I have been using the UNIX operating system to develop software since 1983. The first system I used that ran UNIX was a Plexus computer. This was before virtual memory was built into UNIX and the Plexus system used segmented memory. That is, a dedicated section of memory was allocated for each process. I went on to use the Berkeley Standard Development (BSD) release of UNIX on VAX mini-computers before graduating to working with Sun Microsystems workstations for many years. For a time I was developing software that was shipped on Sun's Solaris, HP's HP/UX and IBM's A/IX. Now I've made the next logical step and started to use Linux.
There are lots of good things about Linux. It is a very powerful and flexible operating system. Great strides have been made (compared to other UNIX systems) toward being user friendly. However, in many cases one is still forced to become a system administrator and master a large store of Linux arcana, which resembles UNIX arcana but is different.
It is easy to forget what was done to configure something on Linux, so this web page is a collection of notes. It is really written for me, but I hope it will be useful for others as well. Linux is in a constant state of development, so I fully expect that these notes may become obsolete over time.
Ian Kaplan
Date: July 18, 2004