A collection of free books to help you learn Linux

If you are a new Linux user and wish for some direction in understanding Linux, then help is at hand. Unlike a few years ago when a Linux newbie had to solely rely on viewing the man pages or reading the manuals from tldp.org to understand the different facets of Linux, things are much different now. Thanks to the ever growing popularity of Linux, there are a plethora of books, manuals and howtos which make life much easier for a Linux enthusiast. It has also helped that Linux has continued to become easier to configure and use during this time.

Daily Artisan has put together a very good collection of links to free Linux books available on the net. The books span the gamut of Linux Installation, beginner guides, Security, System administration, Programming, Migration, Linux Kernel and of course books specific to particular Linux distributions such as Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian and so on.

A valuable resource worth bookmarking. Read the article at Daily Artisan.

100 of the Best Open Source Applications

The following is a list of about 100 of the best open source applications, that actually help make Linux more usable for people. This list aims to show potential Linux users that there is really a pile of large, effective, productive and usable range of free, Open Source applications. This list tends to lean towards tools which are invaluable in web development related work.

Read the whole list of 100 open source applications. You will definitely find some very useful applications which you did not know existed.

Popular Unix and Linux forums

One of the best ways of growing a strong community now a days is to start a forum. There are a plethora of forums for Unix and Linux and new ones are coming up all the time. Out of all these, a small section of them have risen to the top by virtue of their dedication and some good luck. Last updated on December 28th 2007

Below are a collection of popular Linux/Unix forums which I found to enjoy a strong community backing.

• Linux Questions.org - One of the foremost Linux forums which has a very strong community following. I may add that it is one of the most active Linux/Unix forums I have come across in recent times.


• Ubuntu Forums - This is yet another forum which is dedicated to a flavor of Linux albeit a very popular one namely Ubuntu.


• Gentoo Forums - This is the official Gentoo forum which enjoy a huge fan following. Gentoo is a flavor of Linux which prides itself in allowing the user (that is you) in configuring each and every aspect of Linux at the time of installation. The gentoo site also hosts a very good forum which apart from being a knowledge resource for Gentoo users is also sure to help the non-gentoo Linux enthusiast.
  


• Freespire Forums - The official Freespire forum. Freespire is a community-driven, Linux-based operating system that combines the best that free, open source software has to offer (community driven, freely distributed, open source code, etc.), but also provides users the choice of including proprietary codecs, drivers and applications as they see fit.


• Linux Forums.org - Claims to have over 90,000 members and 400,000 posts related to GNU/Linux


• HowToForge.com - This is a site which provides detailed guides on all things related to Open Source and Free Software with a strong leaning towards GNU/Linux. It also has a vibrant forum.


• SuSE Forums - A forum dedicated to discussing problems related to SuSE Linux.


• Arch Linux Forums - This is the official Arch Linux forum which provides help in solving a variety of problems related to this particular Linux distribution. [**New**]


• Debian Forums - I couldn't find an official Debian forum. The closest I could find was this one which discusses all problems arising in Debian Linux. It has a good collection of posts.


• LinuxSolved.com - This is a forum which provides help in solving a variety of Linux related problems which includes troubleshooting, configuration tips, howto's and Faq's. It claims to have well over 7000 posts spanning over 2000 topics to its credit. [**New**]


• forums1.itrc.hp.com - This is the gathering place for IT Professionals to solve problems, exchange ideas, and learn lessons from fellow peers who also use the HP IT Resource Center. Managed by Hewlett-Packard, HP engineers participate in all of these forums to share their advice, however, HP does not guarantee a response as these forums are intended as a peer-to-peer resource.


• BSD Forums - A forum dedicated to BSDs


• Unix Forums - A forum with a strong bias for different Unices such as Solaris, HP-UX and AIX. But it features a collection of posts related to Linux too.
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• Open Solaris Forum - This is the official Open Solaris forum.
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• Kernel trap Forum - KernelTrap is a web community devoted to sharing the latest in kernel development news. Their forum has a small number of quality posts on Linux and Unix kernel.

Note to readers: When ever I come across interesting websites related to Linux, I usually bookmark them for future reference. Over a period of time, I have built up an eclectic collection of links related to GNU/Linux or Unix which provide good information. Earlier, I had featured a slice of those links on the right hand column of this blog. I couldn't feature all the links there due to lack of space. Now, with a revamp of the site design, I decided to move them to their own individual pages. This post is the start of a number of such posts.

This article will be updated as and when I come across interesting forums.

Install Linux on Sony Playstation PS3 - a collection of tutorials

Do you own a Sony Playstation (PS3) ? If you do then here is some good news for you. Now it is possible to install your favorite Linux distribution on a Sony PS3. Then you may ask, what is so unique about PS3 and why should I bother installing Linux on a machine which is primarily designed for playing games, right ?

You see, PS3 has the PowerPC architecture underneath its hood. More importantly, it is powered by IBM's Cell processor. The same processor which will be powering future IBM mainframes. So if you own a PS3 why not harness this awesome power of its processor to run Linux ?

Sony has provided an open platform for Playstation 3 where you can get details of installing another OS on your Playstation.

Apart from the above link, I came across a number of resources which provide step by step explanation of installing a specific Linux distribution on the PS3. They are as follows :

• Install Fedora on PS3 [ Read the article ]
• Install OpenSuSE on PS3 [ Read the article ]
• Install Ubuntu on PS3 [ Read the article ]
  
• Install Gentoo on PS3 [ Read the article ]

The only prerequisites for installing Linux on your PS3 is that the distribution you choose should have a CD image available for the PowerPC architecture. Other than that, I think the steps are more or less the same.

Massive list of free educational video lectures - courtesy Berkeley and MIT

A couple of years back, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) released a press note revealing their intention to make available free of cost the study notes which includes lectures, tutorials, video and audio of lectures of all their courses online. This was big news then and was welcomed by aspiring professionals and institutions the world over. And MIT Opencourseware was the platform chosen to deliver on their promise.

In fact you can find a huge collection of video lectures (which this post is about) on the MIT opencourseware website. The lectures are divided into their respective sections which makes it quite easy to find what you need.

Also check out this web page which features links to over 177 video lectures from the Berkeley University as well as links to other online educational resources. A very good resource worth bookmarking.

Introducing a new installation wiki in the neighbourhood

If you ask me to start naming some content management system, I can start with Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal and so on and then will not know when to stop. Seriously, there are innumerable content management or blogging systems around. Someone told me that he started counting the blogging tools available in order to get an idea in numbers and he was still counting when he reached the number 200.

Now add to this backend programs such as databases and web servers which play a pivotal role in the working of CMSes and we have a whole lot of software on our hands. Keeping this huge mountain of software in mind, Packt Book publishers who are on the forefront in publishing books related to CMSes (they publish books related to other subjects too) has rolled out a new Wiki called InstallationWiki.org which caters to explaining how to install most of these software on your machine either locally or remotely. It has divided the tutorials into 8 broad categories namely "Open Source", "Content management systems", "Web development", Databases, Java, PHP, "Microsoft and .NET" and finally "Networking and telephony".

Already there are a growing number of tutorials and howtos mostly related to CMSes on this site. But considering that this is a Wiki, which anyone can edit, this project shows a lot of promise. Also one should keep in mind that the tutorials listed on the Wiki bear the seal of approval of Packt Books thus one can expect to find quality articles on this site. Do check out the article on PHPMyAdmin for instance to know what I mean... In the past, I have reviewed a couple of Packt books such as the one on Oscommerce ,IPCOP, Wordpress, Drupal and so on and I have found each of them to contain very useful information.

Unix Processes - What constitute a Process ?

A process is a fundamental part of any operating system - irrespective of whether they are proprietary or Free. And all Operating systems usually have a lot of processes running at any given time. This begs the question, what exactly is a process ?

A process can be considered to be a container, bundling a running application, its environment variables, the state of the application's input and output, and the state of the process, including its priority and accumulated resource usage. In short, every single application that you run on your machine will have its own unique process allocated to it for the duration of the time it runs.

In Unix based OSes, each of that unique process has a parent process from which it is forked (cloned, spawned) initially. The very first process that is created by the OS when you turn on the machine is init process. This process will always have a process id of 1. All processes are ultimately descended from the one process called init. Try running the ps command to find the process id of init.

$ ps axj
PPID   PID  PGID   SID TTY   TPGID STAT     UID   TIME COMMAND
 0     1     0     0 ?       -1   S        0    0:04 init [4]

Martin Streicher has written an enlightening article throwing more light on the concept of a Unix process. He explains the semantics of a process, some very useful commands which give information about the running processes as well as talks about forks and daemons (a special kind of process which continuously runs in the background waiting for some application to connect to it).

Free online magazines dedicated to GNU/Linux and Open Source

These are a collection of my links pointing to free online magazines dedicated to Linux and Open Source. If you look around, a lot of effort is being expended, many of those on a voluntary basis to keep alive the spirit of Linux, Open source and Freedom. The links below highlight a slice of those efforts.

• Linux Journal - One of the foremost Linux magazines around, this magazine carry articles which are suited to a more technically oriented crowd. This magazine is made available in both print and online format. Many of the articles on its website are freely accessible but to read the most recent articles, you need to enroll in a paid subscription.


• PClinuxOS Magazine - This is a magazine launched by PCLinuxOS enthusiasts, which is freely made available in both PDF and HTML format. PCLinuxOS is a very interesting Linux distribution which caters to those who crave for a much more complete Linux experience on the desktop. Even though the magazine has the PCLinuxOS name, it carries articles relevant to all Linux distributions.


• Free Software Magazine - This is yet another freely available online magazine which contains articles related to GNU/Linux, open source and Free software.


• Gnome Journal - is an online magazine devoted to everything surrounding the GNOME Desktop. The rate of new articles are a bit far and in between but then that is expected from a magazine dedicated to a narrow subject.


• Linux Productivity Magazine - This was a magazine which used to provide a number of interesting articles on Linux. It has been discontinued since. You can find all the archives of previous issues here.


• Linux-Mag - This is a magazine in print but their website has a number of news items related to Linux.


• Linux Gazette - A purely voluntary effort, this is an online magazine which provides a number of interesting articles related to Linux and Free software on a regular basis.


• Linux Focus - This is another freely available online magazine maintained exclusively through volunteer effort. The USP of this magazine is that you can read the articles featured here in multiple languages. At present, apart from English, it provides the magazine in 10 other languages including the Chinese language.


• Insecure Magazine - This is a freely available digital security magazine discussing some of the hottest information security topics not necessarily all based on Linux. The magazine is available only in a PDF format.


• Linuxformat.co.uk - This is a UK based print magazine but their website also contain relevant news and tips related to GNU/Linux.


• RedHat Magazine - One might wonder why a major Linux distribution vendor like RedHat will bother to bringing out a magazine. But the fact is RedHat does publish an online magazine where you get a monthly dose of tips, howtos and news related to Linux, err... Red Hat Linux that is.


• Tux Magazine - I especially like this online monthly magazine. It is geared towards the new Linux crowd rather than the experienced Linux users and it sends a copy of the magazine in PDF format to ones mailbox. Or rather, it used to send the PDF magazine. As of now its future is in limbo as the magazine owners have found it difficult to sustain their efforts in bringing out the magazine. Hopefully they will find some way to keep this very good magazine alive.


• Full Circle Magazine - This is an independent magazine for the Ubuntu community available in PDF format for free download every month.


• OpenBSD Journal - This is not a magazine per se, its more like a Slashdot style blog. But this is the closest you can get to a magazine dedicated to OpenBSD - arguably the most secure operating system on this planet.


• O3 Magazine - This is a FREE electronic publication distributed in PDF format. The focus of o3 is on the use of Free and Open Source (FOSS) software in Enterprise Data Networking environments.

Note to readers: When ever I come across interesting websites related to Linux, I usually bookmark them for future reference. Over a period of time, I have built up an eclectic collection of links related to GNU/Linux or Unix which provide good information. Earlier, I had featured a slice of those links on the right hand column of this blog. I couldn't feature all the links there due to lack of space. Now, with a revamp of this site design, I decided to move them to their own individual pages. This post is the continuation of a series of such posts.

This article will be updated as and when I come across free online magazines related to GNU/Linux, open source and free software.

A collection of specialized Linux links

Here I have listed some of the popular websites related to Linux which concentrate on providing support for a specialized set of functions in GNU/Linux such as sound/audio, printing and so on. And these are the first sites to visit when you are faced with problems related to these functions.

• Open Printing - Formerly known as linuxprinting.org, this site is a one stop resource for all your printer related problems in GNU/Linux. Does your newly bought printer refuse to cooperate with Linux , are you looking to buy a printer but want to make sure that the one you buy should fully support Linux, then this site is for you. It contains a database of all the printer models categorized into different groups depending upon the degree of support they provide for GNU/Linux as well as the relevant drivers for the printers if you need them.


• ALSA Project (Sound drivers) - Alsa is synonymous with sound. There was a time when you had to slog it out to get sound to work correctly in GNU/Linux. In those early years, Linux made use of the OSS sound drivers which showed many shortcomings. ALSA project was born specifically to provide more modular sound drivers and also to address the shortcomings of OSS. Any time you are faced with some sound problems such as say GNU/Linux doesn't support your sound card (a rarity these days), then this is the site to visit to find a solution to these issues.


• Linux-USB.org - This website serves as a central point of information for USB support under Linux. There are a growing number of devices from digital cameras, to mobile phones, music players, network devices and so on which have USB support. This website documents which all devices have USB drivers in Linux as well as the degree of support provided. Also check out this site which complements the linux-usb.org site in listing the different USB devices which are supported in Linux


• TLDP.org - short for "The Linux Documentation Project" consists of a loosely knit team of volunteers who provide documentation for many aspects of Linux. On this site, you will find several forms of documentation such as Guides, HOWTOs, man pages, and FAQs related to all facets of GNU/Linux.


• NetKit.org - This is a site which caters to that section of Linux enthusiasts who are more inclined to learn and pick up skills in networking in Linux. NetKit allows one to set up ones own virtual networking lab which can be used to study complex networks all on ones personal computer. To make it possible, Netkit heavily relies on User Mode Linux. NetKit offer the users an easy-to-use-and-install package, which at the same time implements effective network emulation.


• Qmailrocks.org - This site is a comprehensive qmail installation resource. Qmail by the way is a mail transport agent similar to the ubiquitous sendmail. But unlike sendmail, qmail is famed for its ease of configuration. Qmailrocks.org was put together to provide a free and open resource for anyone needing help with the installation and configuration of qmail.


• Netfilter.org - Anybody who is used to running a firewall on GNU/Linux would be aware of iptables which form the work horse of the concept called a firewall in Linux. And iptables is developed and maintained by the netfilter development team. Here you will find lots of howtos, documentation, tutorials and tips on making full use of the numerous features of iptables firewall.


• Ndiswrapper List - This page contain a list of cards known to work with ndiswrapper.


• Hardware compatibility list (HCL) - This is a Linux hardware compatibility list maintained at Linuxquestions.org.


• Linux Laptop.net - This site has a detailed list of all the makes of laptops categorized according to the manufacturer and containing different user's experiences in running Linux on them. A must visit site if you are interested in buying a laptop.


• HCL list @ Ubuntu - This is the official Ubuntu HCL for Linux.


• Intel Linux Wireless.org - This is an official Intel site where you can learn about and download the latest development versions of the Linux-based wireless drivers for Intel adapters.

Note to readers: When ever I come across interesting websites related to Linux, I usually bookmark them for future reference. Over a period of time, I have built up an eclectic collection of links related to GNU/Linux or Unix which provide good information. Earlier, I had featured a slice of those links on the right hand column of this blog. I couldn't feature all the links there due to lack of space. Now, with a revamp of this site design, I decided to move them to their own individual pages. This post is the continuation of a series of such posts.

This article will be updated as and when I come across specialized websites related to GNU/Linux.