[For details about where to obtain the latest versions of the documents in this section, see the document home sites index.]
Linux is a free Unix implementation developed originally by Linus Torvalds at the University of Helsinki. It was developed further with the aid of many Unix programmers across the Internet, and is available in source code form under the terms of the GNU Public License. It is now a complete Unix clone which can run X Windows, TCP/IP, Emacs, the GNAT compiler, Netscape, and so on.
Almost all the major free software packages have been ported to Linux, and commercial software is also becoming available. There are even emulators for MS-DOS and MS-Windows available. This CD includes a complete Linux distribution (a binary-only version of the April 1997 Slackware 3.2 distribution) that you can install on your machine.
A complete Linux distribution from the Slackware archive (but source code is not included, for reasons of space) | |
The Installation HOW-TO is a quick guide to installing Linux. Read this first! | |
The Hardware HOW-TO lists hardware supported by Linux | |
Linux Installation and Getting Started: a complete online manual for beginners from the Linux Documentation Project (LDP) | |
Copyright notices for Linux and for LDP documents |
The Linux Information Sheet provides a basic introduction to Linux | |
The Linux FAQ: answers to frequently asked questions about Linux | |
The Linux HOW-TO documents are a set of short documents about a range of Linux topics from the LDP |
Linux Installation and Getting Started: a complete online manual for beginners | |
The Linux User Guide: another complete online manual for anyone new to Unix systems | |
The Linux Programmer's Guide: a guide to writing programs for Linux | |
The System Administrator's Guide: how to manage a Linux system | |
The Network Administrator's Guide: how to run a Linux network | |
The Kernel Hacker's Guide: details of the internal working of the Linux kernel |
The Linux home page has lots of Linux information and links to lots of other sites | |
The Linux Gazette is an online Linux journal (part of the LDP) | |
The Slackware home site | |
The Linux Documentation Project | |
Sunsite Northern Europe at Imperial College has mirrors of all the major Linux archives | |
InfoMagic produce an excellent 6-CD set of Linux material from all the major archive sites (which is very reasonably priced) | |
The newsgroups comp.os.linux.misc, comp.os.linux.setup and comp.os.linux.hardware are good sources of advice and information about Linux installation and configuration. |