So you would like to learn PHP, the popular scripting language used to run countless websites?
What Is PHP?
When PHP first came out it originally stood for Personal Home Page. Over 10 years ago, 1994 to be exact, a man named Ramus Lerdorf created PHP to track visitors who viewed his online resume. As time progressed and PHP's features were expanded on, it got a new name: PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.
VirtualBox is a popular virtualization application that allows you to run a guest operating system (Linux, Windows, etc...) within a host operating system. Basically, it allows you to run one operating system within another without dual booting.
Running commands one right after the other can be a tedious way to get things done from the shell. What if there was a way to "chain" these commands together? Well fortunately Linux provides some ways to allow you to type in a bunch of commands at the prompt and run them as if it was one command.
Input/Output Redirection
What if you wanted to run a command and save the output to a file? Well we would use the greater-than symbol (>) to do this.
Installing KDE on Ubuntu is relatively painfree. If you are coming from a Windows environment you may feel more at ease with KDE than with Ubuntu's main desktop environment GNOME. While you can install KDE from a GUI program, I find that it is actually easier by opening a terminal (gnome-terminal, xterm, etc...) and typing:
What exactly is a 'mount point'? Basically a mount point is where you "mount" a device (CD/DVD, hard drive, etc...) to the root partition. Unlike in Windows where every device is assigned a drive letter (C:\, D:\, E:\, etc...), Linux connects these devices to the root partition of the hard drive. Even though the system "sees" the hardware, the system may not make it available to the user to access.
Linux systems usually define the /mnt and/or /media directories to provide a central location to connect (i.e mount) your systems devices.
In this tutorial, I will walk through the Fedora 10 installation process and sprinkle helpful bits of knowledge to the beginning Linux user.
Granted, most Linux users do not have a need for these installation walkthoughs, but I think they will serve new Linux users well until they get accustomed to Linux. So lets begin!
For some people, migrating from Windows offers a few roadblocks to the user. Linux runs on a different philosophy then Microsoft's flagship product. One key difference is permissions and privileges for users and files.
Basics
Early in Windows history, mainly the 9x branch, Windows didn't fully separate users into groups or roles. Linux, being a Unix variant has since the beginning. Newer Windows systems, such as Windows NT, XP and Vista have implemented a user/group methodology to managing users. Each system is different and has it's pro's and con's.
The way Linux organizes its files on the hard drive is vastly different from how Windows handles this task. New Linux users coming from Windows sometime have a hard time maneuvering though directories or come with notions that Linux should manage its files in the same vain as Windows.
So everything is going according to plan, you have successfully got the parts, built it, set up the BIOS and installed the OS. Now we are on to our last Building A Linux Computer article.
Now that you have Ubuntu up and running, I am going to outline a few basic ideas and tips to get your system up to speed.
Updating Ubuntu
Ubuntu defaults to letting you know what updates are available, but we want to get it out of the way now.
So you have bought the parts, built it and set up the BIOS. Know you are on to the fun part, installing the operating system. Since this article is obviously about building a Linux based system, I was torn between what Linux distribution to use to install on your new computer. After some personal deliberation, I chose Ubuntu Linux for the task.
Why Ubuntu?
There are a few reasons I chose Ubuntu for this article:
