An Engineer's Primer on Linux, Firefox, Thunderbird and Openoffice

An Engineer's Primer on Linux, Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice A White Paper by: Brent Scott LaReau, Consultant www.designsbylareau.com Revised: April 17, 2007 Copyright c 2007 by Brent Scott LaReau Brent Scott LaReau, Consultant Voice/FAX (U.S.A.): 847-428-4923 This document and its content is protected by copy- E-mail: [email protected] right, regardless of how this document or its content is Web: www.DesignsByLaReau.com printed, viewed, encoded, stored or transmitted. Per- Mail (U.S.A.): 2413 W. Algonquin Road, PMB #258 mission to paraphrase, reproduce or copy any part, or Algonquin, IL 60102-9776 all, of this document or its content is granted only if: 1. The reproduction or copy is not achieved for profit without this author's express consent, and. 2. Sufficient information is included to identify this document and its author. Specifically: • The full title of this document plus its copyright date(s), and. • This author's full name (Brent Scott LaReau) and his brief or complete contact information. About the Author Disclaimer Brent Scott LaReau has been an independent consultant since 1987. Information in this document is subject to change without notice and is distributed on an \as is" basis, without war- ranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the He provides design and development services in elec- preparation of this document, its author shall not have any tronics, software, embedded systems and devices, web liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or and intranet sites, knowledge base construction, tech- damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly nical writing, Information Security, and on-site train- by the information contained in this document. ing/mentoring. He is proficient in heterogeneous system design, where diverse components use different programming languages, interfaces, databases, net- works and communications protocols. Brent earned his BSEE at Marquette University, grad- uating first in his class. His academic awards include the International Engineering Consortium's (IEC's) William L. Everitt Award, Marquette University's Top Scholars in Curriculum Award, and the College of Lake Trademark Information County's Outstanding Academic Excellence in Mathe- matics and Outstanding Scholar Award. Trademarked names may appear in this document. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Elec- trademarked name, such names are used in an editorial tronics Engineers (IEEE), the Association of Comput- fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no ing Machinery (ACM), and American Mensa, Ltd. intention of infringement of the trademark. 2 Contents 1 Introduction and Overview 5 2 Linux 6 2.1 The Operating System Is NOT the Computer! . 6 2.2 Meet the Kernel . 6 2.3 GNU/Linux . 6 2.4 Live CDs: Zero to Linux in Two Minutes . 7 2.4.1 Versions for Windows Users or Linux Newcomers . 7 2.4.2 Flagship Versions . 7 2.4.3 Small Versions . 8 2.4.4 USB Versions . 8 2.5 OK, What's the Catch? . 9 2.5.1 Wine, so Sweet . 9 2.5.2 Mono: A Safety \.NET" . 9 2.6 How to Get Started with Linux|Now! . 9 3 Firefox 11 3.1 Internet Explorer Is NOT the Internet! . 11 3.2 Firefox Emerges from Its Hole . 11 3.3 Tabbed Browsing? Cool! . 11 3.4 Other Features . 11 3.5 Automatic Updates . 11 3.6 Security . 11 3.7 Privacy . 12 3.8 Getting Firefox . 12 3 CONTENTS 4 Thunderbird 13 4.1 Outlook Is NOT the E-mail! . 13 4.2 Features . 13 4.3 Security . 13 4.4 Spam Filtering . 13 4.5 Customization . 13 4.6 Automatic Updates . 13 4.7 Getting Thunderbird . 14 5 OpenOffice 15 5.1 Excel is NOT the Spreadsheet! . 15 5.2 Not so Suite . 15 5.3 Beware the EULA . 15 5.4 Free as in Beer, Free as in Speech . 16 5.5 Components . 16 5.6 Features . 16 5.7 Who Owns Your Data? . 16 5.8 Getting OpenOffice . 17 6 Lagniappe 18 6.1 GIMP: Graphics . 18 6.2 K3b: CD Burning . 18 6.3 Scribus: Desktop Publishing . 18 6.4 Nmap: Network Scanner . 18 6.5 Wireshark: Network Analyzer . 18 6.6 KHexEdit: Binary File Editor . 19 6.7 KWrite and Kate: Syntax-highlighting Text Editors . 19 6.8 KSnapshot: Screen Grabber . 19 6.9 KCalc: Scientific Calculator . 19 6.10 KStars: Astronomy . 19 6.11 TEX, LATEX and LYX . 19 4 Part 1 Introduction and Overview \If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps hardware platforms than any other operating system it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to on the planet|cell phones, webcams, personal video the music which he hears, however measured or far away." recorders, game systems, PCs/Macs, mainframe com- |Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) puters, multi-node clusters, and supercomputers. It's an engineers' delight. ecurity is a major concern as we become ever Plus, a great number of Linux software applications are more dependent on data communications net- available|for free. For example, OpenOffice is a suite S works such as the Internet to conduct our busi- of software applications that is similar to Microsoft ness. We have seen an exponential increase in spyware Office. Firefox is a popular web browser with many and other malware, which place our identities and our advantages over Internet Explorer. Thunderbird is an confidential data at risk1. Any engineer whose com- easy replacement for Outlook Express. These three puter has suffered a malware infection doesn't want applications are just the tip of the iceberg. another such experience|ever. Interestingly, OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird are Computer security vendors would have us believe that available for Windows, too. Since malware commonly security can be purchased|from them|at a price. enters Windows computers through two major en- But Information Security experts know that you can- try points|Internet Explorer and Outlook|replacing not purchase security. Information Security is a pro- these with Firefox and Thunderbird can dramatically cess, not a product. This process requires a \layered" increase your Internet security when using Windows. approach, where malware must surmount many obsta- cles before finding a vulnerability to exploit. This White Paper shows how you can get Linux up and running on most PC-compatible (x86-based) comput- One way to create an obstacle is to not use what every- ers in less than five minutes|risk-free and cost-free| one else is using, since those who create malware are by running Linux from a CDROM instead of installing not so stupid as to select targets that are very rarely it to your hard drive. You can install Linux to your found. Instead, malware writers target what \every- hard drive later if you wish. one"is using: Microsoft software, especially Windows, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, and Me- We will also introduce Firefox, Thunderbird and dia Player. OpenOffice, which together fill most engineers' three biggest needs: Web browsing, e-mail and office pro- For this reason, Linux and applications such as Fire- ductivity. These three applications are included with fox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice remain immune to many versions of Linux (including the CDROM-based normal malware. You can relax|Linux puts the fun version mentioned previously), so you can try them back into personal computing! without having to install them. Besides being immune to malware, Linux offers zero li- (Hmmm. easy, quick, free, secure, and powerful. censing costs, excellent reliability, and an ability to run Gee, I wonder if I should try any of these?) well on older PCs. Arguably, Linux runs on far more 1See \An Engineer's Primer on Information Security" by this author, available at his web site [5]. 5 Part 2 Linux Linus Torvalds began to create the Linux kernel while he The first Linux-based operating systems were com- was attending the University of Helsinki in 1991. He was 21 pleted in 1992 by combining system utilities and li- years old. Today, Torvalds and more than two dozen other braries from the GNU Project [13]1 with the Linux distinctive programmers continue to refine the kernel. kernel. Therefore, we should really say \GNU/Linux" instead of\Linux", but most people use the latter term for brevity. 2.1 The Operating System Is NOT the Computer! 2.3 GNU/Linux For many years, most computers have been pre-loaded with an operating system|usually Windows or Mac GNU, which stands for \GNU is Not Unix", is a large OS|before being shipped from the factory. Therefore, collection of software libraries and applications that to- most people (including some engineers) intuitively feel gether create a Unix-like operating system. This makes that an operating system is somehow integrated with GNU/Linux a Unix-like operating system too2. a computer's hardware. GNU/Linux has all the features you would expect in a But in fact, an operating system is a replaceable part modern fully-fledged Unix, including true multitask- even though Microsoft would have everyone believe ing, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand load- otherwise. Therefore, you can choose which operating ing, shared copy-on-write executables, proper mem- system to run on your computer hardware. ory management, and multi-stack networking includ- For example, you could choose to run Linux. It's free. ing IPv4 and IPv6. It's meant to stay up for months at a time. Its license has impossibly easy terms compared to Microsoft's. As GNU/Linux matured, various people, groups and You can install Linux on as many computers as you companies began to produce and distribute customized want.

Load more