► http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/22/1453228&mode=thread — The famous AC Patches from Alan Cox, for whom they are named.
► http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/Kernel-Build-HOWTO.html — The Linux Kernel Rebuild Guide; configuration, compilation, and troubleshooting.
► http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/html_single/KernelAnalysis-HOWTO.html — KernelAnalysis HOWTO. Describes the mysterious inner workings of the kernel.
► http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Module-HOWTO/ — Kernel Module HOWTO. Includes a good discussion about unresolved symbols.
► http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/html_single/Modules.html — The Linux Kernel Modules Installation HOWTO; an older document discussing recompiling kernel modules.
► http://www.tldp.org/ — The Linux Documentation Project. The Mecca of all Linux documentation. Excellent source of HOWTO documentation, as well as FAQs and online books, all about Linux.
► http://www.minix.org/ — The unofficial minix website. It contains a selection of links to information about minix and a link to the actual homepage. Although minix is still copyrighted, the owner has granted unlimited rights to everyone. See for yourself the operating system used to develop Linux.
► http://jungla.dit.upm.es/~jmseyas/linux/kernel/hackers-docs.html — A web page with links to Linux kernel documentation, books, hacker tomes, and other helpful information for budding and experienced Linux kernel and kernel module developers. This list also will be found in the /usr/src/kernels/linux-2.6/Documentation/kernel-docs.txt file if you install the Fedora kernel sources.
PART VII
Appendices
APPENDIX A
The History of Red Hat and Fedora
The main object of this book has been to give you practical advice on getting up and running with Fedora 8, and as such we haven't really spent any time looking at the origins of Fedora and how it got to where it is today. This appendix gives you information that will enable you to put Fedora into context and understand the history behind Fedora 8.
Fedora represented an evolution in the business direction of its sponsor, Red Hat. Red Hat itself is the largest commercial Linux developer in the world, and is based in Raleigh, North Carolina. For nearly 10 years, Red Hat provided copies of its commercial Linux distribution, Red Hat Linux, free over the Internet and also sold boxed copies to consumers and businesses. All that changed in October 2003, when Red Hat discontinued the sale and free distribution of the commercial Red Hat Linux.
As the company has since its inception, Red Hat then released all its work on the open source software in the former commercial distribution. The work, which was to be a new version of Red Hat Linux, was then merged with an existing Fedora Linux project and was reborn as Fedora Core. Red Hat now focuses its efforts on enterprise and corporate Linux-based products and services, but again, continues to make source code available for all its products that are under an open source license.
Red Hat's Enterprise Linux is a series of software products aimed for corporate and enterprise migration, deployment, and use. Although all Linux distributions could be considered the same underneath because all use the Linux kernel, Red Hat takes special pains to create, test, sell, and support commercial Linux distributions optimized for deployment on multiple hardware and CPU architectures. These high-performance enhancements include hardware-tweaked Linux kernels, failover and load-balancing clustering, and integrated Java support — essential for mission-critical applications and production environments.
Red Hat is one of the world's foremost open source development houses and returns nearly all its development efforts back to the Linux development community.
The company has been involved in many open source and GNU GPL projects, such as the Apache web server, the glibc software libraries, the GNU Network Object Model Environment (GNOME), various GNU software tools and packages, the Linux kernel and device drivers, the PostgreSQL database system, and the Red Hat Package Manager (RPM).
Red Hat also supports many other projects by providing FTP service and web hosting and is one of the few companies actively promoting and using the open source business development model. This means that, although many of its products are free, revenue streams are derived from spin-off and related technologies and services.
One possible reason for the success of Linux could be "best hack wins." In other words, software that works well, fills a critical need, is readily available in source form, and is distributed under a free software license (such as the GNU GPL) will quickly spread and see extensive use. The growth in popularity and widespread adoption of Linux around the world is a testament to quality, licensing, and need for Linux.
UNIX enjoyed a similar rapid-fire adoption after it was distributed in the early 1970s and fulfilled user needs on a number of fronts. However, its licensing was restrictive, caused much grief in some open source communities (such as education), and continues to spawn problems to this day.
It was not long ago that any new major project involving use of Linux by big business, government (on any level), or academia would have been big news. Today, Linux is increasingly used by IS/IT strategists for computing solutions. Linux and related open source software rule the Internet. It is the host platform of choice for traditional server operations. Linux is poised to take over the desktop, occupying the number two spot behind a monolithic software entity.
The list of Linux projects, efforts, and partnerships reads like a Who's Who of the software industry: Amazon, Ameritrade, Borland, Computer Associates, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, and SAP are just some of the enterprise-level players using Linux. Linux is also a key ingredient and shares an ever-increasing portion of server hardware sales from all large vendors, such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell.
What Is Fedora?
Fedora is the heir to Red Hat Linux and incorporates many of the features and software tools included with previous Red Hat Linux distributions, along with many enhancements. Red Hat Linux spawned many imitators in the Linux world in the past decade, and many of these imitators have gone on to create credible products and distributions.
Thanks to the different ways you can get Fedora, you no longer need to worry about downloading multiple CDs. Included with this book is a DVD that contains 3GB of packages just waiting to be installed onto your hard drive. Alternatively, you could snag either the Live CD (with the Gnome interface) or the KDE Live CD (with the KDE interface, funnily enough) if you want a usable yet light installation. More than 5,000 separate software packages are in Fedora. This distribution comprises the Linux kernel, installation utilities, thousands of pages of documentation, several thousand fonts, a comprehensive graphical networking interface, and several thousand individual commands and clients.
Fedora provides a base, or core, framework operating system and desktop composed entirely of free software. Fedora includes the Nodoka desktop theme and has an improved consistency in the two major graphical desktops available for use: Gnome and KDE.