2.1. Introduction

Linux is an Open Source version of Unix developed by Linus Torvalds to port Unix to the Intel x86 processor [Torvalds+ 01]. This made Unix available on the most ubiquitous computer hardware that has ever existed, and therefore available to almost everyone. Linux has since been ported to almost every processor and function one could imagine, including game-boxes, personal digital assistants (PDAs), personal digital video recorders, and IBM mainframes, expanding the original concept of Unix for x86 to Unix for everything. Linux isn’t the only version of Unix available to most people (also notable are the various BSD variants, also Open Source), but it’s by far the most popular.

In this chapter, we discuss how to get Linux, how ...

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