Free function of the operating system software for linux

Inferno is a compact operating system designed for building distributed and networked systems on a wide variety of devices and platforms.
Inferno was originally developed at Bell Labs (the research division of Lucent Technologies).
Inferno Operating System is a well-designed, economical operating system particularly suitable for use in networked devices such as advanced telephones, hand-held devices, TV set-top boxes, and many other embedded applications.
Inferno can run in native mode on an embedded system or in emulation mode under many different operating systems. Inferno has many features in common with Plan 9.
Cross-Platform Portability
Inferno can run as a user application on top of an existing operating system or as a stand alone operating system. Most of the popular operating systems and processor architectures are supported:
Host Operating Systems:
- Windows NT/2000/XP
- Irix
- Linux
- MacOS X
- FreeBSD
- Solaris
- Plan 9
Supported Architectures:
- Intel x86 (386 & higher)
- Intel XScale
- IBM PowerPC
- ARM StrongARM (ARM & Thumb)
- Sun SPARC
Inferno also runs as a plug-in under Internet Explorer version 4 and higher. Each Inferno system presents an identical environment to the applications, irrespective of the underlying host OS or architecture, allowing the developer to work with a truly homogeneous environment across multiple different platforms.
Portable Applications
Inferno applications are written in Limbo, a modern, safe, modular, concurrent programming language with C-like syntax. It is more powerful than C but considerably easier to understand and debug than C++ or Java. Limbo code is compiled into architecture independent byte code which is then interpreted (or compiled on the fly) on the target processor. This means that any Inferno application will run identically on all Inferno platforms.
Transparent Resources
Inferno offers complete transparency of resources and data using a simple but powerful namespace system. By representing resources as files and having one standard communication protocol, resources such as data stores, services and external devices can easily be shared between Inferno systems. A resource interface may be imported to the local system and used by the applications without them knowing, or needing to know, whether it is local or remote.
Security
High level security is an important part of the Inferno system. By using one standard protocol for all network communication, security can be focused on one point and provided at a system level. Inferno offers full support for authenticated, encrypted connections using a certificate based user identification scheme and variety of algorithms including:
- IDEA, 56 bit DES, 40, 128 and 256 bit RC4 encryption algorithms
- MD4, MD5 and SHA secure hash algorithms
A Complete Solution
Inferno is not only an operating system, it is also a complete development environment, providing all the tools necessary for creating, testing and debugging the applications that run within it.
- Acme IDE: includes editor, shell, advanced pattern matching tools & more
- Fast Compiler: with full syntax and compile time type checking
- Graphical Debugger: with full stack trace for currently executing threads
- Powerful Shell: with sophisticated scripting capabilities
- UNIX like commands: including bind, grep, gzip, mount, ps, tar, yacc...
Enhancements:
- New licence terms (a `dual licence scheme allowing use as Free Software)
- Styx revision based on 9P2000, and consequent changes to Sys
- Authentication changes
- Improved colour graphics support, including compositing
- Scalable fonts using Freetype
- Revamped Tk implementation
- Window management moved out of Tk to a separate window manager in Limbo
- Limbo: exception handling and fixed-point
- Limbo: other possible changes
- Dis VM changes
- More commands and library modules
- Better network service configuration
- /net/dns served by host and native DNS resolver
- Hosted kernels configured from a parts list as for native kernels
- Signed modules
- Internet Explorer plug-in revised and in source form
- Expanded documentation

DEX Extensible Operating System is an operating system specifically designed for educational and research use. DEX Extensible Operating System allows for the dynamic reconfiguration and customization of various system services using concepts found in extensible operating systems.
It aims to create an operating system design thats easy to understand while having features that are common in todays modern operating systems. Unlike other small operating systems, it is powerful enough to support simple applications that require multithreading and file management.
Its architectural design, with the help of Aspect-Oriented programming, enables easy modification and extensibility. It was developed in C and runs on PCs with 80386 processors or higher.
Enhancements:
- This version is released with a floppy image and the kernel source code.
- The release contains peformance enhancements, source code clean-ups, and a makefile for use with GNU make.

CUPS provides a portable printing layer for Unix(r)-based operating systems. Common UNIX Printing System has been developed to promote a standard printing solution for all Unix vendors and users.

CUPS provides the System V and Berkeley command line interfaces, and uses the Internet Printing Protocol ("IPP") as the basis for managing print jobs and queues. The Line Printer Daemon (LPD) Server Message Block (SMB), and AppSocket (a.k.a. JetDirect) protocols are also supported with reduced functionality.

CUPS adds network printer browsing and PostScript Printer Description ("PPD") based printing options to support real world printing under UNIX. It includes an image file RIP that supports printing of image files to non-PostScript printers.

A customized version of GNU Ghostscript 7.05 for CUPS called ESP Ghostscript is available separately to support printing of PostScript files within the CUPS driver framework. Sample drivers for Dymo, EPSON, HP, and OKIDATA printers are included that use these filters.

KIWI Image System provides a complete operating system image solution for Linux supported hardware platforms as well as for virtualisation systems like Xen Qemu or VMware. The KIWI architecture was designed as a two level system. The first stage, based on a valid software package source, creates a so called physical extend according to the provided image description. The second stage creates from a required physical extend an operating system image. The result of the second stage is called a logical extend or short an image.
A normal installation process is starting from a given installation source and installs single pieces of software until the system is complete. During this process there may be manual user intervention required. However an operating system image represents an already completed installation encapsulated as a file and optionally includes the configuration for a specific task. Such an operating system starts working as soon as the image has been brought to a system storage device no matter if this is a volatile or non volatile storage. The process of creating an image takes place without user interaction.
This means all requirements of the encapsulated system has to be fulfilled before the image is created. According to this the so called image description tree stores all the information needed to create an image.
Main features:
- Distribution independent
- Support for virtualisation systems like Xen
- Support for deploying images over the network
- Support for VMware / Qemu images
- Support for USB-Stick systems
- Support for LiveCD/DVD systems
- Centralized image description based on XML
- Prebuild boot images for SUSE systems
- Prebuild PXE configuration usable with kiwi netboot images
- SUSE Linux on a 128MB flash card.. yes thats possible

Fedora Linux brings you a powerful Linux operating system which is built from open source software. The Fedora Project is an openly-developed project designed by Red Hat, open for general participation, led by a meritocracy, following a set of project objectives.

The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software. Development will be done in a public forum. The project will produce time-based releases of Fedora Core about 2-3 times a year, with a public release schedule.

The Red Hat engineering team will continue to participate in building Fedora Core and will invite and encourage more outside participation than in past releases. By using this more open process, we hope to provide an operating system more in line with the ideals of free software and more appealing to the open source community.

Major Features:

1. Support for the PowerPC (PPC) architecture.
2. GCC 4.0
3. GNOME 2.10
4. KDE 3.4 includes new accessibility features. You can manage these new features in KDS Control CenterRegional & AccessibilityAccessibility.
5. Native Eclipse 3.1M6 (part of a free Java stack)
6. MySQL 4.1
7. PHP 5.0
8. Xen 2 (virtualization to run multiple versions of an OS)
9. GFS 6.1-0.pre22 (cluster file system)
10. Evince 0.2.1 (universal document viewer)
11. GDM 2.6 Includes early login capability
12. SELinux This release includes coverage for 80 new daemons by the targeted policy. There are changes to the handling of Booleans. The targeted policy is enabled by default.

Flumotion project is a streaming media server created with the backing of Fluendo.
It features intuitive graphical administration tools, making the task of setting up and manipulating audio and video streams easy for even novice system administrators. Flumotion is released under the GPL.
Built upon proven and tested free software solutions
The Flumotion Streaming Server is built upon a platform of proven free software solutions. We have currently focused on the Linux platform for our main development. Flumotion is mainly written in the extremely popular Python language.
The high-level functionality is built on top of Twisted. The low-level functionality is built on top of GStreamer.
Wide hardware support
Due to the developers decision to focus on supporting the GNU/Linux operating system, we have support for a wide range of audio and video input devices supported by the operating system.
Flumotion currently supports streaming from webcams, TV capture cards, FireWire DV cameras and the OSS and ALSA sound systems.
Distributed design
Flumotion has a distributed design, making it easy to spread the load over multiple machines, allowing you to do advanced media manipulation and stream generation. No matter how many different streams or multiple versions of the same stream you want to do, or different formats, or overlays, Flumotion can easily scale to handle it by distributing the load onto serveral machines.
Commercial support
While Flumotion is a free software product using the widely accepted GPL license, it has the advantage of having a commercial company behind it. This means that if you introduce Flumotion into your company or organisation and you find you would like commercial support opportunities or extra functionality, there is an entity to turn to to have your need filled.
Setting up Flumotion
Depending on how you installed Flumotion, it will or will not be integrated with your distribution.
In this section we will cover configuring Flumotion on both types of systems. First we will explain how to start and run Flumotion when its not integrated with your distribution. These instructions also work on systems where its integrated, but its preferable to use the distribution-specific way of starting the server.
We also provide an example of running Flumotion on a system where it is integrated with the distribution through service scripts.
If you have received Flumotion packages from either Fluendo or your distribution, this type of integration should be available.
Flumotion on a system where it is not integrated
You are repsonsible yourself for providing a working configuration file, and starting the binaries.
Alternatively, we have also provided a service-like script called flumotion that provides some basic integration, much like a standard service script.
This script is installed in your sbin directory. You can list managers and workers configured, and start and stop them. Flumotion on a system where its integrated
In a well-configured system, Flumotion is integrated into the system using Unix service scripts. In this section, we use the Fedora Core installation of Flumotion as an example. Depending on your distribution, these instructions might slightly vary.
To start flumotion with the service scripts, you start it like any other service, by typing as root:
service flumotion start
which results in:
Starting manager default: [ OK ]
Starting worker default: [ OK ]
Configuration files for flumotion are stored under /etc/flumotion/. In that directory, there is one subdirectory for managers and one for workers. Under each of these, there is one directory with the name of the manager or worker, containing the relevant configuration information.
Typically, the managers directory contains a planet.xml file detailing general configuration for the manager, and a flows subdirectory containing all flows that should be loaded onto this manager.
By default, the installation of Flumotion only allows connections from the local host, for security reasons. If you want to allow other hosts to log in workers or administration clients, you should change the authentication settings and remove the host entries from planet.xml.
Enhancements:
- Minor feature enhancements

Core is a minimal distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system designed to be the basis for a complete system constructed by the end user. A fresh installation of Core will boot into a console and provide the user with the tools needed to download, compile and install other applications. Core contains nothing beyond what is required to perform these tasks.
Core is primarily designed for experienced Linux users, though it has found an audience with those looking to learn about the internals and operation of a Linux system. Core requires the user to manually configure, compile and install applications and expects the user to consult man pages and other documentation.
Installation:
These instructions are incomplete, but should be sufficient:
- Download, burn and boot the ISO.
- Partition, format and mount the hard drive.
- Run install_core [mount point of hard drive].
- Optional packages in /pkgs/optional can be installed with corepkg(8).
- Copy the kernel from /pkgs/kernel to /usr/src of the hard drive.
- Run chroot [mount point] bash -l to chroot into the new system.
- Compile and install the Linux kernel [be sure to run LILO].
- Review and modify the files under /etc.
- Reboot and start constructing the new system.
MD5 sum: 5da52af0d4b0a599cc119afcace77c9c