Linux Guide

A computer program is a list of instructions given to a computer to make it perform a specific task or series of tasks. Computers do not understand English (we all wish that they did!), so programmers must communicate these instructions to the computer in a language the computer understands. Computers, however, can only operate on numbers, which makes a computer's language very difficult for humans to understand.

The solution to this problem is to create an intermediate language that both humans and computers can understand. These are called programming languages. Programmers create a list of instructions for the computer in a programming language such as C, Pascal, or Fortran. This list of instructions is known as “source code”. It is textual in nature, and readable to humans (who speak the language). Programmers do all their work in this source code, changing the instructions to fix bugs, add features, or alter the appearance of a program.

I have been planning to update this article to contain detailed information on configuring and using yum to manage Linux software. Sorry for the delay, but there are only so many hours in the day. For the moment, the best resource for learning about yum is the official documentation at Managing Software with yum. Meanwhile, here is some background on RPM, which is the technology underneath yum.

RPM is the Red Hat Package Manager. Red Hat invented the thing, so naturally you will find it in Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well as their less commercial Fedora distro. It is also supported by S.u.S.E. Software gets wrapped up into these RPM packages that you can download from the Internet. You use the rpm utility to install them, and it keeps track of version information and changes made by the install so the package can be uninstalled or upgraded later if you choose.

After you have installed your software, you may be left asking, Now what?

You are probably staring at a command prompt or a message saying your software package has been installed. But where did it go? How do you start the program? This is one of those mystical Linux moments when you realize that you are a fish and this is not the water you are used to.

If you are using a graphical desktop (KDE or Gnome), the good news is that your newly installed program probably also has a newly installed icon and entry in your programs menu. The bad news is that the menu is so large and poorly organized on most systems that you may not be able to find it.

The thing you have to understand about vi and its work-alike editors is modality. Most programs have just one mode, accepting input and placing it at the cursor. This is what you probably expect from a program. But vi has other modes. When you start vi, you'll be in "Normal" mode, which is really command mode. When you are in Normal mode, whatever you type is considered not to be input, but commands that vi will try to execute.