[PDF]200908 FT Open Source Software

YOUR HANDY GUIDE TO EVERYDAY TECHNOIOQY


Fast Track
to

Open Source
Software

By Team Digit


Credits


The People Behind This Book


EDITORIAL

Editor-in-chief
Editor

Head-Copy Desk
Writers


Edward Henning
Robert Sovereign-Smith
Nash David

Mohamed Rameez, SrilRahil Banthia, Aditya IVIadanapalle, Rossi Fernandes


DESIGN AND LAYOUT

Layout Design Vijay Padaya, MV Sajeev

Cover Design Kabir lUlalkanI


0 9.9 Interactive Pvt. Ltd.

Published by 9.9 Interactive

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted
in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

August 2009

Free with Digit. Not to be sold separately If you have paid separately for this book,
please email the editor at editor@thinkdigit.com along with details of location of
purchase, for appropriate action.


FAST TRACK


CONTENTS


chapter 1 What is Open Source 8

1.1 A history of open source 9

1.2 Open source licenses 13

1.3 How do open source projects worl
1.4 Limitations of open source 19

Chapter 2 Open Source for Professionals 21

2.1 Open Source for the medical profession 22

2.2 Open source for media authoring 25

2.3 Open source resources for education 27

2.4 Open Source for IT professionals 30

2.5 Open source for scientists 30

2.6 Open source for engineers 31

2.7 Open Source for design professionals 33

2.8 Open source for small and medium

businesses 34

Chapter 3 Open Source for Home Use 38

3.1 Introduction 38

3.2 Acquiring the source 39

3.3 Compiling from source for Linux and Windows 40

3.4 Advanced compile options 46

3.5 Reporting bugs and getting help 47


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chapter 4 Creating your Own Linux Distro 51

4.1 Remastering a live CD 52

4.2 Respinning an installed and customised distro 66

4.3 Linux from scratch (LFS) 68

Ciiapter 5 Linux distros 73

5.1 Ubuntu 73

5.2 Slackware 81

5.3 OpenSUSE 86

5.4 Sabayon 94

5.5 Debian 103

5.6 Mandriva 108

5.7 PC-BSD 113

5.8 OpenSolaris 118

5.9 Gentoo 120

5.10 Fedora 123

5.11 Granular Linux 124

5.12 Other important Linux distributions 126


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INTRODUCTION


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Introduction


pen source software is a all engaging term for a wide
range of approaches to designing, licencing and selling
software. Tliere is no specific definition of what open


^ source software is or is not, but by and large, the Debian Free
Software Guidelines apply. Open source in common usage is pretty
Q recent, something that was absent in its present form before the
p turn of the century. Both licenced and free software were released
T with their source code prior to that, and there were a number of
W other models - such as paying extra for the source of a software
A after buying it, buying just the source of the software, or the
" source being given for free to anyone who purchased the soft-
^ ware. All of this could technically mean open source as the source
code of a particular software is available to anyone who wants it,
but that is not what open source means in common usage.

Open source software, as it is commonly understood, involves
the process of the development of the software as well. The devel-
opment schedule of the software, and the feature list is decided
by online collaboration of people working for the projects. The
bugs m the software are tracked by a community of testers, and
their recommendations are taken seriously. Some software and
flavours of Linux are in such active developments, that the cur-
rent alpha versions of these often incorporate suggestions and
fbces days after they are suggested. Once a software is released,
depending on the licence, open source generally allows you to go
ahead and do what you want with it. What does all of this mean
to the lay user?

The way open source enthusiasts look at it, it is immate-
rial whether everyone actually takes apart the source, but the
freedom to do so, is something that is vital to how computers
are used. If you're investing in all the pieces of hardware that
makes up a computer, you should have the freedom to use that
particular hardware in any way you feel fit, instead of the ways
instead of a few corporations deciding for you. To an open source
enthusiast, such a freedom is a very fundamental one, and should
be enshrined in the constitution if possible. All of this is still


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INTRODUCTION


philosophising; and there are two sides to a com, as ensuring a
revenue stream from a software that you have paid to develop, can
be equally argued as an inalienable right of the companies that
make the software. Are there any benefits for everyone who uses
open source software?

Yes, there are. Open source software are licenced in a way
that makes them legal to use as many copies of them as you
want, and wherever you want. Open source software take up
much less resources than their commercial counterparts, because
they don't have any code for licencing, authentification, DRM,
promoting other products, attached advertisements and the like.
Most FOSS IS entirely free of spyware and adware. Bug fixes are
very regular, and you will not be stuck with a buggy version for
a long time. Open source software and the formats they use are
future proof If you make a complicated 3D model, and save it in
the source format of a commercial modelling software, and then
twenty years down the line, the corporation that makes the soft-
ware closes down, your files will be useless. Remember, that in
that much time, the hardware that you ran the original software
on will probably be hideously outdated. If your software is open
source, such a thing can never happen, simply because a new
wave of users will continue to maintain the software.

There will always be commercial software that are much bet-
ter than the open source counterparts, and an equal number of
open source software that are better than the various commercial
counterparts. In the end, the decision to use them is up to the
individual, and this Fast Track covers the important aspects of
using open source software, that is how to build from source,
modify the source, the different types of software available for
professionals, and which Linux distro is ideal for your needs.
Read on, and you will find out that using open source software
is not as complicated or terrible as it seems. Once you are done,
there are plenty of source codes available in the DVD for you to
play around with.


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What is Open Source

Open source - the term has been the centre stage of a David
vs Gohath fight in the software community. Be it Windows vs
other operating systems, or Internet Explorer vs Mozilla; and
now more recently, or more recently Microsoft vs Google, open
source has been the rallying point of the so called 'resistance'
to the proprietary regime. For developers within the software
community, open source has transcended the role of a mere
development methodology into a core life philosophy. Today,
we hear of not just open
source software, but also
open source hardware,
open source biotechnology,
even open source politics!

Open source is a
methodology or approach
towards the design and
development of software
with the intention of giving
the user access to the
source code; i.e. if you use
open source software, not
only will you be able to use

it, you will also be able to see how it works, debug it, modify it
and redistribute it.

To elaborate and make the difference more clear, imagine the
simplest entry level C++ programme, the one that says "hello
world."

If the program was proprietary (non open source), you
would merely have access to the EXE file that upon execution
would give a vnndow with "hello world" written in it.

However, if the program is open source, you will also be
given access to the code that the EXE file is compiled from,
namely

#include

void main ( )

{

cout<<"hello world";

}


The open source initiative


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WHAT IS OPEN SOURCE


Hence, not only will you be able to use this programme for
the pleasure of hearing a "hello world" from your computer, you
will be able to modify this code to allow it to say more than just
that.

This example of course, was overly simplistic. Even if
the programme had been proprietary, anyone could recreate
it making it immaterial whether it was open source or not.
However, in today's era of programmes that run up to tens
of thousands of lines of code, with complex algorithms and
databases forming an integral part of the system, it is impossible
to recreate the code from observing how a program functions.
Here, open source makes all the difference.

The Open Source Initiative, an organisation committed to
promoting open source uses the open source definition in order
to determine if a software is open source or not. This definition,
among other things specifies requirements of the licence such
as preventing discrimination against any persons or groups and
preventing discrimination against fields of endeavour.

One must not forget that there is a core difference between
open source and free software. While they both embody the
same core idea, the former still allows the commercial utilisation
of the code with the motive of profit. Many companies such
as Red Hat gam significant revenues from sale, distribution,
maintenance and consultancy services provided on open source
software.

1.1 A history of open source

while the term open source has been coined only recently in
1998, the core concept behind it has been existent ever since
the advent of software.

In the '50s and '60s, when computers and software were
confined to academic and specialised industrial environments,
almost all software was essentially open source. Software was
not viewed as a commodity and the source code for most
programs were as freely available as the programs themselves.
This was due to the fact that in those days the community of
developers and users of software was more or less the same.
The users often modified the code to fix bugs or to improve
functionality and use it themselves.

Most operating systems were freely distributed along with


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GNU


their source code, and user
groups such as SHARE
were formed to facihtate the
sharing and exchange of IBM
701 source code.

However, by the late
1960s with the evolution
of high level languages and
operating systems, software
development costs were
increasmg. While most earlier
software had been bundled
with the hardware it was
meant to be used on, there was software m the market that was
exclusively for sale only.

Some programs such as Unix were given free of cost to
academia and related users by AT&T, but m the absence of the
permission to modify and redistribute, this was hardly open
source.

Soon, by the 1970s, there were exclusive software-
only companies selling software with licences that forbade
modification and redistribution through patents, copyrights and
trademarks. By the 1980s, nothing was left of free software as
known till then. Even Unix was marketed commercially, and
open source was dead.

In 1983, Richard Stallman of MIT was
annoyed at Symbolics Inc. for not allowing
modifications to updates on its LISP
machines based on MIT's code and started
the GNU project. The GNU project aimed at
creating a UNIX-like open source operating
system free from regulations preventing it
from being modified and redistributed.

The GNU project is also aimed at creating open source
development tools such as compilers and libraries. This is the
beginning of modern open source as we know it, though the
term 'open source' wouldn't come into existence for another
15 years. Around the same time, Stallman also founded the free
software foundation that coined the free software definition - a
precursor to the open source definition.


GNU is a
recursive
acronym for
GNU'S not
Unix


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□


The GNU operating system kernel
(the central part of an operating system
that performs memory and process
management), called the GNU Hurd, was
continuously delayed, but most of the
remaming objectives of GNU had been
achieved by 1991. With the release of
the Linux kernel along with its source
code by Linus Torvalds under the GNU
General Public License (GPL) in 1992, the
remaming GNU tools were modified to
run on Lmux and the initial objectives of
GNU were considered complete. A brief
naming controversy ensued that continues
even today wherein the open source
community is divided on whether to call it
Lmux or GNU/Linux.

Through all this, the software
community also witnessed the
development of FreeBSD and NetBSD
(Berkeley Software Distributions) as open
source operating systems. This culminated
in OpenBSD, released in 1995. It's
development continues even today and is
noted for its versatility and portability.

Since 1993, numerous operating
systems based on
GNU, Linux and
other open source
software have been
released. The most
popular among this
was most probably
Debian GNU/Linux.

In the later 1990s,
some of the open
source software that
remained popular
include the Apache
web server that


Richard Stallman,
the founder of GNU


Linus Torvalds, the
creator of the Linux
Kernel. He is a legend
in the open source
software community


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remains the world's most popular web
server software till date.

Attempts at renammg the
commercially unattractive 'free
software' to something that would
emphasise the commercial benefits
of sharing the source code with the
public while not scaring profit motives
away culminated in the coining of
the term "open source". This caused
a small ideological split in the open
source community as some (such as
Stallman) felt the new


Netscape was the first to
open up in the browser
scene


OpenOffice.org


name undermined
the philosophical and
ethical aspects of free
software.

Microsoft's policy OPenOffice.org is fast emerging as an
„. T attractive open source alternative to

of bundling Internet Microsoft Office.

Explorer with Windows

is deemed to be what brought about the demise of the web
browser that once dominated the market, a practice for which
Microsoft was penalised in court for 'monopolistic practices'.

With increased awareness among the software industry
and users about the benefits of open source, the open source
movement continued to grow. Entire companies such as Red
Hat Inc. developed open source software, generating income
through consultancy and solutions services.

Other notable developments m the history of open source
include the development of the X Window System, KDE and


DID YOU Kh'^""^^^^^^^^^^^^»

The birth of modern open source as we know it was
in 1998, when Netscape Communications Corporation
decided to release the source code of its then popular
Netscape Navigator programme (this code is now found
in Mozilla Firefox, among others) to the public as free
software. This act prompted the free software community
>>>