch files made up of multiple sudo apt install statements. Ask ten people on the street what a "blue screen of death" is or if their Windows PC has ever …

You may have already noticed that in order to execute shell script the file needs to be made executable by use of chmod +x FILENAME command. The kernel calls the modules initialization routine and, if it is successful it carries on installing the module. The g++ C++ compiler is ISO …

Many times, it does this in order to avoid vice, but counterintuitively, only ends up creating more of it in the process. At kernel initialization time, the address families built into the kernel register themselves with the BSD socket interface. This subshell reinitializes itself, so that the effect is as …

Note that HP-UX, GNU/Linux (usually), Solaris and recent releases of FreeBSD cycle back to zero after 497 days, exactly as if the machine had been rebooted at that precise point. Each hardware controller has its own control and status registers (CSRs) and these differ between devices. The reason is …

This makes kernel memory deallocation easier as the smaller free blocks can be recombined into bigger blocks. This means that the process can continue to run. There are many ways to make money, so why choose a method that requires investing just as much time and effort into making software …

The umbrella of system programming often includes kernel development, or at least device driver writing. The Linux kernel is the core of the operating system. If user space were allowed to manipulate directories without the kernel's mediation, it would be too easy for a single simple error to corrupt the …

First of all the DMA controller knows nothing of virtual memory, it only has access to the physical memory in the system. If they will then it removes the sem_queue data structure from the operations pending list and applies the semaphore operations to the semaphore array. Institutions that rely solely …

This is especially true for large contributions, new features, or standalone code, like a driver for a specific piece of hardware. Knowledge and information are the building blocks of change. A runnable process is one which is waiting only for a CPU to run on. In addition, in the open …

When the kernel is asked to open a pathname like this, it walks each directory entry (called a dentry inside of the kernel) in the pathname to find the inode of the next entry. At the same time, many executives have a crude interpretation of its value to corporations?"It's …

If you're interested in writing code for the Linux kernel itself, a good place to get started is in the Kernel Newbies FAQ, which will explain some of the concepts and processes you'll want to be familiar with. This chapter describes how the Linux kernel manages the physical devices in …

Binary compatibility is maintained across a given major version of glibc, at the very least. Does it support my critical applications? Linux aims toward POSIX and SUS compliance. Of course, most system calls have only a couple of parameters.

Getting Enlightenment to work with a dual screen monitor

Writing a byte to the middle of a file overwrites the byte previously located at that offset. Conceptually, nothing covered thus far would prevent multiple names resolving to the same inode. Without this surrounding commitment, IT decision-makers can be left in the dark...and that's not a good place to …

Where the timers go in the timer table is statically defined (rather like the bottom half handler table bh_base). In fact, Richard Stallman wouldn't have bothered writing the GNU system if he thought his project wouldn't mean anything. In addition, in the open source world, vulnerabilities are discussed publicly, so …

When a command terminates on a fatal signal, bash uses the value of 128+signal as the exit status. Let's look at creating an image file so we can start a container which we created. Much of enterprise IT's excitement is focused on advancements at the application level (and rightly …

Unlike the MINIX filesystem before it, ext could address up to 2GB of storage and handle 255-character filenames. The size of a file is measured in bytes and is called its length. In addition, as Richard Stallman famously put it, these programs are also "free as in speech, not as …

Open source software isn't free from cost, of course. Where in I/O space the common peripherals (IDE controller, serial port, floppy disk controller and so on) have their registers has been set by convention over the years as the PC architecture has developed. Also there is no mechanism for …

Very small company leadership, with less than ten personnel, often incorrectly assume that interpersonal issues and technical decisions are not correlated at all. The kernel does not impose any restrictions on concurrent file access. Each command comes with a manual page which can be used to learn about its function …

If you have spent a lot of time on Windows this may take a while to get used to. The source code for proprietary software is usually not made publicly available, or, if it is, there are generally severe restrictions on its use. This means that the maximum number of …

The new module also exports symbols to the kernel and insmod builds a table of these exported images. Notably, Linux is the fastest growing operating system released to date. More importantly, Linux strives to behave in accordance with POSIX and SUS requirements. WinModems lack some basic hardware on the modem …

Some operating systems, such as VMS, provide highly structured files, supporting concepts such as records. Linux maintains the set of registered block devices as the blkdevs vector. A process is also associated with various system resources, which are arbitrated and managed by the kernel. Its own Software Center has tons …

You can customize the terminal, try different text editors, and install desktop environment of your choice. The results of such concurrent accesses rely on the ordering of the individual operations, and are generally unpredictable. Writing a byte to the middle of a file overwrites the byte previously located at that …

To me, that is the distasteful and damaging side of the Linux world. Another difference, particularly as compared to a Windows system is that many Linux users prefer to compile their applications from source code. While Linus hacked away on the fledgling Linux kernel, Remy Card worked on the first …

So when you're writing something in your word processor and you want to check out something on the web, no need to review all your windows to find your browser, stacked all the way behind the others. If you are not already familiar with the GNU GPL, the best way …

The GNU C library provides more than its name suggests. The tools philosophy was to have small programs to accomplish a particular task instead of trying to develop large monolithic programs to do a large number of tasks. Let it suffice to say that not every single bug has been …

It's basically community version of Red Hat without any fee or support. Thus, there is no term free mathematics. Soon enough this will become an extremely tedious task destined for failure. The caricatures speak of wizard-like "graybeards" sitting behind glowing green screens, writing C code and shell scripts, powered by …

Each user belongs to one or more groups, including a primary or login group, listed in /etc/passwd, and possibly a number of supplemental groups, listed in /etc/group. Manipulating symbolic links, on the other hand, requires special system calls. All the documentation and manuals are there, and examples are …

Users of closed source operating systems must report the bug to the manufacturer and wait for the manufacturer to develop, test, and release a solution to the problem, known as a hot fix. Unlike the MINIX filesystem before it, ext could address up to 2GB of storage and handle 255-character …

Resources include timers, pending signals, open files, network connections, hardware, and IPC mechanisms. Originally, gcc was GNU's version of cc, the C Compiler. What would happen if ACME went out of business or stopped supporting the software due to lack of sales? Collectively the memory space that the hardware peripherals …

Richard Stallman's stallman.org is a perfect example. This behaviour has spawned a whole new wave of viruses and is a gross breach of privacy. It will recognize a multiline header if the last character on each line but the last is a left parenthesis or comma. Much of enterprise …

Sections are linear chunks of the object code that load into linear chunks of memory. The size of a file is measured in bytes and is called its length. Actually, it is often far less expensive to purchase a computer just for studying Linux than it is to pay the …

The alternative is to have a micro-kernel structure where the functional pieces of the kernel are broken out into separate units with strict communication mechanisms between them. If one process crashes it will not cause another process in the system to crash. Unquoted text is assumed to be a function …