Introduction to Open Source

Open Source is a wonderful thing, and a great tool for learning. When you have the source code to a program or operating system, you can get under the hood and actually see how things are done. Oh, it's not always easy deciphering code somebody else has written, but once you have it figured out, you have a much better understanding of how things are done.

You will certainly have a better idea of how your operating system works, as well as how to interact with it and program for it, after you've looked at a bit of source code! I'll also be posting software I have written, in the appropriate sections, so you'll get to see stuff of my own creation. I comment my code more than a lot of programmers, so hopefully my code will be easier to understand.

Be sure to include all the information you can for bug reports or enhancement suggestions, and send code if you can - we will give credit where credit is due. Describe all problems or suggestions as clearly as possible and send exact copies of any error messages, along with the package name and version.

Be sure to start out with the UNIX section after you finish with the introduction, since I will try not to duplication anything I've already written about in the Linux section. Linux is able to use much of the same software as UNIX can, so I'll try to keep things in this section specific to just Linux.

The message boards are now online! I've created several catagories and forums to start things out and can easily add more as needed. Feel free to make suggestions for changes and/or additions that will make everything better here.

You will notice I have added donation buttons to several sections of this site. No, I am not holding my hand out and expecting donations. I am just making it easy for members and visitors to donate if they wish to do so. All donations received will go towards enhancing this site, furthering my research into Open Source technologies such as Open Servo, aquiring components to allow further research into robotics and building of new robots, equipment and software to allow me to do such things as take better pictures and make better videos for the site. I very much need to build another computer for my web and database servers, since I am going to be taking more of my web hosting and doing it myself. This will save me quite a bit of money each month and allow me to do more robotics and other projects.

I have a total of four websites, one of which I am already hosting myself. The other three are hosted with my internet provider. I am also going to be in need of more bandwidth to support these additional web hosting and mail services. This is what donations I receive will be used to accomplish. Another of my major goals is to transfer as much of my code development as I can to an OS such as FreeBSD and GNU/Linux, which will require building another computer. I already have my only Windows PC, and another PC running FreeBSD 6.0 that currently handled primary DNS, web and database serving, mail, and other tasks - and this machine is severely over loaded right now, being just a 733 MHz Pentium 3 with 192 Meg of RAM.

If you would rather donate equipment, parts, or other things I might use for robotics and/or to enhance this site, please let me know. I would be happy to discuss such donations with you, so send me e-mail. I'd love to aquire a decent laptop, a PDA for remote data and communications with robots via bluetooth and/or wifi, a nice video camera for taking stills and movies of my robots in action. Right now I am taking pictures and videos with an inexpensive Logitech webcam. I will be adding wireless links to every robot I construct.