Introduction

The phenomenal popularity of Linux has taken us by surprise. When we started to write the first edition of Linux Unleashed way back in 1994, we had no idea that Linux was going to take the world by storm. Oh sure, we knew Linux was a great operating system. We knew Linux was a superb way to play with UNIX on your PC. We knew experimenters and programmers would fall in love with Linux. But we didn’t expect to be writing so many revisions of the book. This is, to date, the fifth Linux Unleashed book we’ve written, two of which were specifically aimed at RedHat and SlackWare versions, while this series has covered all versions. On top of that, my Linux System Administrator’s Survival Guide (also published by Sams) has been in demand for the past three years.

Why is Linux so popular? Part of the reason has to be its ready availability both in terms of price (free or at a very low price) and accessibility (hundreds of Web and FTP sites, thousands of CD-ROMs in bookstores). Another part of the popularity has to be its attraction as a UNIX system. Whatever our friends in Redmond say, UNIX always has been more powerful than Windows (recent versions of Windows won’t even run on an 80386!). This trend is bound to continue, because UNIX simply makes better use of the fast processors we use today. Multitasking and multithreading were invented for UNIX. Windows is just catching up now.

Yet another reason for the popularity of Linux is the number of applications available. Cruise any of the Web sites that offer Linux applications and you’ll be overwhelmed. And these applications are not trivial games or half-hearted attempts to provide basic functionality to Linux. The applications are professionally done, full featured, and rival those selling for big bucks on any other operating system. Linux is also popular because of its support mechanism. Got a problem? Post a note on Usenet’s Linux newsgroups and you’ll have answers fast. Finally, Linux is popular because it’s just plain fun to play with. What more can you ask of an operating system?

We’ve added quite a bit of new material to this edition of Linux Unleashed. We received a lot of suggestions by email that we took to heart and worked into better descriptions of installation and configuration, as well as some new application chapters. We’ve rewritten many chapters from scratch to make them more readable. The result, we hope, is a book you’ll enjoy reading from start to finish.