Basics of the Operating System

Heather RussellNT1430 Unit 1 Chapter Exercises Unit 1 Chapter 1 1. What is free software? List three characteristics of free software. Free software is software that users have the freedom to distribute and change. The three main characteristics of free software are: The source code has to be distributed with the program, you cannot restrict people from redistributing/modifying/using the software, and users must be allowed to redistribute modified versions under the same terms/licensing. 4.What is the Free Software Foundation/GNU? What is Linux? Which parts of the Linux operating system did each provide? Who else has helped build and refine this operating system? GNU stands for â€Å"GNU'S Not Unix†, and it was designed to be a UNIX-like operating system developed by Richard Stallman. Linux is the name of operating system kernel developed by Linus Torvalds. GNU's tools aside the Linux kernel make the operating system known as â€Å"Linux† aka â€Å"GNU/Linux†. Th ousands of people helped refine the operating system online.Chapter 2 1. Briefly, what does the process of installing an operating system such as Fedora/RHEL involve? Installing Fedora/RHEL is the process of copying operating system files from a CD, DVD, or USB flash drive to hard disk(s) on a system and setting up configuration files so Linux runs properly on the hardware. Several types of installations are possible, including fresh installations, upgrades from older releases of Fedora/RHEL, and dual-boot installations Chapter 3 1. What is a live system?What advantages does it have over an installed system? A live system gives you a chance to preview Fedora without installing it. It does not write to hard disks. 4. Where on the disk should you put your /boot partition or the root(/) partition if you do not use a /boot partition? Put /boot at the beginning of the drive (partition 1) so that there is no issue of Linux having to boot from a partition too far into the drive. 8. When do es a Fedora/RHEL system start X by default? When the system enters Run Level 5Chapter 11 1 How does single-user mode differ from multiuser mode? When a system is in single-user mode, you can log in only at the console. Not all of the filesystems are mounted, and many daemons are not running. With the system in multiuser mode you can log in at any terminal or workstation that is set up for login, most or all of the filesystems are mounted, and all of the daemons that your system is set up to run are running. 3 What do the letters of the su command stand for? Hint: It is not Superuser. ) What can you do with su besides give yourself Superuser privileges? How would you log in as Zach if you did not know his password but knew the root password? How would you establish the same environment that Zach has when he first logs on? The letters stand for substitute user. You can give yourself privileges of any user whose password you know (or any user when you are running as root). You can also execute a command (other than a shell) as the specified user.