Linux
The Linux section comprises topics ranging from powering-on a computer with Linux up to running a command on the terminal.
The objective is to provide a view about the many things happening “behind the curtains” inside the computer and the OS. Things that even experts in technology take for granted, in a similar way as when we start our car and start driving. Mico Maco considers that making a computer run programs or services (or in a tablet, or a mobile, etc.) is more complex that creating cars (Mico Maco remembers the fake joke about Bill Gates and GM that was around the net some time ago…)
This is even more true when one thinks about Facebook, Gmail or many other “needed” services consumed by millions of people around the globe… While it is easy to consume them, thousands of CPUs, hard drives, memory chips, routers, networks, system engineers and programmers are there to make it look easy for the majority of us….
In the next posts a very small part of what a single computer does to run a program is (hopefully) explained.
Topics covered are
- Linux, from power-on to the shell prompt
- What happens when a process is launch in bash?
- File System, or where are the files to run (or with data)?
- Process scheduling (to be published…)
- Virtual Memory, paging, swap (trashing???)
- Common commands and linux internals (to be published)
There could be many more, even with a much higher depth. One could go down to electricity and explain the physics of it. Or even get lost with Schrödinger’s Cat (yes, quantum computing is already here…), but Mico Maco, as a single “unit” descending from monkeys and apes, has its own limitations (mainly time !!)
Some Unix history?
Curious about how Unix was born during the 70’s? Find here the Unix or the Unix wars pages at Wikipedia ( …Yes!! Once upon a time, even Microsoft had his own Unix !!)
Under this section…