User:Silviolorusso/Report

4/6 October - Install Party

Bought a brand new cheap netbook. Installed Ubuntu by myself, therefore joined the Debian group.

First day: not everything clear, especially regarding the file structure. Realized I was missing the basic terminal commands. Anyway Debian was installed and it was working fine (except for the wireless and the audio).

Second day: not able to follow, pretty much copying from the screen. Got the audio to work. Realized my netbook processor is 64. Had to reinstall from scratch. Installed Ubuntu this time.

10 October - Terminal session /part 1

In developing his mechanical loom, Joseph Marie Jacquard implemented punched cards. It was 1801. Punched cards were a crucial innovation that would eventually affect the whole computer industry becausese they were the only way to store data.

A company called Dehomeag, subsidiary to IBM, was leading the punchcards movement.

Then the punchcard technology became deprecated for the connection with Nazism: punch cards allowed Nazis to have scientific control over the repressed people. People started to think punchcard were allowing a repressive control over people.

The terminal concept was a sort of response to punchcards: instead of punching cards, writing command and data into a terminal. In fact the first terminal was not much more than a typing machine. Computer were made in a modular way: terminal were meant only to send data and to display it, not to precess them.

VT100 is an example of "dumb" terminal.

In parallel to terminal, serial consoles came to exist. A serial console allowed the admin to connect to the system through it. Now the difference between serial consoles and terminal is pretty blurred.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> time jump >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

(UNICS) UNIX, fully operating system, developed in 1969 by employers of Packard Bell research lab. The idea was to be able to breakdown everything in small parts. Modular. Doug Mcllroy:

<quote> This is the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface. </quote>

The philosophy took off. More than 40 years after every simple computer is directly related to this principle.

Unix → Next Step (Steve Jobs), total failure → again in mac OS X

GNU started with the GNU manifesto 1980's by Richard Stallman

Stallman was working at AI labs and he witnesses the transformation of compunting as a collaborative working to a commercial enterprise. No recipes, bits of code could be shared anymore. Bill Gates and others prevented that because it was considered harmful for the enterprise.

Four freedoms GNU:

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). ** Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

How to enforce this legally? GPL license, a sort of hack on copyright.

Stallman and others started to rewrite bits of code and release those in GPL.

Linux: just a Kernel without operating system. GNU didn't have a kernel. Good opportunitiy. GNU + LINUX.

Do one thing and do it well? How? Pipeline! What to pipe? Std (standard) streams in Unix (stdin / stdout / stderr)

Terminal: text-based as metaphoric as gui

commandlinefu.com: list of recipes command

LIST OF SHELL COMMANDS

ls : list grep : find a line ps : processes man : manual less : simple text viewer alias : create alias vim : text editor pwd : where I am? mkdir : make directory cd : change directory touch : create file for do done : iteration loops while : iteration loop, while something is true iterate some commands whereis : where is software? source: refresh echo : print function ssh : connect to a player sh : a shell bash : other shell zsh : another one chmod +x : change modes of a file dmesg : list all kernel messages > : pipe writes to file | : pipe \ : cut oneliner seq : sequence number sed : editor text to pipe

ARGUMENTS &: run in background

FILES AND FOLDERS AND VARIABLES

.bashrc : config of bash /dev/mem : ram /dev/dsp : audiocard ~ : home $HOST: name of the computer $USER: name of the user

SHELL SHORTCUTS TAB: Completion