[lug] Re: Developing New Linux System

Sandy ,

I think a good place for you to start is some research and reading on
the difference between a modular (stock) 2.6 kernel and a monolithic
(custom) 2.6 kernel.

Unlike Windows, Linux is a very modular operating system. Hardware
abstraction is done by the kernel by examining your system's bus to see
what hardware is there then loading modules to support it. When you
compile your kernel you "teach" it things about how it should go about
making use of your system.

A Modular kernel senses hardware and if its been taught to do so , will
include modules and objects to support it, where a monolithic build has
a set of blinders on and will only load whats been statically linked
into it.

For instance, say you have a linux server that is used only to power
Apache + MySQL and doesn't even have a monitor connected to it. You'd
want to use a "monolithic" kernel that has been taught to never look
for or do anything with the following:

USB
Video
Audio
(and many other things never used on a dedicated server)

Whereas your desktop would remain a modular build to take advantage of
new hardware you add.

Linux will handle networking functionality, encryption and other things
in a similar fashion such as "iptables" (rules about how tcp / udp
packets are handled by the kernel). This can also be Modular, or static
within the kernel.

The other thing that is important to realize is Linux uses memory in a
very different way than Windows systems. Linux learns what applications
are running, how much memory the neeed and by configuration will fill
up most of the available memory with these processes so they respond
quickly to incoming requests. Its typical to see a constant 90% memory
usage on most Linux systems.

There are some great books that show you how to really take advantage
of your system. Keep in mind, Fedora is an experimental OS. Ball &
Duffs "Fedora (x) Unleashed" series are excellent reading and available
used on amazon.com. There's also the Linux documentation project.

I suggest trying your searches here:

http://google.com/linux

Google's special linux search really helps filter out "junk" and get
you the documentation and information you need.

What is your native language? There may be support for it already
included in your distribution.

I also encourage you to go poking around your /proc directory to get a
birds eye view of how your kernel is looking at your system. To find
out what something is (for instance, the line that says dentry in
/proc/slabinfo just Google it "dentry in /proc/slabinfo".

Another thing to read up on is what is malloc() and what can happen
when too many malloc() hungry services are running on one server.

I wish you the best in exploring what Linux has to offer :)

hth

timtim