1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Meaning of Open Source Software
Open source software is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance.
"Source code" is the part of software that most computer users don't ever see; it's the code computer programmers can manipulate to change how a piece of software—a "program" or "application"—works. Programmers who have access to a computer program's source code can improve that program by adding features to it or fixing parts that don't always work correctly.
1.2 Meaning of Hardware
Refers to objects that you can actually touch, like disks, disk drives, display screens, keyboards, printers, boards, and chips. In contrast, software is untouchable. Software exists as ideas, concepts, and symbols, but it has no substance.
Books provide a useful analogy. The pages and the ink are the hardware, while the words, sentences, paragraphs, and the overall meaning are the software. A computer without software is like a book full of blank pages -- you need software to make the computer useful just as you need words to make a book meaningful.
1.3 Meaning of Software
Organized information in the form of operating systems, utilities, programs, and applications that enable computers to work.
Software consists of carefully-organized instructions and code written by programmers in any of various special computer languages. Software is divided commonly into two main categories: (1) System software: controls the basic (and invisible to the user) functions of a computer and comes usually preinstalled with the machine. See also BIOS and Operating System. (2) Application software: handles multitudes of common and specialized tasks a user wants to perform, such as accounting, communicating, data processing, word processing.
2.0 The Latest Open Source Operating System (OS)
2.1 Meaning of Open Source OS
An...