Hackers - The real meaning

Who is a hacker? If you think a hacker is someone who is breaking into systems to stole,destroy or modify something, then you must read this post.

Unfortunately, many people have been fooled into using the word 'hacker' instead of crackers. Crackers are the people who breaks into computers with malicious or criminal intentions or recovers encrypted passwords from data that has been stored in or transmitted by a computer system or associated to accounts.

Hackers are entirely opposite to crackers in terms of their intention. A community of enthusiast computer programmers and systems designers, originated in the 1960s around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The members of this culture originated the term hacker. This community is notable for launching the free software movement. The World Wide Web and the Internet itself are also hacker artifacts.

The basic difference is: hackers build things, crackers break them. Hackers solve problems and build things, and they believe in freedom and voluntary mutual help. 

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AJAY

Why Open Source?

You may have questions regarding why I selected open source technologies for my project. As a student and a growing developer I can justify it. We know, all software has source code. Open source software grants every user access to that code. Freedom means choice. Choice means power. That's why I believe open source is inevitable. It returns control to the customer. You can see the code, change it and learn from it. Bugs are found and fixed quickly. When customers are unhappy with one vendor, they can choose another without overhauling their entire infrastructure. No more technology lock-in. No more monopolies. We believe open source simply creates better software. Everyone collaborates, the best technology wins. Not just within one company, but among an Internet-connected, worldwide community.

In the proprietary model, development occurs within one company. Programmers write code, hide it behind binaries, and charge customers to use the software--then charge them more to fix it when it breaks. The problem worsens when you become tied to a company's architecture, protocols, and file formats.

Free and open source software (FOSS) is at the root of the most innovative products, technologies and services of our time. Today’s top entrepreneurs are using FOSS as the building blocks for innovation. Instead of writing an entire solution from scratch, developers can assemble large parts of their solutions from liberally licensed FOSS projects, and focus their creative energies. FOSS also serves as a training ground for new developers. Good developers have always known that the way to improve is by reading well-written programs. Good FOSS projects in dynamic communities provide a wealth of examples for students to read, understand, and work on. There’s the real-world experience of participating in a distributed team.

Open source is not nameless, faceless, and it's not charity. Nor it is solely a community effort. What you see today is a technology revolution driven by market demand.

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AJAY

Linux - The new era begins

Linux is an operating system based on the free software concept. The thoughts on creation of the Linux was developing since the success of UNIX. The UNIX operating system released in 1970 became influential to other system authors because of its availability and portability. From that time many developers are investing their time on projects regarding the creation of a UNIX-like system. The GNU Project, started in 1983 by Richard Stallman, had the goal of creating a "complete Unix-compatible software system" composed entirely of free software.

Richard Stallman

In 1991, in Helsinki, Linus Torvalds began a project that later became the Linux kernel. Linus Torvalds had wanted to call his invention Freax, a blend of "freak", "free", and "x" (as an allusion to Unix). He wrote the program specifically for the hardware he was using and independent of an operating system because he wanted to use the functions of his new PC with an 80386 processor. Development was done on MINIX using the GNU C compiler, which is still the main choice for compiling Linux today. Ari Lemmke, Torvald's coworker at the University of Helsinki who was one of the volunteer administrators for the FTP server at the time, did not think that "Freax" was a good name. So, he named the project "Linux" on the server without consulting Torvalds. Later, Torvalds consented to "Linux".

Linus Torvalds

Torvalds first published the Linux kernel under its own licence, which had a restriction on commercial activity. In 1992, he suggested releasing the kernel under the GNU General Public License. Linux and GNU developers worked to integrate GNU components with Linux to make a fully-functional and free operating system.

Torvalds announced in 1996 that there would be a mascot for Linux, a penguin. The name Tux was suggested by James Hughes as derivative of Torvalds' UniX. Some Tux graphics are shown below.

The largest part of the work on Linux is performed by the community: the thousands of programmers around the world that use Linux and send their suggested improvements to the maintainers. Various companies have also helped not only with the development of the Kernels, but also with the writing of the body of auxiliary software, which is distributed with Linux.

The major Linux distributions are Debian, Fedora(RedHat), Gentoo Linux, Mandriva Linux, openSUSE, Slackware, Ubuntu, Slax, Puppy Linux, PCLinuxOS, Linux Mint, Sabayon Linux, etc. 

I have installed Ubuntu 10.04 and I feel good with this open source OS. If you want to download Ubuntu for your system click here.

Thanks

AJAY