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Grex > Systems > #4: The Linux item
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cross
The Linux item Mark Unseen   Sep 16 19:00 UTC 2006
This item is for discussion of the GNU/Linux system originally written by
Finnish (then) student Linus Torvalds.  Linux has since grown to be the
premier open source project, running on a huge number of machines with
thousands of contributers and perhaps millions of users.  Many distributions
of the basic Linux kernel and GNU utilities exist, and Linux is unique in that
"Linux" refers to the system's kernel which is maintained separate from any
specific distribution.  The Linux kernel is available free (with source code)
under the GNU Public License, and is often bundled with GNU utilities leading
the distributions to be frequently referred to as "GNU/Linux."
79 responses total.
ball
response 1 of 79: Mark Unseen   Jan 16 00:41 UTC 2007
Does Linux support external Firewire devices such as hard
disks, DVD-RAM drives and camcorders?  Does it support IP
networking over Firewire?

Can today's Linux connect to an 802.11g LAN that uses WPA
with a private shared key?
cross
response 2 of 79: Mark Unseen   Jan 16 01:12 UTC 2007
I imagine it depends on the exact distribution used, but I have a hard time
believing that the answer to all of those questions is not `yes' for the major
distributions.
mcnally
response 3 of 79: Mark Unseen   Jan 16 02:37 UTC 2007
 Linux has had firewire disk support for quite some time.  PC BIOSes may
 not support (in fact, usually do not support) booting from Firewire,
 however.  

 CD and DVD burners are a little more complicated, because it depends on
 the application software.  My understanding (which is limited) is that
 handling of Firewire peripherals is done through a sort of SCSI emulation
 layer and that handling of CD and DVD burners is *also* done through a
 sort of SCSI emulation layer, so I would recommend testing first or asking
 someone who has a configuration similar to the one you have.

 As far as video cameras are concerned, I don't know.

 The laptop I'm typing this on currently is connected to my 802.11g WAP,
 which uses a WEP key (I know it's not secure.)  The version of Ubuntu
 which I am using has a nice little GUI configuration widget to enter
 the key and everything (though of course I'm sure there are also command
 line equivalents..)  And my Ubuntu distro is more than a year old 
 (I'm running 5.10, I believe) and things have probably been refined
 further since then.  Nowadays, for example, I believe there are native
 drivers for the Broadcom chipset my Dell laptop uses, which eliminate the
 need to use the awkward (but better-than-nothing) ndiswrapper utility
 to load the Windows drivers.
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