http://www.mdx.cat:80/handle/10503/8 http://www.mdx.cat:80/retrieve/71 http://www.mdx.cat:80/handle/10503/8 http://www.mdx.cat:80/handle/10503/8246 Introduction to free software González Barahona, Jesús Seoane Pascual, Joaquín Robles, Gregorio What is free software? What is it and what are the implications of a free program licence? How is free software developed? How are free software projects financed and what are the business models associated to them that we are experiencing? What motivates developers, especially volunteers, to become involved in free software projects? What are these developers like? How are their projects coordinated, and what is the software that they produce like? In short, what is the overall panorama of free software? These are the sort of questions that we will try to answer in this document. Because although free software is increasing its presence in the media and in debates between IT professionals, and although even citizens in general are starting to talk about it, it is still for the most part an unknown quantity. And even those who are familiar with it are often aware of just some of its features, and mostly ignorant about others. http://www.mdx.cat:80/handle/10503/8247 Basic GNU/Linux operating system López Sánchez-Montañés, Joaquín Belles Ramos, Sofia Aulí Llinàs, Francesc Baig Viñas, Roger Although free software has been around for over twenty years, it only recently began to be seen as a valid alternative for many users, companies and, increasingly, institutions and governments. GNU/Linux is currently one of the most reliable and efficient operating systems available. Although the fact that it is free software led to some initial wariness among users and companies, GNU/Linux has proved itself to be in the same class as any other operating system available today. The aim of this course is to initiate us into the world of GNU/Linux. It will explain to us the basics for understanding the open source philosophy and how to use and modify it to suit our needs, and it will teach us how the necessary tools work so that we can find our way in this new world more easily. Nonetheless, this document is not an essential reference guide for administrators and/or users; there are already hundreds of manuals, how-to guides and other reference works numbering thousands of pages that serve this purpose. Our aim here is to take our first steps in this as-yet uncharted territory for too many users and administrators, and to explain how to tackle and resolve potential problems by ourselves. The course is not based on any particular distribution, but we need to specify certain actions for most of the examples and activities, for which we will use Debian GNU/Linux (version 3.0 –Woody). Although this distribution is not as intuitive and user-friendly as others, it will serve to explain all the characteristics of a GNU/Linux-based operating system, step by step. Moreover, its remarkable quality, stability and security make it one of the most valid options available today. We should also mention the support (Debian is developed by volunteers and there is no support for it) available for other distributions, which is essential for many companies. We have therefore included an appendix explaining the installation process and main features of RedHat Linux (version 9.0). We hope that you enjoy the course and it serves to open the doors of the world of free software to you. The more users we are, the more software and better quality we will obtain. Welcome to GNU/Linux! http://www.mdx.cat:80/handle/10503/8248 Advanced administration of the GNU/Linux operating system Jorba Esteve, Josep Suppi Boldrito, Remo The GNU/Linux systems have reached a significant level of maturity, making them valid for integration into any working environment, whether a PC desktop or the server of a large company. The main aim of this course is to initiate us into the administration of GNU/Linux systems. We will learn how to provide the necessary services for different user environments and machines from GNU/Linux. Systems administration is a vast field (there are many tasks, many problems to deal with, an excellent knowledge of hardware and software is required), and a little psychology is not too much to ask for when dealing with the end users of the systems. The course will not focus on any particular GNU/Linux distribution, although we have selected two for the examples: Debian and Red Hat/Fedora. We will attempt to manage administration from the lowest possible level, normally the command line and the configuration files. If necessary, we will discuss higher-level tools, but we need to take care with these because they often depend very much on the distribution used and sometimes even the version. Moreover, these tools vary a great deal from version to version. Low-level administration is usually much more difficult but we know what we are doing and where we can see the results. It also gives us extra knowledge about the different technologies used. The distributions chosen are: Debian Woody 3.0 and Red Hat 9.0 (or compatible distributions such as Fedora), used when this course was prepared (at the end of 2003). The Debian distribution is a paradigm in the open-source movement because it does not belong to any company and is only developed with contributions from volunteers around the world. Debian is also exclusively developed with free software (and others can be added). Red Hat, on the other hand, is a distribution by one of the most solvent companies on the business scene, which is perhaps the reason why it offers the most business support (through paid services). With Debian, support is obtained from volunteers and the knowledge shared among users. Since systems administration is a very broad-ranging field, this manual only seeks to be an introduction to this passionate – and, naturally, sometimes frustrating – world. We will look at some typical tasks and see how to deal with problematic ones, but administration is something one learns gradually, through day-to-day experiences. We will point out here that this manual is an open publication, with its accuracies and more than likely errors, and it may be expanded on with the comments of (suffering) users. Therefore, any comments or suggestions for improving the materials will be well-received. Finally, the manual contents reflect the status of the distributions and administration tools at the time this course was prepared (end of 2003). http://www.mdx.cat:80/handle/10503/8249 Utilidades y herramientas de software libre Corrius i Llavina, Jesús En el curso de Herramientas y utilidades de software libre veremos algunos de los programas pensados para el entorno de trabajo de un usuario final. Estos programas nos permiten navegar de manera segura por la red (Mozilla), gestionar nuestro correo electrónico y trabajar en grupo (Ximan Evolution) y crear documentos de texto, hojas de cálculo o presentaciones al estilo del Microsoft Office (OpenOffice.org).