Linux Network Administrators Guide
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Preface
- Table of Contents
- 1. Purpose and Audience for This Book
- 2. Sources of Information
- 2.1. Documentation Available via FTP
- 2.2. Documentation Available via WWW
- 2.3. Documentation Available Commercially
- 2.4. Linux Journal and Linux Magazine
- 2.5. Linux Usenet Newsgroups
- 2.6. Linux Mailing Lists
- 2.7. Online Linux Support
- 2.8. Linux User Groups
- 2.9. Obtaining Linux
- 3. File System Standards
- 4. Standard Linux Base
- 5. About This Book
- 6. The Official Printed Version
- 7. Overview
- 8. Conventions Used in This Book
- 9. Submitting Changes
- 10. Acknowledgments
The Internet is now a household term in many countries. With otherwise serious people beginning to joyride along the Information Superhighway, computer networking seems to be moving toward the status of TV sets and microwave ovens. The Internet has unusually high media coverage, and social science majors are descending on Usenet newsgroups, online virtual reality environments, and the Web to conduct research on the new "Internet Culture."
Of course, networking has been around for a long time. Connecting computers to form local area networks has been common practice, even at small installations, and so have long-haul links using transmission lines provided by telecommunications companies. A rapidly growing conglomerate of world-wide networks has, however, made joining the global village a perfectly reasonable option for even small non-profit organizations of private computer users. Setting up an Internet host with mail and news capabilities offering dialup and ISDN access has become affordable, and the advent of DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) and Cable Modem technologies will doubtlessly continue this trend.
Talking about computer networks often means talking about Unix. Of course, Unix is not the only operating system with network capabilities, nor will it remain a frontrunner forever, but it has been in the networking business for a long time, and will surely continue to be for some time to come.
What makes Unix particularly interesting to private users is that there has been much activity to bring free Unix-like operating systems to the PC, such as 386BSD, FreeBSD, and Linux.
Linux is a freely distributable Unix clone for personal computers. It currently runs on a variety of machines that includes the Intel family of processors, but also Motorola 680x0 machines, such as the Commodore Amiga and Apple Macintosh; Sun SPARC and Ultra-SPARC machines; Compaq
* License
