fedora

[fedovinay]

is there any difference between fedora and linux or are the both same?

[smolloy]

Strictly speaking, Linux is the kernel of the operating system, while Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Debian, etc., are all OS distributions which have the Linux kernel at their core.

For day to day purposes though, you can refer to Fedora (or Suse, or Ubuntu, etc.) as a "type" of Linux. In other words, they're basically the same thing.

Welcome to the forums

[fedovinay]

what is the difference between kernel and os

[smolloy]

what is the difference between kernel and os

That is a very technical question.

Put simply, the kernel is the program that deals with all communications between the running programs and the computer hardware. So it deals with interpreting keyboard input, network devices, memory, storage systems, etc., making all this available to the "user space", which is where your programs run.

The OS, is really a grand collection of programs, including the kernel, the tool chain, text editors, compilers, interpreters, all the way up to your window manager.

[fedovinay]

thanks very much for the info.
i have installed fedora 9 using a live cd.
i want compile and run c language programs in the terminal which are bieng taught in my college.
are supposed to install additional packages for that?
i have one gcc package but its installation is kind of difficult.

[smolloy]

In fedora it's easy to install this.

yum install gcc

Run that command as root, and it will install gcc on your system for you.

You should make sure to look at the threads at the top of the newbie forum to learn a bit more about installing software on your system, and linux in general.

EDIT: I moved this thread to the Misc forum, as it seemed more appropriate than the Coffee Lounge.

[fedovinay]

thanks for the help