Michael Schwarz

I dedicated this book to my father, Gene Schwarz. There's a simple explanation. He is the sole reason I have a career in computer programming, and, thus, he is the reason I had the opportunity to write this book.

My father was an electrical engineer working for Control Data in the mid-1970s when he began to build our first microcomputer in our basement . We cobbled together an S-100 bus microcomputer using kits and wire-wrap boards , and even began doing our own photo-etched printed circuits. We built the machine around the cutting-edge Zilog Z-80. A friend of his wrote the original BIOS and monitor program, but, before long, I was adding routines required for newer versions of the CP/M operating system.

By the time we stopped developing on that machine and bought in to the PC craze, we had a machine with 64k of static RAM and a 4MHz processor. We were hot stuff.

One of the first programs I wrote converted an entire SSSD 8-inch floppy from EBCDIC to ASCII. I will never forget the first time code of mine made those old CDC BR-803 floppy drives seek to track 0 (tracks, not cylinders ”single sided floppies, remember?) and load the head. It was magical , and I was hooked.

As the PC industry grew, that magical feeling became more and more remote. The PC became an appliance. And while programming skillfully still held pleasure , it was getting to the point where monkeys could write software that, to unskilled eyes, seemed to work just fine. The excitement was gone.

Then, in 1993, I started to hear about Linux. I had already worked with Unix, starting with machines from a failed CDC venture into SOHO Xenix machines, built by Altos. I had continued to use Unix skills at work on "beefier" systems.

The idea of running Unix (or at least something like it) on my PCs was exciting. I stayed late at work (no Internet at home yet), downloading the Texas A&M University (TAMU) Linux distribution. It was something on the order of 18 floppy disk images for the whole thing.

I managed to configure and boot that, and I've been addicted ever since. It has brought excitement back to computing. Every day is a day on the frontiers of knowledge and progress. In the rest of the (Microsoft) world, you don't get to do that. You get to play in the box they provide. Want your own box? Too bad. Either come to work for Microsoft, or play where you are told to play.

I try to keep up, at least in passing, with the Windows world, but I sure don't plan to go back.

From 1993, with a crashing kernel and a bash prompt, to today, with Linux doing massively parallel supercomputing, multiprocessor, and clustered computing right up there with the big boys, Linux has been a very exciting ride, and a chance to learn so much about the most fundamental elements of computing. I hope this book helps you to enjoy Linux as much I do.

Of course, I have to thank everyone involved in this project. My co-authors, of course, who came through even when life demanded they be elsewhere. My wife, Tina, for putting up with the process and my absentmindedness. I have to thank everyone at Addison-Wesley for their hard work and patience. I also wish to thank everyone who reviewed our manuscript. Their suggestions made this a much stronger book. Where weakness may still exist, the fault is mine and not theirs.

Of course, I also thank Messrs. Thorvalds and Stallman for god-fathering so much software to write about.

”Michael Schwarz

January 2002