20002001Alexander Kirillov, Kirrily Robert
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
License, Version 1.1 or any later version
published by the Free Software Foundation with no Invariant
Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. You
may obtain a copy of the GNU Free Documentation
License from the Free Software Foundation by
visiting their Web
site or by writing to: Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
Many of the names used by companies to distinguish their
products and services are claimed as trademarks. Where those
names appear in any GNOME documentation, and those trademarks
are made aware to the members of the GNOME Documentation
Project, the names have been printed in caps or initial caps.
GlossaryAAppletAn application working inside a small window in a panel.
Application launcher
A button in the panel which launches an application or executes
a command when pressed.
ASCIIAmerican Standard Code for Information Interchange; the
standard describing a collection of characters and codes
(i.e. sequences of zeros and ones, or numbers) assigned to
them. ASCII characters include
Latin letters, common punctuation marks, some special symbols
usually found on the keyboard such as & and $, and some
control symbols, such as the codes used for denoting end of
line and end of file; it does not include accented
symbols. The corresponding codes run from 0 to 127.
When you see a mention of an ASCII file or
ASCII text somewhere, it usually means a plain
text file which only uses symbols defined in ASCII standard,
with no formatting information such as fonts to be used.
ASCII is defined as a standard of American
National Standards Institute (ANSI); the offical reference is
ANSI X3.4-1986. You can find a reproduction of
it in many places on the Internet, for example, on
CNET Web page.
Attachment
Any file accompanying an e-mail message in a special format so
that it can be viewed or saved to disk independently of the main
message body.
BBackground
To make a program run without any visible output; to put a program
which is already running into the background.
On the UNIX command line, the character &
appended to a command will make that command run in the
background.
Binary
An executable program, so called because the file containing the
program consists of machine-readable binary digits, i.e. ones and
zeroes.
BitThe minimal possible unit of information, a digit which
can take values 0 or 1. Saying
that the file has length n bits is equivalent to saying that it
can be written as a sequence of n zeros and ones.
Byte8 bits, i.e. a sequence of 8
zeros and ones.There are 256
possible such sequences, so one can also say that one byte
represents a number ranging from 0 to 255.
Byte is the basic building block of filesystem: all files
are composed of bytes. For text files, each byte represents
one symbol (see definition of encoding for more information).
CCache
A short-term storage area in RAM or on the hard disk. Many
programs use caches to store recently-accessed files or other
items.
Character set (charset)
A collection of symbols, such as letters of one or several
alphabets, digits, punctuation marks, etc. Commonly used
together with encoding.
Clipboard
The temporary buffer into which text or other data can be
copied, to be used later by pasting into a different location.
Most applications support the clipboard either through native
mouse-based cut and paste functionality of X Window System, or through specialised
menus and other interfaces.
Command line options
Parameters or arguments given on the UNIX command line after a
program name, which tell the program how to run. For instance, in
the command ls -l the -l is
a command line option telling the ls program to
produce a long listing.
Cursor
A highlighted or animated icon which indicates the current
position of the mouse on the screen, or the position where
keyboard input will occur in a text window.
DDaemon
A background process providing basic system or network services.
Desktop
The visible screen area, on which windows, icons, and other graphical
items may be placed.
Desktop environment
Software which provides graphical user interface for users
desktop. In addtition to capabilities provided by a window manager (that is, ability
to move, resize, and hide windows), a desktop environment
usually also includes such elements of GUI as a File Manager
with drag-and-drop capabilities, Panel used for keeping your
favorite applications and applets, and a set of other
utilities. Most popular desktop environments for UNIX
include GNOME, KDE and CDE (soon to be replaced by
GNOME).
Device
A piece of hardware with which the system interacts, such as a
hard disk, modem, or mouse.
Directory
A branch within UNIX's hierarchical file system; a
folder containing files or other directories
(called subdirectories).
DNS
Domain Name Service; converting domain names (such as
www.gnome.org) into IP addresses such as
209.116.70.70. If you want to use
domain names, your computer must be configured to connect to
one of DNS servers which would do this conversion.
EElectronic mail (e-mail)
A way of exchanging messages between users of computers
connected to a network (local or Internet).
EncodingA correspondence between characters of some character set and character codes,
i.e. internal computer presentation of the symbols. In order to
be able to read a text file, you need to know its character set
and encoding.
In most encodings, each symbol is represented by one
byte, which is equivalent to a
number from 0 to 255; the characters corresponding to codes 0
to 127 coincide with the ASCII
standard, while the characters with codes higher than 127 vary
between encodings. For Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and similar
character sets, each symbol is represented by 2 bytes.
The most common encoding is
iso-8859-1; in addition to ASCII
characters, it also contains accented letters covering most of
Western European languages. Environment variableA global setting, or configuration
parameter, which is available to all applications. Each
environment variable has a name and a value (which usually is a
string of symbols or an integer number). Any application you run
can access any of the environment variables. For example, there
is a standard environment variable HOME, whose
value is the user's home directory (for example,
/home/joe), and any application which wants
to create a file in your home directory uses this variable to
find out what your home directory is.
To view all currenlty defined environment variables, use
the command printenv (provided that you have
GNU shell utils package installed). To modify a value of
environment variable, use the command
export
NAME= VALUE;
if you are using bash shell or setenv
NAME VALUE; if you are
using csh or tcsh shell.
Ethernet
A protocol for network communication, developed in the 1980s and
commonly used for Local Area Networks (LANs) and other network
communication.
FFileAny piece of information (text, graphics, executable) put
together and given a name. All the information you have on the
hard drive is arranged as a collection of files.
FilesystemA collection of all the files and directories on a system
arranged in a tree-like hierarchy.
Foreground
To run a program so that its output is visible to the user, or to
bring a previously backgrounded program to the foreground.
Programs running in the foreground can display output and receive
input from the user.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)A protocol for exchanging files over the Internet or local network. There is a
number of utilities based on this protocol, such as
gFTP; you can also use command
ftp on the command line. In addition, most
file managers and Web browsers have built-in FTP capabilities.
Free softwareAs defined by Free Software Foundation, free software is
software that comes with permission for anyone to use, copy, and
distribute, either verbatim or with modifications, either gratis
or for a fee. In particular, this means that the source code must
be available.
This is very close, but not identical, to the notion of Open Source software. Detailed
discussion of this and related topics can be found on Free
Software Foundation's Web page.
GGNOME
A free desktop environment for UNIX and
UNIX-like operating systems; one of the two leading desktop
environments for Linux (the other one is KDE). For more information, please
visit GNOME
Web site.
Officially, GNOME stands for GNU Network Object Model
Environment. The only part of this name that really matters is
GNU, which is there to indicate that GNOME is a part of the
larger GNU project.
GNU
GNU's Not UNIX; a project to develop a complete UNIX-like
operating system which is free
software. Combination of tools and utilities produced
by GNU project with Linux kernel
is widely known under the name Linux operating
system; more accurately, such a system should be
called GNU/Linux.
For more information about GNU project, visit its Web page.
GNU General Public License
(GPL)A software license developed by the Free Software
Foundation. In short, it allows anyone to use, copy, distribute,
or sell the software, in original or modified form, as long as
you distribute the program's source code along with the
binaries, and you distribute them again under the GPL. A copy of
the GPL is included as an appendix to GNOME User's guide. You
can also view GPL on-line on FSF's Web page.
GPL plays an extremely important role in the free
software movement; almost all of GNU project software, as well
as Linux kernel, is distributed
under GPL. For a detailed discussion of history, ideas and
philosophy related to GPL and free sofware in general, visit
FSF's Web
page.
GIMP Toolkit (GTK)
A collection of tools for creating screen widgets
such as scrollbars, menus, checkbuttons, etc. in
applications. GTK is used by all GNOME applications.
HHot Key
Hot-keys are keyboard combinations used to do actions on a
computer instead of using the mouse to do the same action.
Hot-keys can speed up computer usage. Also known under the name
keyboard shortcut or keyboard
accelerator.
HTMLHypertext Markup Language; the language in which all the
Web pages in the world are written. HTML can also be used for
e-mails, which allows having nicely formatted e-mails, possibly
including images and links.
More information about HTML can be found on the Web page
of World Wide Web
Consortium, which is the official maintainer of HTML
standard.
HTTP
HTTP
Hypertext Transfer Protocol; the protocol by which web pages and
other web-accessible resources are delivered. Whenever you are
browsing the Web, your browser uses HTTP to communicate with the
Web server and request a Web page.
HTTP is defined in RFC 1945
(HTTP 1.0) and RFC 2068
(HTTP 1.1).
IIDE
Intergrated Drive Electronics; an interface for connecting
hard drives and other similar devices to your computer. IDE
is an old interface; nowadays, most drives use an enhanced
version of IDE, EIDE.
Icon
A small picture used within a graphical user interface to indicate
a program, file, or other part of a computer system.
InternetUnless you spent the last 20 years on a deserted island,
you probably know what Internet is. But just in case: Internet
is the network of millions of computers all around the world,
connected to each other by some hardware means (cables, wires,
phone lines, communication satellites) and communicating with
each other using some standard protocols. Internet makes it
possible for users of these computers to send and receive
electronic mail, browse the World Wide Web, exchange files (using FTP protocol), remotely login into your
computer from other places (using telnet), and more.
IP addressA unique address assigned to each computer connected to
the Internet or a local
network. Has the form a.b.c.d, where
a,b,c,d are numbers from 0 to 255, subject to a number of rules
and conventions.
All communication between computers on the Internet is
based on IP addresses; however, on a properly set up network you
can instead use domain names (such as www.gnome.org), which are
automatically transformed to IP addresses using Domain Name Service (DNS).
KKDE
A desktop environment for
UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems; one of two leading
desktop environments for Linux (the other one is GNOME). For more infrmation visit
KDE Web
site.
KernelThe core component of an operating system, responsible for
basic operations such as accessing the files, input/output,
managing the processor and memory resources, etc. All other
tools, utilities, and applications use the kernel.
LLinuxA free (as in GNU GPL) UNIX-like operating system, written in
collaboration by hundreds of developers all around the world,
most of them volunteers. One of the most successful and famous
free software projects.
Strictly speaking, the name Linux only
applies to the kernel of the
operating system. Most of other tools and utilities necessary
for system functioning came from GNU
project, so the operating system should be properly
called GNU/Linux; however, for convenience
reasons most people use the name Linux for the whole operating
system.
There is a tremendous amount of information about Linux
available on the Internet; good starting points are www.linux.com,
www.linux.org. There is
also a number of good books about Linux available in bookstores;
if you have a Linux system, you probably also have a lot of Linux
documentaion installed on your system.
login
The process by which a user authenticates herself to a computer
system, usually by typing in a username and password.
MMail Client
An application which a user reads and sends
their e-mail with. Also called Mail User Agent (MUA).
Manual page (manpage)
A documentation resource commonly provided with UNIX programs.
Manual pages typically contain concise technical listings of
available command line options and
other settings which affect the running of the program. Can be
viewed using GNOME Help Browser or by typing man
commandname on the command
line.
Menu
A list of possible actions or options available within a program.
MIME type
A type of the file, describing what kind of
data and in which format this file contains; for example, MIME
type image/jpeg is used for graphic files
in JPEG format. Used by many applications (such as file
manager) to determine what application should be used to open
or edit a given file. This can be configured using
GNOME Control Center.
The acronym MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extension, since originally it was used to describe types of
files sent in e-mail.
Mount
A command instructing the operating system to incorporate
contents of a device (such as a
hard drive or a CD-ROM) into the system's link file system. Requires the device
name (e.g. /dev/cdrom) and the mount point,
i.e. the name of the directory under which the contents of the
device will be shown (e.g.,
/mnt/cdrom). You must mount any device
before you can access files on it, and unmount it before
physically disconnnecting or removing the drive. For more
information, see Appendix If you are new to
UNIX in GNOME User's Guide or
manual page for mount.
Mount pointMouse cursor
An small icon (usually an arrow) used to indicate the position
of the mouse on the desktop.
NNautilusNautilus is the next generation file
manager for GNOME being written by Eazel.
OOpen Source
Refers to software for which both the executable files and
the source code can be freely redistributed and re-used in
other products. This term was introduced by Open Source
Intiative; it is very close, but not identical to
the notion of free
software used by the Free software Foundation.
PPartition
Hard disks and other similar devices can be
divided into parts which, for all practical
purposes, can be used as separate disks; these parts are
called partitions. For example, you can create partitions of
differrent types (e.g., FAT32 used by
Windows and ext2 used by Linux) on the
same disk, format them independently of each other, and so
on.
Password
A string of typable characters (letters, numbers, punctuation
marks, etc.) used to authenticate a user's
identity. Required for logging in.
Process ID (PID)
The ID number by which the system identifies individual processes.
The first process to run on the system has PID 0.
Pixel
A single element, or dot, on the computer's
screen. A pixel's colour is made up of a mixture of red, green
and blue light. Screen resolution is measured in pixels.
PointerPoint-to-point protocol (PPP)
A protocol allowing a computer to connect to a TCP/IP network via a modem. A PPP
connection allows an ordinary home computer connected to a
telephone line to become a part of the Internet
PostscriptA language for desribing printed pages, developed by
Adobe
Corporation. Can be used to describe both graphics and
text, black and white or color. Postscript is the
de-facto standard for quality printing; almost all printing
in UNIX is done by converting the data to be printed to
Postscript before sending it to printer. If your printer does
not have built-in Postscript capabilities, then your system is
probably configured to convert Postscript to something you
printer can print.
Postscript files can also be saved to disk; they usually
have extension .ps. There is a number of
utilities for viewing Postscript files, such as
gv or
ggv.
Process A task run by the operating system. UNIX is a
multitasking sytem, so at any given moment there are many
processes running. Usually, each command or application you
start is run as a new process; some applications may run several
processes. In addition, there is also a number of system
processes which run in the background to ensure proper
functioning of the system.
Each process has a unique ID number
(PID). You can view the list of all the
processes running on your system using GNOME System
monitor (gtop) or
Ktop. See the documentation for these
applications for more information.
RResolution
A measurement indicating the height and width of the visible
screen of a computer in pixels.
Typical resolutions include 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024.
Root directory
The top level directory of a UNIX file system, containing all
other files and directories. Root directory is denoted by a
single slash (/).
Root (user)
The privileged user on a UNIX system; has full control over
the system and all files on it, including those of other
users. Is typically used by system administartor for system
maintenance.
Root window
The background of an X11 desktop, in which background images
(wallpaper) or running programs may be displayed.
RPM packageA file containing in it in a packed form all the files
comprising an application (executable files, documentation,
configuration, etc.), plus some extra information about the
application, such as a brief description and dependency
information. The RPM format makes installing, un-installing,
upgrading, and keeping track of the applications installed on
your system very easy. There is a number of tools available for
working with RPM packages, such as
gnorpm or
Kpackage. For those who prefer the
command line, there is also the rpm command.
See the documentation for these utilities or RPM's Web page for more information.
RPM format was developed by Red Hat, Inc; the acronym
RPM stands for RPM Package Manager.
SScreen
The physical monitor device of a computer, consisting of a cathode
ray tube, liquid crystal display, or similar means of displaying
pixels; the visible picture displayed
on the monitor.
Screensaver
A program which blanks the screen or displays pretty or
entertaining graphics after a period of inactivity on the
console. Originally intended to prevent burn-in
of images on older cathode-ray tubes, screensavers are now used
primarily for entertainment purposes or to lock an unused
terminal, requiring the user to enter a password to return to the normal
display.
Script
A program written in an interpreted language, i.e. a language
where the commands are executed one by one as you enter them
(as opposed to compiled languages, in which the whole program
must first be translated into machine codes (compiled) to
create an executable file). By far the most common type of
scripts are shell scripts, which are simply sequences of shell commands. Other popular types of
scripts are javascripts used in Web pages, perl scripts and
Tcl/Tk scripts.
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface; an interface for connecting
various computer components, such as hard drives. Works
faster than the more common IDE
interface, but is more expensive, so it is used mostly on
servers.
Segmentation fault (segfault)
A program crash. More precisely, this is what happens when a
program tries to access resources which do not belong to it;
in such a case, for security reasons the operating system
immediately kills the offending program. Segfaults are
almost always caused by bugs in the program.
Shell
Any of a number of UNIX programs which interpret commands typed
by the user before passing them to the operating system and
provide other features such as command history, aliasing, and
scripting. Examples include bash and
tcsh. Shells are often displayed in a terminal window.
SMTP
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol; a protocol used for exchanging
electronic mail messages between machines on a network.
Spam
Useless e-mail. Spam normally comes in forms of
chain-letters and advertisements for websites or services.
Symbolic link (symlink)
A file of special type which contains no data but instead, points
to another file or directory. Equivalent
to a shortcut under Windows.
System administrator
The person responsible for administration and maintenance of a
computer system.
TTar archive (tarball)
A file created using the tar (Tape ARchive)
program, which conglomerates multiple files, or even a whole
directory tree, into one file for easy storage or transfer. These
archives are often compressed using the gzip
program and given a filename extension of
.tar.gz.
TCP/IP
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol; pair of
protocols used for all communication between computers on
the Internet and most local networks. TCP/IP serves as a
basis for higher level protocols (FTP, telnet, SMTP,
…): all information sent from one computer to another
on the Internet, be it an e-mail message or a Web page, is
sent as a collection of TCP/IP packets.
TelnetA protocol allowing logging into your computer account
via Internet or local network from another computer; also, the
command using this protocol. For more
information, see manual page for telnet.
TerminalOriginally, a physical device, a monitor capable of
showing text output with a connected keyboard. Nowadays, mostly
used to refer to a window on your screen which emulates one of
these terminals and provides a command line prompt for entering
commands and running text-based applications.
Theme
An integrated collection of graphical elements intended to give
the desktop a certain look and feel. Common theme components
include matching backgrounds, icons, and window decorations.
The look of GNOME desktop is determined by 2 themes: a
GTK theme, which determines the look of application menus,
toolbars and other widgets, and window manager theme, which
determines window borders, buttons, and window title font.
UUnicode
A character set which strives
to include all symbols in all human alphabets, and all special
symbol used by people. It is a work in progress; the latest
version of Unicode (3.0) includes 49,194 characters and covers
languages ranging from English to Chinese to Cherokee. For
more information, see Unicode
Consortium Web site.
UNIX
An operating system originally developed at Bell Labs in the early
1970s by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie; any of a large number of
operating systems sharing many features with the original UNIX
operating system, such as Sun's Solaris
or IBM's AIX.
For legal reasons, operating systems such as
FreeBSD and
Linux can not be called UNIX, but
they do share all important features with UNIX systems; thus,
they are commonly called UNIX-like.
USBUniversal Serial Bus; an interface for connecting
various peripherals, from keyboard to digital cameras, to the
computer.
User
An actual person who uses a computer system, identified by a
unique username, or a virtual
person or role similarly identified by a unique
username. Virtual users may be used to run daemons or other software.
Username
A string of alphanumeric characters uniquely identifying a user of a computer system. Most usernames
are based on the user's real name, so Mary Smith might have the
username mary or msmith.
Uniform Resource Locator (URL)An address, or location, of
a document. Most common URL types are a Web address (such as
http://www.gnome.org), a file on a
FTP server (e.g.,
ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub), or a file
on your own local system (e.g.,
file:/usr/doc/). Formal definition
of URL (which is a subset of more general notion, Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI)) is given in RFC2396,
(beware: as any formal deinition, this one is way too
technical for greater majority of users).
VVirtual desktop
Some window managers allow
the user to have several virtual desktops;you
could have application windows open and working on all of
them, even though at every moment, only one of the virtual
desktops is shown on your screen. Similar to having several
physical desks in your office so that you can put your
papers on all of them, even though you can only work at one
desk at a time
WWidget
A single element of a graphical user interface, such as a button,
scrollbar, or text input area.
Window
The interface element used to display most applications under a
windowing GUI such as X Window
System. Windows typically consist of a main area in
which typing or other work occurs, a title bar (which may
contain buttons to minimize, maximize or close the window),
window-specific menus, and a scroll bar down either side of the
window if required.
Window manager
A program which extends the capabilities of the X Window System by providing
most of the user-friendly widgets
people expect from a windowing system, such as window borders,
buttons and menus, ways of moving, resizing, and hiding
windows, placing the icons on your desktop, and so on. Examples of
window managers include Sawfish and
Windowmaker.
Workspace
Same as virtual desktop.
World Wide Web (WWW)
The most visible part of the Internet; the World Wide Web is
formed by all the
Web pages available on the Internet and all the links among
them.
XX Window SystemA graphical system commonly used with UNIX operating
systems; also known under the names X11 or simply X. X is
responsible for putting windows, icons, text, and other
graphical elements on your screen. X is always used in
combination with window manager,
which provides higher level functions such as moving,
minimizing, and maximizing windows.
X11XFree86A freely redistributable implementation of the
X Window System
that runs on UNIX-like operating systems (and OS/2). For more
information, visit XFree86 Web page.
X server