Some executives haven't ever heard of GNU/Linux and don't know any better (although these are becoming rare ;-). In these cases, you can raise the awareness for GNU/Linux by telling them about your need for free drivers. Sometimes, though, manufacturers knowingly restrict your freedoms.

Debian GNU/Linux includes complete source-code for all of the included programs, so it should work on all systems which are supported by the Linux kernel; see the Linux FAQ for details. The current Debian GNU/Linux release, 3.

If the gNewSense Live CD does not work, you might still be able to use GNU/Linux. Some hardware manufacturers refuse to provide specifications for their hardware to free software developers. Instead, they provide GNU/Linux drivers that deny users some of the essential freedoms. Some GNU/Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, include these drivers, so that users of restricted hardware can use GNU/Linux too.

Fundamentally all Ricoh devices that support PCL XL or PostScript should work, Not all Ricoh Devices support these Print Languages. Please consult your device specification. A quick check of supported languages can be made by printing the device configuration page. If the device does support PCL-XL (PCL6) or PS your first step should be to look up your printer on linuxprinting.org.

Debian GNU/Linux is a particular distribution of the Linux operating system, and numerous packages that run on it. In principle, users could obtain the Linux kernel via the Internet or from elsewhere, and compile it themselves. They could then obtain source code for many applications in the same way, compile the programs, then install them into their systems. For complicated programs, this process can be not only time-consuming but error-prone.

A list of packages which are still needed to be packaged for Debian exists, the Work-Needing and Prospective Packages list. For more details about adding the missing things, see How can I become a Debian software developer?, Section 12.1. Debian Policy requires that such symbolic links (to libfoo.so.x.y.z or similar) are placed in separate, development packages. Those packages are usually named libfoo-dev or libfooX-dev (presuming the library package is named libfooX, and X is a whole number).

A typical GNU/Linux distribution includes hundreds or even thousands of pre-packaged software libraries and applications in its repositories that are available for you to install at any time. In gNewSense, for example, you can install, uninstall, and update applications through the "Applications"|"Add/Remove..." menu or through the Synaptic Package Manager. New software or updates are automatically downloaded from the Internet.

Yes. The OpenOffice.org office suite can read and write Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents. OpenOffice.org is installed by default on gNewSense. We encourage you to use the OpenDocument format (an ISO standard, which OpenOffice.org uses by default) instead of Microsoft's proprietary formats for documents that you write. This is the best way to avoid vendor lock-in. Microsoft Office users (Office 2000 and above) can read and save to this format by using a plug-in. OpenOffice.

Protux is written using state-of-art plataform independent code (Java) yet preserving the performance using very sophisticated optimization techniques. That means you can run Protux in any plataform you want, as long it provides a Java VM. But it is import to assert that we keep GNU/Linux as the target plataform, yet we offer support only for GNU/Linux users.

First, you need to choose a GNU/Linux distribution. The FSF recommends gNewSense, which was created with the explicit goal of never compromising your freedoms. gNewSense comes as a Live CD. This is a CD that contains the entire GNU/Linux operating system and a few essential applications in a bootable form. This means, you can insert the CD, reboot your computer, and start using gNewSense right away â?" if you don't like it, remove the CD, reboot, and you're back in your familiar oprating system.

Dual-boot: In this setup, everytime you switch on your PC, you can decide whether you want to boot into GNU/Linux or into Windows. Each operating system gets its own part of the hard disk, although it is possible to exchange files between them. Virtual machine: A virtual machine (VM) is a regular application that emulates an entire PC within it. Basically, a virtual machine allows you to run GNU/Linux in a window on Windows, or Windows in a window on GNU/Linux.

A virtual machine is an application that emulates an entire PC within it. Depending on its implementation, a virtual machine can achieve "near native" execution speeds of the system that it runs. You can find a comparison of virtual machines at Wikipedia. QEMU is a very good free software virtual machine that runs on Windows. There are also proprietary virtual machine implementations that are available at no cost.

it is still in its early stages of development, and will be included with your distribtion at a later time. it is proprietary or restriced by software patents. In this case, your distribution might already contain a free alternative. Some software packages come with an interactive installer, similar to a "setup.exe" on Windows, that you can download and run. (After downloading, you might have to set "Execute" permissions in the file properties dialog to allow it to run.

Many GNU/Linux distributions, including gNewSense, do not contain support for proprietary media formats that cannot be implemented and distributed freely. Some of these formats are restriced by software patents, others contain Digital Restrictions Management. Either way, these formats are incompatible with the free software philosophy.

GNU/Linux distributions include everything a casual gamer wants: Card games, board games, classic arcade games, puzzle games, and much more. These are typically not the kinds of games that get the kids excited (but your kids might be different ;-) ). If we're talking about Windows games, some of them will run using Wine. There's no guarantee that this works, though.

To access a Windows share, you need to install the Samba client and point your file browser to smb://computer/share. To share a GNU/Linux folder, you need to install the Samba server. In the gNewSense file browser, you can share a folder by right-clicking it and clicking "Share folder" on the context menu. To use a network printer, in gNewSense, open "System"|"Administration"|"Printing", then click "New Printer" and select "Windows Printer (SMB)".

When security problems are found in any software package that's part of your distribution, you are notified about the availability of an update and can install it with the click of button. In fact, updating your software is even easier than with Windows: All the software packages â?" not only the operating system itself â?" can be installed, uninstalled, and updated through the same easy-to-use interface.

Yes and no. The Wine project offers a reimplementation of the Windows Application Programming Interface (API) for GNU/Linux. To Windows applications, the Wine API is indistinguishable from the Windows API, so they will run just like on Windows â?" at least that's the plan. In practice, the Windows API is a moving target for the Wine developers, and despite their hard work since 1993, many popular Windows applications do not currently run on Wine, or crash often.

REW) There is no "best" CPU. The choice of CPU always depends on your price/performance/technical requirements. On the x86 side, we have Intel, AMD, Cyrix and IDT/Centaur, with various models available. All of these work. Besides the x86 processors, the Linux kernel runs on 68k processors, MIPS R3000 and R4000, Power PC, ARM, Alpha and Sparc processors. There are lots of different ways to build a computer around a processor. If you have an x86, they built a PC around it.

REW, ADB) The CPU field is very active in terms of technological developments. New CPU models, new architectures, new manufacturing technologies keep pushing the state of the art. WRT GNU/Linux, it is a general consensus that Alpha machines usually provide the best floating point performance, when the actually shipping hardware available at any given point in time is compared (June 1998: the 21164/600). However for non floating point applications the issue is not as clear-cut.

REG) Yes! The Linux kernel has the clone(2) system call, which provides the underlying mechanism for implementing a threads library. And Xavier Leroy has provided us with LinuxThreads, a POSIX 1003b implementation of threads for the Linux kernel. If you have a libc 5 system, you'll need to install LinuxThreads if it is not already installed. You can get the LinuxThreads library here. If you have a libc 6 (aka glibc 2) system, you shouldn't need to do anything. Glibc has LinuxThreads merged in.

REG) Different people mean different things when they talk about clustering. Some people want transparent fault tolerance and load balancing of general applications, others want parallel processing of a single job. Most people who talk about fault tolerance expect hardware and OS support of this (if a node goes down, the OS will automatically migrate the application to another node). This is not (yet) available for Linux.

the major GNU applications for software development, file manipulation, and text processing, including gcc, g++, make, texinfo, Emacs, the Bash shell and numerous upgraded Unix utilities, the X Window System, which provides a networked graphical user interface for Linux, and countless X applications including GNOME and KDE as well as the GIMP GNU Image Manipulation Program, a full suite of networking applications, including servers for Internet protocols such as HTTP (WWW), FTP, NNTP (news), SMT.

In common use of the terms, there is no difference. Although the operating system is now commonly called just Linux, it started out as the GNU project, aimed to create a Free Software operating system. This system adopted a kernel (the core of the operating system, one might say, which deals with communication between software and hardware) called Linux, created by Linus Torvalds.