I chose Linux as the environment for this class. Many question the
soundness of this decision. Well, I have the following defense:
- It is free. Get an old computer, even a 486, and you can
get Linux installed on it for free. Sure, you probably have
accesses to ``free'' versions of Windows, but why risk
getting sued by Microsoft for products that are proven to
be, well, buggy?
- Linux is a 32-bit operating system. In other words, the
processor runs in protected mode and instructions are
by default 32-bit instructions. All tools in Linux are
designed to utilize 32-bit mode instructions. On the other
hand, classic tools for Windows and DOS are real-mode tools,
by default.
- Linux is a POSIX-compliant OS. This means if you know how to
interface to Linux, you know how to interface to most U*ix
OSes. What you learn can be applied to Solaris, FreeBSD and
etc.
- Linux can be frugal. If you strip all the fancy stuff,
Linux is quite content with a 486 system with less than
1GB of storage, less than 256MB of RAM and just an SVGA
display. All the tools we use in this course run just fine
in text mode.
Copyright © 2009-04-16 by Tak Auyeung
