Subtitles of the Movie

Now let's take an introduction to SUSE Linux. Now, while we're not going to make you Linux experts, uh, during this course, we are going to try to make you a little it more of an expert on SUSE Linux in particular. So we're going to talk about Linux superficially a little bit at first. Hopefully you're already familiar with Linux to some certain degree. Uh, then we're going to take a look at SUSE Linux itself, uh, that particular distro, the distro we're working with and we'll go over some features as well as a little bit of history of SUSE Linux. And then finally, we'll finish out talking about it with cross-platform integration and value, we'll kind of just talk about what value you get from SUSE Linux over another version of Linux or even Windows. First of all, let's talk about a quick introduction to Linux itself. Linux is not just another OS, uh, or an alternate to Windows. There's not really a, uh, a going choice between Windows or Linux, although Windows is probably on better than 90 percent of the desktops in the world. Linux is not just an alternative for people who aren't in the mainstream or people who just simply don't like Windows. Uh, Linux is quickly taking the market by storm. It's becoming a very popular desktop for end users and it has been for quite a while a popular server platform. Uh, Linux brings several things to the table that, uh, benefit both users and businesses. It brings things like interoperability with other systems; choice. You now have a choice. You don't necessarily have to be committed to a Microsoft Windows environment or a Unix environment or a Sun Solaris environment for example. So it does bring choice to the user and it brings a great cost savings to consumers and businesses. Dollar for dollar it's a very inexpensive solution compared to Windows. Now, Linux was basically developed by, uh, a man called Linus Torvalds back in 1991. He was working on a college project and he was trying to come up with a replacement operating system from Minix. He was just kind of fooling around. He never really intended it to be a serious, uh, endeavor. But as time passed and it grew, it became, uh, a very big project and it was contributed to by many, many people early on. Linux very closely mirrors the Unix type of operating systems in terms of file systems and, uh, commands and things of that nature. Normally, if you have used Unix, uh, Linux is a very easy transition or vice versa. Now, the kernel itself is developed by a particular organization and applications are also developed by a community of users. Everyone who has a stake in Linux or wants to contribute to it can do so and it's normally done under the, uh, new license or the GPL licensing scheme. Uh, Linux is open source software, as you may know, meaning that it's not only sometimes free in terms of cost, but it's free in terms of, uh, information, uh, being disclosed about, uh, it's coding, it's source code and things like that, so it's not proprietary. It doesn't follow closed standards. It's a very open, uh, operating system. You'll hear the term distros quite frequently and basically Linux comes in many flavors or distros and essentially a distro might mean that, uh, it's a uniform kernel, but a particular distro may provide certain applications or utilities or drivers that other distros don't. Some distros are more suited for business users, uh, some distros are more suited for home users. There are particular distros such as a security distro or a multi-media distro that's out there that may be geared specifically for a particular use or group of users. All in all, Linux is a very solid desktop and server platform and again, while I'm not going to make you an expert in Linux in general, uh, I think it's important that you know where Linux is coming from in terms of it's a very strong alternative to other operating systems that are out there.