GNU/Linux Application Programming (Programming Series)

In the early days, running a GNU/Linux system was anything but simple. Users sometimes had to modify the kernel and drivers in order to get the operating system to boot. Today, GNU/Linux distributions provide a simple way to load the operating system and selectively load the plethora of tools and applications. Given the dynamic nature of the kernel with loadable modules, its simple to configure the operating system dynamically and automatically to take advantage of the peripherals that are available. Projects such as Debian [Debian04] and companies such as Red Hat [RedHat04] and Suse [Suse04] introduced distributions that contained the GNU/Linux operating system and precompiled programs on which to use it. In fact, most distributions typically include over 10,000 packages (applications) with the kernel, making it easy to get what you need.