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About Linux

As mentioned earlier, an excellent choice for a WAVE host is a PC running Linux. Linux is a (very) complete, and completely free, robust, modern reimplementation of the UNIX operating system, written by Linus Torvalds and a cast of thousands. It is available in source and ready-to-run form by anonymous FTP from many sources, including ftp://ftp.tux.org, public.planetmirror.com, and ftp.funet.fi. You can also obtain Linux on CD-ROMs from many commercial sources, generally at very low prices (typically US$10 to $40, depending mainly on the amount of printed documentation and technical support offered). Current Linux distributions include TCP/IP networking including NFS support, the complete collection of GNU software including the GNU C/C++ compiler, Ghostscript, TEX, and much more. Some also include X11R6, XView 3.2, olwm and olvwm; these are also available from the sites above as well as from PhysioNet. For further information, visit the home page of the Linux Documentation Project (http://www.tldp.org/), where you may also find the Linux HOWTO documents mentioned earlier.

Since mid-1995, Linux has supported ELF binaries, and current versions of WAVE for Linux are made available in this format. Older versions of Linux used the a.out binary format. If you have been running one of these older versions of Linux, updating your system to one with ELF support is highly recommended. Otherwise, you can attempt to compile an a.out-format WAVE from the sources available from PhysioNet.


next up previous contents index
Next: Other useful software Up: System Requirements for WAVE Previous: Data acquisition and digitization
George B. Moody (george@mit.edu)
2005-08-20