Re: C Question/Fake Modal
- Posted by Monty King <boot_me at GEOCITIES.COM> Jun 28, 1998
- 1159 views
>In looking at various Unix/Linux toolkits, I occasionally run across >references to something that *seems* to offer the same functionality as >DLLs. David, I have been looking at installing Linux on my system here, but have decided that they can't tell me for sure if it will work with my mb's chipset, though I am pretty sure it will, but I could experience a lockup if using a k-6 processor...etc.etc. Anyway, I have been reading various docs, and was wondering if you have read the linux booklet, available from: http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/LDP/gs/node3.html The pages above are labeled node1, node2, node3, etc. Anyway, it talks about dynamic links... here is a quote, not sure if it will do any good. ( I added more than was necessary to show everyone how cool this OS would be to use:::) Linux provides a complete implementation of TCP/IP networking software. This includes device drivers for many popular Ethernet cards, SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) and PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol), which provide access to a TCP/IP network via a serial connection, PLIP (Parallel Line Internet Protocol), and NFS (Network File System). The complete range of TCP/IP clients and services is also supported, which includes FTP, telnet, NNTP, and SMTP. We'll talk more about networking in Chapter . The Linux kernel is developed to use protected-mode features of Intel 80386 and better processors. In particular, Linux uses the protected-mode, descriptor based, memory-management paradigm, and other advanced features. Anyone familiar with 80386 protected-mode programming knows that this chip was designed for multitasking systems like UNIX. Linux exploits this functionality. The kernel supports demand-paged, loaded executables. Only those segments of a program which are actually in use are read into memory from disk. Also, copy-on-write pages are shared among executables. If several instances of a program are running at once, they share physical memory, which reduces overall usage. In order to increase the amount of available memory, Linux also implements disk paging. Up to one gigabyte of swap space may be allocated on disk (upt to 8 partitions of 128 megabytes each). When the system requires more physical memory, it swaps inactive pages to disk, letting you run larger applications and support more users. However, swapping data to disk is no substitute for physical RAM, which is much faster. The Linux kernel also implements a unified memory pool for user programs and disk cache. All free memory is used by the cache, which is reduced when running large programs. Executables use dynamically linked, shared libraries: code from a single library on disk. This is not unlike the SunOS shared library mechanism. Executable files occupy less disk space, especially those which use many library functions. There are also statically linked libraries for object debugging and maintaining ``complete'' binary files when shared libraries are not installed. The libraries are dynamically linked at run time, and the programmer can use his or her own routines in place of the standard library routines. To facilitate debugging, the kernel generates core dumps for post-mortem analysis. A core dump and an executable linked with debugging support allows a developer to determine what caused a program to crash. end quote... My main question is, I know that I can use loadlin (or linux loader) to use multiple OS's, but am not sure how to go about fdisking to where I can keep my existing software in a dos partition without risking (keyword here) losing my win95 system...as I use it all of the time. (Is this why your system is not up now David? You put Linux on?) Well, anyway, My copy of Debian came from a magazine released version (Boot Magazine) and is a bit stripped down, but contains all of what I need to get it up and running I am assured. Monty in Oregon