www.it-ebooks.info Linux Bible ® 2006 Edition Boot Up to Fedora™, KNOPPIX, Debian®, SUSE™, Ubuntu™, and Other Distributions Christopher Negus www.it-ebooks.info Linux Bible ® 2006 Edition www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Linux Bible ® 2006 Edition Boot Up to Fedora™, KNOPPIX, Debian®, SUSE™, Ubuntu™, and Other Distributions Christopher Negus www.it-ebooks.info Linux® Bible 2006 Edition: Boot Up to Fedora™, KNOPPIX, Debian®, SUSE™, Ubuntu™, and Other Distributions Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc 10475 Crosspoint Boulevard Indianapolis, IN 46256 www.wiley.com Copyright © 2006 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published simultaneously in Canada ISBN-13: 978-0-471-75489-3 ISBN-10: 0-471-75489-7 Manufactured in the United States of America 10 1O/RS/QR/QW/IN No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600 Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Legal Department, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 10475 Crosspoint Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46256, (317) 572-3447, fax (317) 572-4355, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY 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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Negus, Chris, 1957– Linux bible / Christopher Negus.—2006 ed p cm Includes index ISBN-13: 978-0-471-75489-3 (paper/dvd) ISBN-10: 0-471-75489-7 (paper/dvd) Linux Operating systems (Computers) I Title QA76.76.O63N42143 2006 005.4'32—dc22 2005032276 Trademarks: Wiley and related trade dress are registered trademarks of Wiley Publishing, Inc., in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds Fedora is a trademark of Red Hat, Inc Debian is a registered trademark of Software in the Public Interest, Inc SUSE is a trademark of Novell, Inc Ubuntu is a trademark of Canonical Limited Company All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books www.it-ebooks.info About the Author Chris Negus has written or co-written dozens of books on Linux and UNIX, including Red Hat Linux Bible (all editions), Linux Troubleshooting Bible, and the recent Linux Toys II For eight years he worked with the organization at AT&T that developed UNIX before moving to Utah to help contribute to Novell’s short-lived UnixWare project in the early 1990s When not writing about Linux, Chris enjoys playing soccer and just hanging out with his family About the Contributing Authors Wayne Tucker is a Linux enthusiast and has been a professional system administrator for six years He is currently a technical manager, systems administrator, and network engineer at an Internet company in Washington state He lives in Bellingham, Washington, with his beloved wife, Danielle, whom he would like to thank for her patience while he was working on this project His future projects include continuing his education and working on the things that have recently accumulated on his “honey-do” list Kurt Wall is a professional technical writer by trade and a historian by training These days, Kurt works for TimeSys Corporation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania His primary responsibility is managing TimeSys’s Content Group In addition to overseeing production of the technical and end-user documentation of TimeSys’s embedded Linux operating system and development tools, he writes most of the documentation for TimeSys’s embedded Linux products and all of the content available on the TimeSys Network Kurt has written or co-written 15 books on Linux system administration and programming topics and contributes the occasional product review to LinuxPlanet In his spare time, he has no spare time Kurt, who dislikes writing about himself in the third person, receives entirely too much e-mail at kwall@kurtwerks.com www.it-ebooks.info Credits Executive Editor Carol Long Vice President and Executive Publisher Joseph B Wikert Acquisitions Editor Debra Williams Cauley Project Coordinator Michael Kruzil Development Editor Sara Shlaer Graphics and Production Specialists Denny Hager Joyce Haughey Heather Ryan Alicia B South Erin Zeltner Technical Editors Kurt Wall Wayne Tucker Bill von Hagen John Kennedy Dilip Thomas Quality Control Technicians John Greenough Joe Niesen Brian H Walls Copy Editor Nancy Rapoport Editorial Manager Mary Beth Wakefield Media Development Associate Producer Rich Graves Production Manager Tim Tate Media Development Specialist Kate Jenkins Vice President and Executive Group Publisher Richard Swadley Media Development Coordinator Laura Atkinson Proofreading and Indexing TECHBOOKS Production Services www.it-ebooks.info As always, I dedicate this book to my wife, Sheree www.it-ebooks.info Contents at a Glance Acknowledgments xxv Introduction xxvii Part I: Linux First Steps Chapter 1: Starting with Linux Chapter 2: Running Commands from the Shell 29 Chapter 3: Getting into the Desktop 77 Part II: Running the Show 123 Chapter 4: Learning Basic Administration 125 Chapter 5: Getting on the Internet 173 Chapter 6: Securing Linux 195 Part III: Choosing and Installing a Linux Distribution 241 Chapter 7: Installing Linux Chapter 8: Running Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Chapter 9: Running Debian GNU/Linux Chapter 10: Running SUSE Linux Chapter 11: Running KNOPPIX Chapter 12: Running Yellow Dog Linux Chapter 13: Running Gentoo Linux Chapter 14: Running Slackware Linux Chapter 15: Running Linspire Chapter 16: Running Mandriva Chapter 17: Running Ubuntu Linux Chapter 18: Running a Linux Firewall/Router Chapter 19: Running Bootable Linux Distributions 243 275 299 325 341 363 383 399 415 425 441 459 485 Part IV: Running Applications 503 Chapter 20: Playing Music and Video Chapter 21: Working with Words and Images Chapter 22: E-Mailing and Web Browsing Chapter 23: Gaming with Linux www.it-ebooks.info 505 545 585 619 ... has written or co-written dozens of books on Linux and UNIX, including Red Hat Linux Bible (all editions), Linux Troubleshooting Bible, and the recent Linux Toys II For eight years he worked with... Entering the Linux Community 825 General Linux Sites Linux Distributions Companies and Groups Supporting Linux Major Linux Projects Linux User... Finding Linux Distributions on the DVD Fedora Core Linux SUSE Linux KNOPPIX Linux Slackware 10.1 Ubuntu 5.1 Finding Linux