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Linux Installation and Getting Started

What This Book Means To Me

I started with Linux in those "bad old days", back in 1994, and the book that was my steadfast guide throughout my first six months of wrestling with this strange new world was "Linux Installation and Getting Started", by Matt Welsh. I say "book", but it would be more exact to say file; although it was book-length, it wasn't printed, nor even "published" on the web to begin with. The book has gone through numerous revisions, and editions have also been printed by SSC and O'Reilly.

Version History

This list merely marks some milestones, and is not meant to be complete. The very first edition is an eye-opener. It uses SLS, because there really was no other distribution in those days. Who today has even heard of it, unless they've read an article on Slackware history? My own personal favourite remains the second edition. The only version I can find now is 2.2.2, but as that's from '95, I must have used 2.0 or 2.1, I guess— probably lying around on an MS-DOS formatted floppy somewhere. Whatever, the reliance of this version on Slackware is A Good Thing. If you really want to learn Linux, and not just install this "Linus" OS because everyone else is talking about it, then Slackware is still the best just because it requires more of a hands-on approach than the others. Naturally, Slackware hasn't stood still; newer versions (we're now on 7.0) have an install program that's more robust and complete that it used to be. Nevertheless, you can still go right ahead and install Slackware based on the six year old advice in 2.2.2. Not bad going, I suggest, in a field that changes so quickly. So, in what follows, it is the old 2.2.2 edition to which I'm remaining faithful unless otherwise indicated. A lot of the web seems to view the latest SSC version, 3.2, as definitive. This is a pity in some ways. Of course, the snapshot I've reminisced over is badly is out-of-date. On the other hand the SSC version is a patchwork, in which the original Walsh material is supplemented by additional writing of varying quality. The new material on Slackware, for example, labours under the delusion that Slackware can't be upgraded without re-formatting partitions; and that an upgrade will wipe out any customisations you made to the last installation (that's what /usr/local is for, friend). Clearly, in a book that's undergone so many changes, it's important to establish what book we are talking about. I'll be focusing mostly on the second edition, as that's what I used. But why read such an old book? Well, that's what this article is intended to tell you.

Outline of the Book

Preface

Possibly the best come-on ever written (in a computer book, anyway). With the preface headed by a timeless quote — "You are in a maze of twisty little passages" — Walsh's first sentence in the book is
"Before you looms one of the most complex and utterly intimidating systems ever written."
Wow! Who wouldn't want to get stuck into Linux after reading that!?

The motiviation for Walsh's book stems from the days before "distributions", when the "standard" way of installing Linux was to grab whatever others had kindly made available — Walsh mentions H.J. Lu's diskettes — and set to work getting the thing up and running on your system. Not only were distributions on CD-ROM not available; Linux couldn't read from a CD-ROM drive in any case! In his own words,

"I downloaded a slew of files and read pages upon pages of loosely-organised installation notes. Somehow, I managed to install this basic system and get everything working together."
This book, however, does not expect you to go to such lengths!

Introduction to Linux

There is a nostalgic feel to the remarks in the first chapter, Introduction to Linux, where we learn that
"Linux requires very little memory to run compared to other advanced operating systems. You should have at the very least 2 megabytes of RAM;"
Indeed, I even got Linux running on a wretched Amstrad PC1386, the same machine that had resolutely refused to run Minix. This box boasted a whooping 1Mb RAM (more than anyone would ever need, according to BG) and a practically limitless 40Mb HD. There used to be a great page about Linux kernels tuned for low-memory machines, but this is gone now. Today, the kernel requires 4Mb absolute minimum; but I think for useful work you're looking at 8, and most installation programs also require this at least.

Obtaining and Installing Linux

Yes, OK, there are distribution-specific segments in the newer versions (caveat: not written by Welsh); but the "classic" 2.2.2 teaches us how to install Slackware . This is because Slackware rules. I like this chapter in particular because it shows just how simple a Linux installation is: This is stuff that's been obscured by more recent distributions, who cover it all up with a click-OK-to-continue style of installation script. These are fine as long as everything works; if something doesn't work, the less-clued-up user is often left staring at the screen in dumb bewilderment, wondering why clicking won't help any more. OK, I exaggerate. But there is no substitute for understanding what goes on in a Linux installation. And Matt's explanation, although dated in parts, is very good indeed.

Linux Tutorial

I knew most of this stuff from The Unix Programming Environment (q.v.), but still found it well worth reading through — especially since times have changed, and Linux doesn't work just the way V7 Unix did. It is a well-written introduction that neither takes things too slowly, nor talks down to the reader — a difficult middle way to follow consistently. All the essential stuff is here, including a nice little introduction to vi (though Matt has since left the fold and condemned himself to eternal perdition by becoming an Emacs user).

System Administration

Another solid chapter, beginning with some sensible advice on that responsibility that goes with the power of the super-user account. The rest is decent short explanations of essential admin: user account maintenance, backups, kernel upgrades, library upgrades (something often neglected, but a devil if you get it wrong), managing filesytems, and what to do when things go wrong. Linux system administration in a nutshell.

Advanced Features

Matt identifies three "advanced features", including such luxuries as a GUI (X of course) and Networking. The X section is a nice simple introduction to getting X up and running. If I've never had major problems with X on Linux, it is perhaps at least partly because I got a solid grounding in the basics early on from this chapter. Of course, nowadays one just runs xf86config, which takes a lot of the by-hand stuff out by simply generating a normally-usable /etc/XF86Config. But, as I said when talking about the installation chapter, if you know what a config program is doing, it can be a great help should things go wrong. Then, comes a section on MS-DOS. Yes, that's what it says. MS-DOS. Quite an issue in the early days, for those who didn't want to switch overnight, but to make the move a more gradual process. Then as well, there weren't so many applications as there are now, so many people needed to run both OSs side-by-side, as it were, rebooting if they couldn't afford two machines. Dosemu , the MS-DOS emulator, also gets a name-check.

I find the Networking chapter particularly good. It's out of date now of course, but still a fine example of how to explain a) Linux networking, and b) how to get a Linux box up on the Internet, both done in a very clear and concise manner. It focuses on using SLIP, which I think is now well and truly obsolete. Be that as it may, it was standard when I got an Internet dial-up account, and I stuck with it until 1995 or 96, I don't recall exactly. (My ISP, then in the UK, was the first British ISP on the American model — dial-up accounts, tenner-a-month for unlimited access— and having started up when SLIP was the norm, continued to support it as PPP became the preferred protocol.)

The Appendices

The appendices show the book's age most clearly. Sources of Linux Information is a must-have still; but the rest: Linux vendor lists, A list of BBSs with Linux files, a list of ftp sites, even a short tutorial on ftp, well, how long ago and far away they seem now, the days when such information was needed. Finally, we have the text of the GPL. The book is actually under the GPL license.

Why This Book Is Important

Well, it was the first, for a start. I guess when the time comes for Peter Salus to write A Quarter Century of Linux, this will be the book taking pride of place at the head of the bibliography. It very effectively communicates the author's raw enthusiasm for Linux. It makes Linux seem special — as indeed it was, and is. Dry rehashing of the HOWTOs, stripped down for Dummies, finds no place here. If you don't know Linux, want to get started, and have "the hacker mindset", any edition of this book remains the best resource. Probably the best way to really learn all about Linux is to install Slackware helped by this book.

How To Get The Book

The basic version is maintained by the LDP. Sadly, plain text is no longer available — if you really want to see 2.2.2 in this format, it's on my website . The LDP website gives us the following info.:

version: 3.2
author(s): Matt Welsh and others
last update: March 1998
available formats:
1. HTML
2. HTML (tarred and gzipped, 836k)
3. other : HTML (zipped), DVI, PDF (gzipped / zipped), PostScript
(gzipped / zipped), and LaTeX source.
4. various (non-English) translations

The print version has mutated into various forms. SSC published a straight copy of the etext, now out of print, and an expanded version, also out of print according to SSC's web page.

Title: Linux Installation and Getting Started
Author: Matt Welsh
Publisher: SSC
ISBN: 0916151778
Price:
Pages:
Date:

Paul Dunne 2000

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