Chapter 8: GNU Utilities

Overview

Secrets in This Chapter

An Overview of GNU Software
Working with Files
Learning the find Command
Substituting or Deleting Characters from a File
Learning the Basics of sed Commands

Red Hat Linux includes the Linux kernel and a large collection of utilities and applications that make it a complete operating system. Most of these utilities and applications are from the GNU Project. In a way, Linux has become a full-fledged UNIX-like operating system primarily because of the GNU software. The GNU Project provided everything from the software development tools—assembler, compiler, and make—to GNOME, the graphical user interface (GUI) desktop. This chapter gives you an overview of the GNU software and introduces you to some of the GNU utilities.

Cross Ref

Chapter 10 describes several applications, such as The GIMP, Ghostscript, and Ghostview. Chapter 11 describes the GNU Emacs editor, one of the most well-known software packages from the GNU Project. Other GNU software, such as the Bash shell, C/C++ compiler, the make utility, and other software packages, are described in several chapters throughout this book.