Posted on Friday, March 4, 2005
A Linux InstallFest was hosted by Westminster College assistant professor of computer science Dr. David Shaffer in the McElree lab in Hoyt Science Resources Center on Feb. 26.
The event, the first of its kind on campus, was meant to spread information and help students interested in Linux, a free operating system, install it onto their computers. Other campuses and Linux user groups around the area hold InstallFests and other Linux-related meetings regularly.
"The wealth of free software for Linux opens opportunities for students to undertake tasks that might otherwise cost a significant amount of money," said Shaffer, who has been using the operating system since 2000. "I'm glad to see the variety of students that showed up."
Seniors Brad Kita, Jeremy Baker and Raphael Pigulla, sophomore Colin Dean and freshmen Bill McCullough and Bill Quigley attended the InstallFest. Kita, Dean and Quigley are computer science majors and Pigulla is a computer information systems major.
"I've been into computers since I was eleven," said McCullough, a music major. "I first became interested in Linux when an acquaintance mentioned it. I used to run [the] Debian [distribution]. Today, I installed Gentoo." A distribution is a version of Linux. There are currently hundreds of varying versions of the operating system.
"This [computer] has basically been a paperweight for the past three months," said Baker, a sociology major. Baker has been unable to get into Windows, so he decided to try Linux.
Linux was first made public in 1993 by Linus Torvalds, a Finnish programmer who was tinkering with a version of UNIX, one of the first operating systems, called Minix. Since then, Linux has been adopted by major corporations such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems. Torvalds is still the maintainer of the kernel; the core of the system.
Companies such as Red Hat, Mandrake and Linspire offer unsupported free versions of their distribution while also offering professionally supported commerical versions. Other distributions, such as Debian and Gentoo, are offered completely free and are community-supported. The campus's UNIX lab is currently in the process of moving from Red Hat's distribution to Gentoo.
"Some find Linux confusing at first, but as with anything new, one must be patient and learn the ropes," said Shaffer. "It's not just the free operating system that is nice, but the sheer amount of free software that works just as well as commercial software, such as OpenOffice to Microsoft Office and GIMP to Photoshop."
Shaffer plans to have at least two more gatherings this semester regarding Linux. The topic of first of the two is currently the tools and common programs found in most Linux distributions. The topic of the second is still being planned.
More information on Linux can be found by contacting Dr. Shaffer at (724) 946-7292 or e-mail shaffecd@westminster.edu or by visiting www.kernel.org,
