Library 2.06 February 2009 Linux for Librarians Nishtha Anilkumar Librarian Physical Research Laboratory Ahmedabad

Library 2.06 February 2009 Why Linux ? Most of the library system softwares like LibSys now run on Linux platform Digital Library Softwares like Greenstone and DSpace are available on Linux platform Open Source Integrated Library systems like Koha also run on Linux

Library 2.06 February 2009 Understanding Linux A story that goes back over 40 years to Bell Laboratories, where UNIX was born

Library 2.06 February 2009 Ken Thompson & Dennis Ritchie Thompson developed the first UNIX kernel Ritchie developed the a computer language ‘C’ Portability, Modularity, Flexibility made UNIX popular

Library 2.06 February 2009 Richard M Stallman (RMS)‏ Without Stallman’s contribution, Linux would have had a different quality Member of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Culture of the Lab. was one of extreme openness

Library 2.06 February 2009 Birth of GNU Mission of RMS : Creation of free UNIX like OS GNU stands for ‘GNU is Not Unix’ RMS’s formula for free software :  Freedom to run the program  Freedom to modify the program  Freedom to distribute copies  Freedom to redistribute the modified versions

Library 2.06 February 2009 Free Software By 1991 ‘Minix ‘ was in circulation which was a variant of UNIX Linus Torvalds, a Finnish software engineer, reacting to the limitations of Minix, took a small bit of working code and Minix as a guideline to create a basic kernel

Library 2.06 February 2009 Linus Torvalds Linus released it under the GPL (GNU Public Licence) originated by RMS and the Free Software foundation With very basic operating system built from Linus’s kernel and handful of GNU tools – Linux was born!

Library 2.06 February 2009 Another facet of Linux culture One of the difficulties of getting a working Linux machine was downloading all the needed bits and compiling them Overcome by – Distribution or Distro However, the term free software was being taken as something of inferior quality

Library 2.06 February 2009 Eric S Raymond (ESR)‏  Instrumental in removing this notion of “low quality or incomplete”  Led the way to market the name ‘Open Source software’ (OSS) as a new way of thinking The Cathedral and the Bazaar - CatB

Library 2.06 February 2009 Current applications Networking and services in the beginning Today Linux has joined the desktop On the server side Stable and reliable platform providing database and trading service for companies First choice for firewall, proxy- and web servers

Library 2.06 February 2009 Other applications In large search engines, clusters are used to perform Internet searches Linux also runs on gadgets like – PDAs – Mobiles – Experimental watches

Library 2.06 February 2009 Challenges faced by organizations  Reducing the costs  Managing heterogeneous technology landscape  Ensuring sufficient support Basic needs to be met - Performance, Security & Standardization

Library 2.06 February 2009 Linux pros and cons Free Portable Made to keep running Secure and versatile Scalable Short debug times There are far too many distributions Linux is confusing for beginners Is an Open Source product trustworthy ?

Library 2.06 February 2009 Direct benefits of adopting Linux  Flexibility to choose vendors  Alternative to costly proprietary OSs  Ease of migration  Security

Library 2.06 February 2009 What is KDE, GNOME ? The K Desktop Environment (KDE) and GNOME Desktop Environment are two popular desktops available

Library 2.06 February 2009 Distributions On top of an OS, there are many applications which provide complete environment e.g. Windows have tools like Word pad Most Linux distributions also comes bundled with many applications Examples – Red Hat, Debian, SUSE, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva

Library 2.06 February 2009 Choosing the right distribution 1) Purpose 2) Software update life 3) Feature Stability 4) Package Selection

Library 2.06 February Purpose Desktop usage : ease of adjusting settings, age of software, range of GUI applications Server usage : software life, security

Library 2.06 February Software Update life How often you want to upgrade to a new distribution version ? Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Centos, Debian or Ubuntu LTS are good choices for longer life distribution

Library 2.06 February Feature Stability Many distros have a policy of not upgrading software in mid-release Instead distro maintainers will backport a security fix to a older release and rename it Reason – if they upgraded to a new version, the features or configuration might have changed

Library 2.06 February Package Selection Different distros have differing amount of softwares in their repositories Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux has a much smaller package offering than Debian

Library 2.06 February 2009 For servers, RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) For Desktop – Fedora or Ubuntu Choice of distribution

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Library 2.06 February 2009 Linux Users’ Group (LUG) LUG - a non-profit or not- for-profit organization that provides support and/or education for Linux users particularly for novices Online LUGs use mailing lists and bulletin boards for communication

Library 2.06 February 2009 Some interesting links

Library 2.06 February 2009 Thank you !