Welcome to Gaia! ::

So, in Freshmen Seminar, i am writing an essay that was mainly assigned to teach us how to use resouces of different types rolleyes . So, this is one of the REALLY easy essays that doesnt require too much thought. but the reason i need help is that i need stuff to write about. Example: This is a four paragraph essay xd , and i dont want to even mention the word kernal, because i would have to explain the whole thing in lamen terms, and it would suck... So, is there any VERY basic questions that i could answer in this essay that people that never heard of linux might ask? Thanks.

An easy way to explain what a Kernel is would be something like this "a kernel is the beating heart of any operating system, and with out this 'heart' a computer operating system would just be a bunch of useless pictures." Why compare an OS kernel with a heart is because in a living thing a heart is needed to keep it alive, its pretty much the same thing in a OS it needs a kernel to make it work. So can you write a good essay with out mentioning the kernel? No Can you write a good essay comparing a OS to a living thing? Yes

Hopefully by now everyone will know, or have a basic concept of, how important something like a heart is to use and so by explaining it like that even the most computer retarded person should be able to picture how important the kernel is.

See you didn't even need to get technical with this explanation.

As for your question, the big one that I can think of would be "What can you do in Linux?" The best way to get some answers for that would more than likely be found out side this guild, yes you can get some info from us, but don't base all your info from here remember the more sources you have the better. I would suggest that you dig around in some of the ditro sites, forums. mailing lists, irc channels, wikipedia, and some of Linux History.

Hope this helped

Phase, the Calvin quote that just happened to come up in your sig was oddly fitting:

If something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, it's probably not worth knowing anyway.

Anyway, all you have to do is simplify. Similes and analogies are a good way to start, like vendion's idea of a heart. Or maybe use a brain, or a car engine, or something.

I agree, post some drafts here. I'm an English student so I can give you some protips. cool

You can find it in the "So You want to Switch to Linux" sticky at the top of this forum 3nodding .

It might not be quite what you're looking to do but it'll probably give you some ideas.

What is Linux? Surprisingly many people ask this question. Linux is an alternative to the commonly known Windows Operating System for computers. Linux is also virus free, faster, allows more choice, and best of all, free. This is why I chose Linux for my I-Search project. What do I want to know? I want to know everything about Linux.
Linux is “open source,” which means that anybody can look at the Linux code (what every Operating System is made up of) and modify, change, add to, and fix, ect. This way, any bugs in the system can be fixed by anybody wishing to fix it. Unlike Windows Operating System, which is owned by Microsoft, which is a company that closely protects its codes, and doesn’t share codes with the public to be fixed. With only a limited amount of people being able to fix bugs in the Operating System on a time-line basis, where there are dead-lines that the company needs to set. Also, limited amount of people in the company means limited amount of imagination and ability to go new places, where as with Linux, the sky is the limit. Sometimes bugs aren’t able to be fixed due to lack of time (because of dead-lines), and lack of people in a company. Unlike Linux, which isn’t a company, doesn’t have any dead-lines, and unlimited amount of people can help fix, and add on to Linux Operating System(s). And open-source is only one good thing about Linux; there are still more phenomenal properties to come.
What else does Linux excel at? Well, Linux is actually safe, and a virus-free world. Linux doesn’t have any viruses. So you can stop worrying about getting your fragile Windows computer infected with a virus, and never run the same again. Such as when my whole school district got a virus from students downloading Flash games. With Linux, that virus wouldn’t have been compatible in Linux’s virus free world. Even though you should never let down your guard on the internet, Linux is much safer. As for hackers that could ruin your whole life through identity theft, and deleting your whole hard-drive, Linux is safe against them! To stop hackers Linux has not one but two built in firewalls (you don’t even have to install them, they come with the free system) to stop those pesky hackers. But, Windows is constantly at risk with spyware, viruses, malicious codes, ect. Linux can get spyware, but is nearly impossible with the two built in firewalls. Such as this report explained by the United States Computer Emergency Rediness Team (CERT):
“IE is vulnerable to a cross-domain violation that seems to involve a race condition, frames, and possibly the execScript method. When the location of the content of a frame is changed with an HTTP redirect response, a modal dialog box that was called from the frame before the redirect will return a cached reference to the frame's original domain. IE then incorrectly considers the cached domain instead of the redirected domain when determining the security domain of the modal dialog box. Also, since the contents of the frame have been changed by the redirect, it is possible to set the location object of the frame. By redirecting to a local resource, controlling the timing of the redirect, and setting the frame's location to a [removed] protocol URL, an attacker can execute script in the security context of the Local Machine Zone.

Functional exploit code is publicly available, and there are reports of incidents involving this vulnerability (Scob, Download.Ject, Toofeer, Berbew).

Any program that hosts the WebBrowser ActiveX control or used the IE HTML rendering engine (MSHTML) may be affected by this vulnerability.”
–US CERT Vulnerability Note VU#713878

Soon, Windows won’t be safe. While on Windows you’re in constant danger, but Linux is safe.
In addition, Linux has an interesting history. In 1991, Linus Torvalds began to work on Linux. Linux was originally intended to be a non-commercial replacement for Minux, an educational Operating System. As Linux kept developing, Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, changed the original license (which prohibited commercial redistribution) to the GPLv2 license. Making Linux a complete, fully functional free Operating System.
This sums up Linux. But your left with that one questions, aren’t you? If Linux is truly this good, then why isn’t it so popular? Every computer you buy comes with Windows already on it. It’s what everyone is familiar with. So people like to stay in their comfort zone, and use what they know, it might not be best, but they do. So why not step out of your comfort zone, and make the easy switch from Windows to Linux? I promise that you won’t regret it. Now its time for me to ask you the question. Why are you still using Windows?

Why thank you... and the copy and pasting just butchered my whole paper.. i can send it to you through email if you want... then you could actually read it the way i wrote it as far as grammar

edit:i sent it to you. do as you wish with it

Edit : Oh s**t, do you even have Word??? if not cant you open it with somthing else?

did you get it?

just wonder what kind of grade i got... i guess it all depends