Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology

Linux 279of Sarah Y. He was arraigned today and bail was denied.” Asystem reading the story might see “arrested” and see that itlinks to an internal frame called “crime.” The crime framemight have slots for “accused person,” “charge,” “victim,”and “custodial status.” The system could then interpret thestory as indicating that Joe is the accused person, murder isthe charge, Sarah is the victim. For the custodial status thesystem might look to another frame called “arraignment”that includes the rule that if bail is allowed and paid, theperson’s status is “released until trial” while if the bail iseither not allowed or not paid, the status is “in custody.”Computational linguistics and natural language processingare likely to be of increasing interest in years tocome. With the World Wide Web bringing the world’s languagesinto more pervasive contact, the ability to translateor automatically summarize Web pages and e-mail willbe very marketable. It is also likely that advanced, secretresearch in the field is also being carried out by organizationssuch as the National Security Agency (NSA), whichmonitor worldwide communications.Further ReadingHausser, Roland. Foundations of Computational Linguistics: Human-Computer Communication in Natural Language. 2nd ed. NewYork: Springer, 2001.Lawler, John. Using Computers in Linguistics: A Practical Guide.New York: Routledge, 1998.“Linguistics, Natural Language, and Computational LinguisticsMeta-Index.” Stanford University Natural Language Processing.Available online. URL: http://www-nlp.stanford.edu/links/linguistics.html. Accessed August 13, 2007.Mitkov, Ruslan. The Oxford Handbook of Computational Linguistics.New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.LinuxLinux is an increasingly popular alternative to proprietaryoperating systems. Its development sprang from two sources.First was the creation of open-source versions of UNIX utilities(see unix) by maverick programmer Richard Stallmanas part of the GNU (“Gnu’s not UNIX”) project during the1980s. Although these tools were useful, the kernel, or basicset of operating system functions, was still missing (see kernel).Starting in 1991, another creative programmer, LinusTorvalds, began to release open-source versions of the UNIXkernel (see Torvalds, Linus). The combination of the kerneland utilities became known as Linux (a combinationof Linus and UNIX), though Stallman and his supportersbelieve that GNU/Linux is a more accurate name.Development and DistributionsAs an open-source product, Linux is continually beingdeveloped by a community of thousands of loosely organizedprogrammers. (The further development of the kernelitself is more closely supervised by Torvalds and a systemof review that he set up.) New versions of the Linux kernelare released frequently, including support (drivers) for newdevices and refinements in other features.A distribution or “distro” is a package consisting of aLinux kernel, standard utilities, and a variety of other softwaresuch as office and graphics programs, Web-relatedThe basic components of a Linux system. A distribution, or “distro,”combines the latest version of the common kernel with a windowmanager, selected software, and, perhaps, custom features.programs, and so on. Some distributions such as Novell andRed Hat are geared toward business use and provide feebasedsupport and consulting (Red Hat spun off Fedora as afree user-supported distribution). One of the most populardistributions as of the mid-2000s is Ubuntu. Named foran African word meaning “humanity toward others” andfunded by millionaire Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu combinesa business-oriented component (through CanonicalLtd.) and a large and enthusiastic community of desktopusers from all walks of life.Using LinuxLinux is very versatile and probably runs on more kindsof devices than any other operating system. These includesupercomputer clusters, Web and file servers, desktops(including PCs designed for Windows and Macs), laptops,PDAs, and even a few smart phones. The Linux programmerhas many programming languages and environmentsto choose from, including C++, Java, Perl, PHP, and Ruby.Thousands of open-source programs have been written foror ported to Linux, including OpenOffice.org (a suite comparableto Microsoft Office), databases (such as MySQL),and Apache, the most popular Web server.Although Linux rapidly gained a significant share in serverapplications, early versions of Linux for ordinary desktop