NetWatch Every month we trawl the Internet to bring you a taste of the gigabytes of goodies that are on tap. If you find anything you think we should look at, tell Rupert Goodwins.

June 1997 - Linux

So what is Linux? Check out www.li.org/linux-int/introduction/welcome.html, a Unix system that's grown from a one-man product to one of the best-supported systems in the world. Support for a free system might seem unlikely, but as well as megabytes of online information, there are even 24-hour IRC channels with sysops available to help you. An example of this is the Linux Internet Support Co-operative, www.linpeople.org/.

New announcements about Linux are best followed on the comp.os.linux.announce newsgroup, with a very useful precis available on the newgroup's home page, www.cs.helsinki.fi/~wirzeniu/linux/cola.html.

No operating system is much good without applications, and the Applications and Utilities page, www.xnet.com/~blatura/linapps.shtml, has hundreds nicely sorted into type. The operating system itself is distributed from a number of places, but one of the best maintained and simplest to install versions is that of Red Hat at www.redhat.com/.

Not everything Linuxian is in Finland or America--a fine local site is UK Linux Org, www.uk.linux.org/, offering links, local archives and help. Further recommended reading is on the Linux Gazette, www.ssc.com/lg/, the Linux Journal, www.ssc.com/lj/, and the Linux Documentation Project, www.caldera.com/ldp/. And yes, you can get Czech, Polish and Thai resources. If you have any other questions, see www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/iwj10/linux-faq/index.html.

Thanks to Chris Lewis, Webmaster of ZDNet UK and Linux evangelist.