The second essential factor for a positive and efficient conversion to Linux is directly related to the Hardware Factor. When the last process sharing the memory detaches from it, the pages of the shared memory current in physical memory are freed, as is the shmid_ds data structure for this shared …

On i386, for example, a register is used for each possible parameter-registers ebx, ecx, edx, esi, and edi contain, in order, the first five parameters. As users developed ways around the methods, the methods kept getting progressively harsher, severely punishing casual proprietary software users who had been legally using and …

There are editors, compilers and interpreters for nearly every language ever created, debuggers, parser generators, you name it. What exactly do the kernel and the C library provide? Whereas it had previously been the norm to assist colleagues and freely share ideas and software, such cooperation suddenly became forbidden and …

Some tasks are best suited to a GUI, word processing and video editing are great examples. You can easily configure and access any corner in your computer, monitor processes and manage virtual environments for different projects. First is the Human Factor, which includes the psychological issues with change, any kind …

The system itself is designed with a very open-ended, feature-minded approach. I moved on to larger applications and contributions. Other drivers can be loaded as kernel modules when they are needed. It would not be enough to stop here, though.

Get the most out of ClusterKnoppix

Sustainable technologies are about ensuring access to knowledge forever. Traditionally, all Unix programming was system-level programming. Critical mass will be reached when people are given a CD that they can install just as easily as Windows and will provide them with all the tools that they are accustomed to on …

Most of this is going to be very important for your management of the machine. In the rare event of a system call with more than five parameters, a single register is used to point to a buffer in user space where all of the parameters are kept. That aside …

Currently, in Distrowatch's past 6 months ranking, it sits at #3. Linux clearly needed a better filesystem! Named pipes act like regular pipes but are accessed via a file, called a FIFO special file. You can interpret the answer into the GUI tool of your choice.

Fundamentals of dpkg

In Linux, blocks are generally larger than the sector, but they must be smaller than the page size (the smallest unit addressable by the memory management unit, a hardware component) Common block sizes are 512 bytes, 1 kilobyte, and 4 kilobytes. Even so, most software developers, even those who have …

The master disk on the primary controller is /dev/hda and the slave disk is /dev/hdb. It is being widely used in embedded devices such as mobile phones and PDAs (Personal Data Assistants). All the linux commands like grep, cat and ls can be pipelined easily. It sure isn't …

Most of the time you will be issuing commands. This is because IP addresses are simply an addressing concept, the ethernet devices themselves have their own physical addresses. Advocates of copyleft respond by pointing out that there is no such thing as absolute freedom. To see what is meant by …

By applying the foundational principals behind two factors, even the most techno-phobic and proprietary software entrenched small sized companies can painlessly move to Linux on the Desktop. It looks at each member of the operations pending queue (sem_pending) in turn, testing to see if the semphore operations will succeed this …

Becoming familiar with Linux can result in a substantial financial savings because the software (both the operating system and the application programs) is available for free and because Linux can run on older and cheaper computers. In 1978, Kernighan and Ritchie wrote, "The C Programming Language," a book that is …

If the kernel handles the signals, it will do the default actions required for this signal. The target host that owns the IP address, responds with an ARP reply that contains its physical hardware address. First, arrow to the boot option that you want to modify, and then press the …

A vi-style line editing interface is also available. So that modules can use the kernel resources that they need, they must be able to find them. The GNU C library provides more than its name suggests. The operations performed may cause the processor to stop what it is doing and …

It interprets the commands the user types in and arranges for them to be carried out. The process of booting your Linux system can sometimes be easy and sometimes be difficult. Upgrading from one version to another is also painless. In addition to implementing the standard C library, glibc provides …

An interrupt driven device driver is one where the hardware device being controlled will raise a hardware interrupt whenever it needs to be serviced. Thus they are also called built-in commands. Most of the Linux kernel is written in the C programming language, with a little bit of assembly and …

Its entries are also device_struct data structures. Copyright does not protect facts, discoveries, ideas, systems or methods of operation, although it can protect the way they are expressed. Remember that the shell is a program providing you with an interface to the Linux system. Binary compatibility is maintained across a …

But, as we all know, there are typically many directories on a system. In either case, the kernel simply resolves the pathname to the correct inode. The editing mode may be switched during interactive use by using the -o option to the set built-in command. Whereas sockets communicating over the …

For new system timers, the entries in the linked list of timer_list data structures are checked. One of the main arguments used for Free Software is the advantage of not reinventing the wheel, yet in the case of nearly every hole in the software platform to fill, there are at …

Symbolic links look like regular files. It is time for the opening of the tools that will be needed to build this new age. In fact, part of the freedom of free software is that anyone has the right to sell an executable program released under a free software license …

When there are no more characters left to read, the device returns end-of-file (EOF). On GNU/Linux systems a file command can be used to identify a type of the file. Unlike most other operating systems, Linux is freely developed and continu- ously improved by a large community of software …

As such it is possible to have two or more files and directories with the same name but letters of different case. I say somewhat, because the use of sed in conjunction with pipes is somewhat more comfortable (at least to this author) for substitution of text in files. Software …

Hard links allow for complex filesystem structures with multiple pathnames pointing to the same data. You may need to go through several rounds of resubmission and additional feedback before your code is accepted, and in some cases it may be rejected. Share your personal experiences (good and bad) with Linux …

Each filesystem is mounted to a specific location in the namespace, known as a mount point. For the old system timers the timer_active bit mask is check for bits that are set. NASA spacecrafts, Motorola cell phones, Google Android smart- phones and tablets, Amazon Kindle eBook readers, TomTom GPS navigation …

In either case, the kernel simply resolves the pathname to the correct inode. Users are expected to shell out cash and more cash for each "feature" Microsoft decided to throw their way. Compare this to a floppy disk which only spins at 360 RPM. It is a synthasisable core and …

It can also be a Macintosh or almost any other type of computer. The overhead of symbolic links is minimal, but it is still considered a negative. Setting up TCP/IP connections is very different from setting up an amateur radio X.25 connection. Red Hat or Slackware) comes with …

This fixing up takes the form of patching the module image in memory. Some of this information will also help Windows users to understand the importance of user accounts. They work because they want to help themselves, their user base, or their software project. Block devices are generally storage devices …

The Graphical User Interface is much easier and I can already do most of what I need there." To a certain extent you would be right, and by no means am I suggesting you should ditch the GUI. Networking the critical aspects of a city, from manhole covers and traffic …

They are accessed via block device files. Freedom not to have to pay $300 or $400 for making your computer even useful, for something other than a calculator. The application can then trap into the kernel through this well-defined mechanism and execute only code that the kernel allows it to …

awk is actually a programming language designed particularly for text manipulation, but it is widely used as an on-the-spot tool for administration. Notably, Linux is the fastest growing operating system released to date. Linux is a multiprocessing operating system, its objective is to have a process running on each CPU …

The smallest addressable unit on a block device is the sector. With the connection established both ends are free to send and receive data. When it is started up, usually at system boot time, it opens up an Inter-Process Communication (IPC) channel to the kernel. At kernel initialization time, the …

The default action for the SIGFPE signal will core dump the process and then cause it to exit. Any of the bytes within a file may be read from or written to. Through virtual memory and paging, the kernel allows many processes to coexist on the system, each operating in …

Processes are generally associated with a user's login group, not any of the supplemental groups. Sometimes the DMA channel for a device can be set by jumpers; a number of ethernet devices use this technique. In user space, Linux implements threads in accordance with POSIX 1003.1c (known as Pthreads …

However, not all Linux installations use GNU components as a part of their operating system. In that case, the new bytes (which are added to the end of the file) are filled with zeros. Although the source code must be made freely available in all cases, there is no requirement …

The read/write heads are moved across the surface of the platters by an actuator. The Linux kernel, supporting both preemptive multitasking and virtual memory, provides every process both a virtualized processor and a virtualized view of memory. Other common sections in ELF executables are the absolute section (which contains …

Unlike Windows, Linux requires each user to have an account. Linux keeps looking through the pending list from the start until there is a pass where no semaphore operations can be applied and so no more processes can be woken. Effectively, they define system programming, or at least a common …

Its own Software Center has tons of free applications that make it a great Linux OS for programming. Another good example is the PCI bus which allows each device (for example a graphics card) to be accessed independently. Apart from the ability of a loaded module to crash the operating …

Automation is also a game-changer using the terminal. Open source has become the de facto way to build software - not only in tech, but across diverse industries. In 1991, this final gap was filled by Linux, a kernel which was written independently of the GNU project by Linus Torvalds, then …

The kernel seamlessly and transparently preempts and reschedules processes, sharing the system's processors among all running processes. The major identifier for the primary IDE controller is 3 and is 22 for the secondary IDE controller. Usually, as bytes in the file are read from or written to, byte-by-byte, the file …