Gerdes System Technology: Linux and unix system programming and device drivers.

I have worked on various UNIX operating systems throughout my professional career. The problems involved mostly communication and networking tasks. In one of the projects I did the major X-Windows graphics programming also. Early after the advent of Linux I started to use this free operating system platform in 1993, as I always preferred UNIX over any Microsoft OS. When MS-DOS came up I was very surprised that it wasn't a multi-tasking system. I was used to Data General's RDOS which had been a multi- tasking OS since the early seventies.

The impact of the bad start still has consequences in today's Microsoft products. Linux offered a multi user environment right from the start which was quickly enhanced to a full demand paging virtual memory protected operating system utilizing the 386 architecture in full while others are still dealing with VM86 bottlenecks.

Linux is used more and more frequently in client server database and networking applications were it's outstanding reliability is at prime. The open source policy allows us system programmers to write application specific kernel extensions like device drivers for special hardware. This is especially important in the measurement and automation realms.

A wide variety of languages is available for Linux. I do prefer C++ for most applications. Java is the preferred language for networking tasks, while the role of assembler is continuously diminished as it raises portability issues and better compilers and processors now often render potential performance gains unnoticeable by the end user.