Common Words and Definitions

From LUG Manipal Wiki

GLOSSARY

Software Repository

A software repository (sometimes abbreviated as a repo) is a storage location from which software packages may be retrieved and installed on a computer.

Repositories may be solely for an entire operating system.

Package Management System(w.r.t Software Repository)

Tools intended to search for, install and otherwise manipulate software packages from the repositories. For example, many Linux distributions use Advanced Packaging Tool or yum.

Distro

It is a synonym for a Linux distribution (also called GNU/Linux by distributions such as Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva and Gentoo), which is a member of the Linux family of Unix-like software distributions.

Such distributions consist of a Linux operating system and a collection of applications.

GNU GPL

The GNU General Public Licence (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely used free software licence, originally written for the GNU project.

GNU Project

The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project,The founding goal of which was, in the words of its initial announcement, to develop "a sufficient body of free software to get along without any software that is not free."

Kernel

To understand what a kernel is, you first need to know that today's operating systems are built in "layers." Each layer has different functions such as serial port access, disk access, memory management, and the user interface itself. The base layer, or the foundation of the operating system, is called the kernel. The kernel provides the most basic "low-level" services, such as the hardware-software interaction and memory management. The more efficient the kernel is, the more efficiently the operating system will run.

The kernel is a program that constitutes the central core of a computer operating system. It has complete control over everything that occurs in the system.

Shell

The outermost part of an operating system and a program that interacts with user commands.

Library

A library is a collection of subroutines or classes used to develop software. Libraries contain code and data that provide services to independent programs

Compiler

A compiler is a computer program (or set of programs) that translates text written in a computer language (the source language) into another computer language (the target language). The original sequence is usually called the source code and the output called object code.

Text editor

A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.

X windows system

The X Window System (commonly X or X11) is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for networked computers.

IRC

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a form of real-time Internet chat or synchronous conferencing(Synchronous conferencing is the formal term used in science, in particular in computer-mediated communication, collaboration and learning, to describe online chat technologies). It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message, as well as chat and data transfers via Direct Client-to-Client(Direct Client-to-Client (DCC) is an IRC-related sub-protocol enabling peers to interconnect using an IRC server for handshaking in order to exchange files or perform non-relayed chats).

x86

The generic term x86 refers to the most commercially successful instruction set architecture[1] in the history of personal computing. It derived from the model numbers, ending in "86", of the first few processor generations backward compatible with the original Intel 8086.

Instruction set

An instruction set is a list of all the instructions, and all their variations, that a processor can execute. Instructions include: Arithmetic such as add and subtract Logic instructions such as and, or, and not Data instructions such as move, input, output, load, and store Control flow instructions such as goto, if ... goto, call, and return. An instruction set, or instruction set architecture (ISA), is the part of the computer architecture related to programming.

x86_64

x86-64 is a superset of the x86 instruction set architecture. x86-64 processors can run existing 32-bit or 16-bit x86 programs at full speed, but also support new programs written with a 64-bit address space and other additional capabilities.

Wine

Wine is a free software application that aims to allow Unix-like computer operating systems on the x86 or x86-64 architecture to execute programs written for Microsoft Windows.

Server

A server is a computer program that provides services to other computer programs (and their users), in the same or other computer. The physical computer that runs a server program is also sometimes referred to as server

LAMP

The acronym LAMP refers to a solution stack(a solution stack is a set of software subsystems or components needed to deliver a fully functional solution, e.g. a product or service.) of software, usually free and open source software, used to run dynamic Web sites or servers. The original expansion is as follows: Linux, referring to the operating system; Apache, the Web server; MySQL, the database management system (or database server); PHP or others, i.e. Perl, Python, the programming languages.

Wiki

A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language.Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis.