Hi

I played around with Linux a little bit but i haven`t used much of the commands. For now i prefer a GUI such as kde but eventually I would like to learn more about the command line interface. I've heard many times that linux is open source and that you can alter the code but my question is "what exactly can i do with a open source?" Can I alter the way that kde looks , operates etc...
Could any of you give me concrete exemples of things that some of you have done to alter the source. I may be a newbie but i can work my way around so please don`t give me little exemples made for a 6 year old
thanks

At our level, i.e. below coder, the only critical upshot to open source is its corollaries: its free to use, upgrade, fiddle with, all without paying out the nose. I run a server off of Slackware 8 that cost me $0.27 in burnt CDs: mail, web, its a NAT for a house LAN, ftp, and a bunch of other stuff. Same setup using comercial products with more bugs and no support forums like this: 2, maybe 3 grand; plus I couldn't run it on an old P Pro 200.

Hope that makes sense,

Finegan

for a short answer to your question about open source and if you can alter it... sure, if you know how and its open with the source there for you. most i would think don't usually alter maybe looks, but if they find bugs or whatever.. they usually just improve the code if they do alter anything, to make the software more stable and bug free.