Linux variety

• Welcome to linuxzoo
  • Essential Linux
    • Unix Overview
      • Linux variety

Linux and Unix can be installed in a variety of ways, and is available in a whole range of flavours. Some of the common flavours (known as distributions) are listed below:

• Debian
• Redhat Enterprise
• Fedora (a free redhat)
• Gentoo
• SUSE

Each flavour can be installed in different ways, to best support the way the system will be used. Common installed include:

• Local Install: uses the hard drive of your computer
• CDROM execution: uses only your CDROM and your memory - good for demonstrations.
• Diskless node: a central server holds all your files, allowing each uses to have a cheap computer for Linux which does not even have a hard drive.
• NFS partitions: A local install of only a minimum amount of files, where most files and all user data is stored on a central machine. Easy to maintain for a system administrator but may suffer performance problems.
• X Terminals: only have a screen and keyboard and mouse. All work is done on a server.

X Terminals are similar in concept to the terminals of decades ago. An X-Terminal cannot actually run any user programs, and does not even run Unix itself. However, it allows a Unix application to redirect its output to an X-Terminal, giving the appearance of a normal Unix client box. Clearly if the applications in question require considerable graphics manipulation (such as in the case of watching a movie) then all the graphics data must continuously be passed from the place where the application is running to the X-Terminal via the network. This often leads to poor performance, and so X-Terminals are not a common component in modern architectures.

In the tutorials we concentrate on server configurations where all data is stored locally.