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Linux is the most widely used free operating system. (Technically Linux is an operating system kernel, and any collection of software which has been ported to it; see the GNU Project Home Page to split those hairs). GNU/Linux is one of several freely available operating systems.
Linux and FreeBSD are a couple of our principle hobbies -- they are also tools that we use extensively. There are two people behind starshine.org, Heather Stern and Jim Dennis.
In the Linux community I'm probably best known for my work as the Linux Gazette Answer Guy over the last three years. My wife, Heather Stern has been doing all my HTML editing for the Answer Guy column for the last couple of years. She's created a separated comprehensive index. I also recently published a book Linux System Administration with my co-authors M Carling and Stephen Degler. One minor contribution I've made is to create a patch to allow tripwire to complile cleanly under Linux. However, this is probably unnecessary now. If you like, read a discussion of why you don't need my old tripwire patch. Linux is a big subject, which I spend a fair amount of time investigating. Since Linux is a "product" of the Internet almost all of the work and documentation that's relevant to it is available on the web.
I have some local mirrors to the LDP, Linux Gazette. I also have a page of links to LDP documents and other documentation resources arranged by topic
The official sources for the Linux kernel are now at The Linux Kernel Archives which is apparently sponsored by Transmeta Inc. -- the company where Linus Torvalds works.
Linus is, of course the "father" of Linux. He started the phenomenon back in about 1992 (?) and invited readers of the comp.os.minix newsgroup (actually I think it was "alt.os.minix" back then, but things have changed since then) to play with his code.
The Linux Project?
Given the anarchy that characterizes the development of
Linux its a little hard to call it a "project." In one sense
Linux is "just" a kernel. The sources for that kernel are
maintained by Linus -- and parts of it have been written by
lots of people. In addition to the
official kernel
In other senses Linux is an incarnation of the
GNU project. It provided
a kernel to allow the Free Software Foundation's code function
as a stand alone operating system. Richard Stallman (rms)
the founder of the GNU project has occasionally raised some
controversy
regarding this. By contrast, GNU is a project -- which a
central spokesperson and an official plan and policy. It is
also working on it's own kernel, called the
HURD ("HIRD of Unix Replacement Daemons" where HIRD, in turn,
stands for "HURD of Interfaces Representing Depth *)
While the Linux kernel is released under the GNU Public License
(GPL) it is not part of the GNU project. So, although, large
parts of a typical Linux distribution or installation are GNU
-- it isn't quite right to say that Linux is "just" a GNU
system.
It is conceivable that someone could create a complete
Linux distribution using all BSD, public domain, and other
non-GNU software (although it would probably still need to be
built with gcc, the GNU C compiler). In fact I think there
are some "X terminals" which are really a combination of the
Linux Kernel and XFree86
without basically no officially GNU "products" embedded in the
system. Like said, Linux is the product of concerted anarchy.
As a result of all this wonderful anarchy it's difficult to say
anything definitively about the subject. I can't simply point to
one place with a link that says the official Linux web site.
However, here's a sampler of the sites that I think are the
best overall resources for Linux:
-- Links maintained by SSC (publishers of The Linux Journal)
Despite my interest and efforts I can't keep this page as
up-to-date as I'd like. Here are a couple of "canned searches:"
Linux Mailing Lists
-- A Yahoo! Query
Here are a few links to places where you can find info on
these subjects:
Later I'll create a bunch of links to Companies like Yggdrasil, InfoMagic, Caldera, WGS, RedHat, I-Connect (Debian distributor), and others.