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China Tech What is GNU/Linux anyway?
China Tech What is GNU/Linux anyway? | What is GNU/Linux anyway? |
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| China tech | |
| Friday, 18 August 2006 | |
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Avid readers will have noticed that my articles are peppered with references to GNU/Linux. You may have felt like asking “what is GNU/Linux anyway?” It's just a little bit cryptic of me to keep referring to it as an operating system. GNU/Linux is software that makes computers work. It's stuff that allows you to play DVDs and use the Internet. It can help you write letters and (if you are so inclined) it can help you program computer applications. It's a big collection of thousands of bits of software technology that helps you accomplish tasks. GNU/Linux is a bit like Microsoft Windows and tons of applications like Microsoft Office. The major difference between GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows is that GNU/Linux has no restrictions on its use. You can get GNU/Linux from the Internet for free. It's perfectly legal to share it with your friends. I like GNU/Linux because it means that technology is not owned by a company. It allows us to ensure that both developed and developing nations have access to advanced technology under a liberal license. I think this will have a really positive effect in the long-term. We're going to see kids in China getting hold of an old computer using cutting-edge technology. Lots of people are already engaging with the GNU/Linux way of doing things. It's called the Free Software movement. We're talking about Free as in Freedom here, not price. The government of Brazil have whole-heartedly embraced GNU/Linux and switched their economy from having over $1 billion dollars of technology trade deficit to having a technology export market worth over $2 billion in just a couple of years. The UK and China are seeing the potential for GNU/Linux. In Birmingham and Bristol the local government is transitioning their computers to cheaper, more secure and more reliable GNU/Linux systems instead of Microsoft Windows. In China there is a huge push to adopt GNU/Linux in governmental and military systems. I wanted to help demystify all of this technical stuff by talking to one of the key players in the GNU/Linux field. Chris Smart of the Kororaa GNU/Linux project was kind enough to speak to me. He makes a GNU/Linux distribution. That means he makes a disk that allows you to put GNU/Linux onto a computer for free. Q: Hi Chris. You make the Kororaa distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system. Let's get down to basics here and tell people what you do. First of all, what's an operating system, what's GNU/Linux, and what's the Kororaa distribution? A: Hi Shane, hi everyone! I head the Kororaa Project, which is a special version of GNU/Linux. Kororaa is an operating system that can be installed onto your computer. An operating system is software that talks to your hardware to make your a computer useful :) A computer on its own is not good for much except a "doorstop". You need software (programs) in order to make the computer do what you want it to do. Programs need to be installed to your computer and talk to the hardware. They do this by sitting on top of an operating system which has the ability to talk to the hardware and make your programs work. Most people have used Microsoft Windows, which is an operating system and Microsoft Office, which is an program that runs on Microsoft Windows. GNU/Linux is made up of lots of pieces of software and Linux is the part that talks to your hardware. When one configures and bundles these together you get what is called a GNU/Linux distribution. This is what Kororaa is. Q: I have a killer question. How is it possible to make Kororaa for free? Microsoft Windows and MacOS X aren't free. They might come pre-installed on a computer but we still pay a license fee. How do you avoid that? A: Good question. First of all, Linux was started in 1992 by a Finnish university student called "Linus Torvalds". He was looking for an operating system he could use on his Intel 386 computer. He decided to write his own and give it away for free! Since then thousands of people around the world have contributed to it and from there is has grown and grown. Linux is different to other operating systems out there. It is created by people who donate their time and programming skills to make it better and they do it all free of charge. This means that Linux is free for anyone to use and install. You can even make copies and give it to your friends! (In fact we invite you to!) I give Kororaa away for free because I was given so much by everyone else around the world. I was given Linux for free. I was given GNU software for free. So in return I create my distribution and also give it away for free. It is sad that end users are forced to spend their hard earned money on Microsoft Windows or OSX when they buy a new computer. We hope one day power will be returned to the end user and they will be given the choice! Q: What are the benefits of using Kororaa GNU/Linux over something like Microsoft Windows or MacOS X? I mean, will this stuff make my life easier? A: One thing that Linux is renowned for is security and stability. It doesn't crash. Partly this is due to the excellent programmers working on it who do it not for money, but for the love of it. It is also deliberately designed that way. You do not have to constantly restart your computer when you install new software and there are no "blue screens of death"! GNU/Linux is also free in another way; free as in "free speech". When you use Microsoft and Apple products, you are not allowed to know how the programs actually work. GNU/Linux is entirely the opposite. Not only are you allowed to study the software and how it works, you are given all the tools and even the actual code to do it! You are also welcome make changes the way the software works and then make those changes available for others. Together we all build a better operating system. GNU/Linux gives you back the freedom to use your computer however you want to, without the restrictions imposed on you by corporations. There are thousands of pieces of opensource software available for you to run on Linux (and often even Windows). You may have heard (or even be using) the web browser, Mozilla Firefox. It is an opensource application and runs on Linux (they also have Windows versions). Another one of the most popular pieces of software is OpenOffice.org which is a complete Office product. It can read and write Microsoft Office documents like Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc and yet is completely free (there is also Windows version of this software). Another opensource program is the Gimp, the GNU Image Manipulation Program (it's like Adobe Photoshop), once again there is a Windows version available. Linux also comes installed with media playing software, music players, scanner software, digital photo managers, CD burning software, internet chat, games, and any type of software you can think of; all opensource and truly free. Will it make your life easier? Well maybe :) It is like learning to drive a new car. It takes a little bit of dedication and patience to learn how things work differently. If you can do this, then you will actually start to ENJOY using your computer (imagine that!). Q: There are lots of GNU/Linux distributions apart from Kororaa. Do you guys work together, do you compete or do you all just aim for different things? A: We all work together. If I come across a problem with a program and create a fix for it, I share it with the rest of the world and it is then incorporated into other distributions. Likewise I benefit from the solutions other distributions have created. We share data and information. All the software we use is opensource and freely distributed and because of this we have a collective resource probably larger than any corporation in the world. There are lots of different distributions available because different people like different ways of doing things. Everyone is free to change the software however they want to, so people started making distributions that did things differently or catered for a niche market. Essentially we just like to see people using GNU/Linux in general. It could be Kororaa, or it could be Debian or RedHat or one of the many others, it doesn't matter :) Q: What made you start with all of this GNU/Linux stuff and what do you plan to do in the future? I'm wondering if you have some sort of masterplan. A: Of course the grand master plan for Linux is world domination ;) Not for political or personal gain (we don't make money from Linux) but because we want to see the whole world using free software (free in both senses of the word). I started using GNU/Linux back in 1998 because I was introduced to it by Andrew Tridgell (who wrote the software called samba, among others) and fell in love with it straight away. The idea of an operating system that worked for me, the way I wanted it to, appealed to me. I never looked back! In the future I hope to be able to continue working on Kororaa making it better and better. It is an on-going process as new programs, new hardware and new ways of doing things are created. But it is a challenge I really enjoy and love working on. It is my hobby and my passion. Q: What's the single most difficult thing about making a GNU/Linux distribution? It sounds like an incredibly difficult job with a hugedministrative overhead. A: Time. Time is the killer. Most people involved in Linux and distribution development have fulltime jobs during the day. This means they have limited amount of time to dedicate to Linux each week. Ideally I would love to be sponsored to work on Kororaa fulltime but that sort of thing doesn't happen often. The administrative overhead is not very big. I am not selling anything and I am not marketing anything. I make a product which people will learn about simply by word of mouth, and I give it away for free. The biggest hurdle is hosting and transferring the Kororaa files which are distributed as ISO images for people to burn to CD and install with. We have a number of mirrors which provide an invaluable service, as well as file sharing protocols like bittorrent. As I donate my time to create Kororaa, others donate their time helping out on the forums and IRC. People test products and provide feedback. Some even check out the code and make suggestions. This takes a lot of the work load and distributes it among people willing to help out in various ways. It is no easy task mind you, there are lots of issues involved that have to be overcome and it is hard work. But it is a labour of love which makes the burden lighter. Compared to what other projects do, what Linux kernel developers do, what the GNU software guys do, I don't do much at all. But hopefully I am able to make a contribution, although small, large enough to make a difference. Q: Is there any single point when you thought to yourself "yeah, this is the reason I do all this work"? I'm wondering if there was a moment when you felt you'd accomplished what you wanted to do. A: I get a buzz every day that I work on Kororaa. I love seeing all the pieces come together as we prepare for a new release and make changes to current products. Sometimes it gets frustrating when things are not going as planned, but because it is my hobby it is very easy to feel satisfaction from what I do. The best is when I hear back from people who love using Kororaa. What I do is really only a very small part. Credit must go to the developers of Linux and GNU and especially Gentoo Linux (on which Kororaa is based). Q: A final question. Chris, how easy is it to approach people like you? I mean, let's say I'm a graduate student working on operating systems. Can I email you to talk about your experience and to ask questions about Kororaa? It'd be pretty impossible to do that with someone like Bill Gates. A: I can't speak for others but I think that I'm very approachable :) You approached me and I was only too happy to help. I make a note of replying to every email I receive in regards to Kororaa. Of course if this gets to become hundreds a day then I might have to reconsider this position! In general the Linux community is very friendly and there are people at all levels of knowledge and ability. We at the Kororaa Project are only too happy to assist anyone interested in giving Linux a go. So please feel free to drop me an email, come visit us on IRC or in the forums, we'd love to have you along! -- Thank you for talking with me Chris! I appreciate it. If you have any thoughts or comments about this article and interview you can always email me at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it . |
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