<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >Introduction</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="Linux Assembly HOWTO" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="Linux Assembly HOWTO" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Do you need assembly?" HREF="doyouneed.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="CHAPTER" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >Linux Assembly HOWTO</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="doyouneed.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="CHAPTER" ><H1 ><A NAME="S-INTRO" ></A >Chapter 1. Introduction</H1 ><DIV CLASS="TOC" ><DL ><DT ><B >Table of Contents</B ></DT ><DT >1.1. <A HREF="introduction.html#AEN75" >Legal Blurb</A ></DT ><DT >1.2. <A HREF="introduction.html#AEN83" >Foreword</A ></DT ><DT >1.3. <A HREF="introduction.html#AEN100" >Contributions</A ></DT ><DT >1.4. <A HREF="introduction.html#AEN111" >Translations</A ></DT ></DL ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NOTE" ><P ></P ><TABLE CLASS="NOTE" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="25" ALIGN="CENTER" VALIGN="TOP" ><IMG SRC="../images/note.gif" HSPACE="5" ALT="Note"></TD ><TD ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="TOP" ><P >You can skip this chapter if you are familiar with HOWTOs, or just hate to read all this assembly-unrelated crap.</P ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SIMPLESECT" ><H4 CLASS="SIMPLESECT" ><A NAME="AEN75" ></A >1.1. Legal Blurb</H4 ><P >Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU <A HREF="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html" TARGET="_top" >Free Documentation License</A > Version 1.1; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover texts. A copy of the license is included in the <A HREF="fdl.html" >GNU Free Documentation License</A > appendix.</P ><P >The most recent official version of this document is available from the <A HREF="http://linuxassembly.org/howto.html" TARGET="_top" >Linux Assembly</A > and <A HREF="http://tldp.org/docs.html" TARGET="_top" >LDP</A > sites. If you are reading a few-months-old copy, consider checking the above URLs for a new version.</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SIMPLESECT" ><H4 CLASS="SIMPLESECT" ><A NAME="AEN83" ></A >1.2. Foreword</H4 ><P >This document aims answering questions of those who program or want to program 32-bit x86 assembly using <EM >free software</EM >, particularly under the Linux operating system. At many places Universal Resource Locators (<SPAN CLASS="ACRONYM" >URL</SPAN >) are given for some software or documentation repository. This document also points to other documents about non-free, non-x86, or non-32-bit assemblers, although this is not its primary goal. Also note that there are FAQs and docs about programming on your favorite platform (whatever it is), which you should consult for platform-specific issues, not related directly to assembly programming.</P ><P >Because the main interest of assembly programming is to build the guts of operating systems, interpreters, compilers, and games, where C compiler fails to provide the needed expressiveness (performance is more and more seldom as issue), we are focusing on development of such kind of software.</P ><P >If you don't know what <A HREF="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/" TARGET="_top" ><EM >free software</EM ></A > is, please do read <EM >carefully</EM > the GNU <A HREF="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html" TARGET="_top" >General Public License</A > (<SPAN CLASS="ACRONYM" >GPL</SPAN > or <SPAN CLASS="ACRONYM" >copyleft</SPAN >), which is used in a lot of free software, and is the model for most of their licenses. It generally comes in a file named <TT CLASS="FILENAME" >COPYING</TT > (or <TT CLASS="FILENAME" >COPYING.LIB</TT >). Literature from the <A HREF="http://www.fsf.org" TARGET="_top" >Free Software Foundation</A > (<SPAN CLASS="ACRONYM" >FSF</SPAN >) might help you too. Particularly, the interesting feature of free software is that it comes with source code which you can consult and correct, or sometimes even borrow from. Read your particular license carefully and do comply to it.</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SIMPLESECT" ><H4 CLASS="SIMPLESECT" ><A NAME="AEN100" ></A >1.3. Contributions</H4 ><P >This is an interactively evolving document: you are especially invited to ask questions, to answer questions, to correct given answers, to give pointers to new software, to point the current maintainer to bugs or deficiencies in the pages. In one word, contribute!</P ><P >To contribute, please contact the <A HREF="index.html#KONST" >maintainer</A >.</P ><DIV CLASS="NOTE" ><P ></P ><TABLE CLASS="NOTE" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="25" ALIGN="CENTER" VALIGN="TOP" ><IMG SRC="../images/note.gif" HSPACE="5" ALT="Note"></TD ><TD ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="TOP" ><P >At the time of writing, it is <A HREF="index.html#KONST" >Konstantin Boldyshev</A > and no more <A HREF="index.html#FARE" >Francois-Rene Rideau</A > (since version 0.5). I (<A HREF="index.html#FARE" >Fare</A >) had been looking for some time for a serious hacker to replace me as maintainer of this document, and am pleased to announce <A HREF="index.html#KONST" >Konstantin</A > as my worthy successor.</P ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SIMPLESECT" ><H4 CLASS="SIMPLESECT" ><A NAME="AEN111" ></A >1.4. Translations</H4 ><P >Korean translation of this HOWTO is avalilable at <A HREF="http://kldp.org/HOWTO/html/Assembly-HOWTO/" TARGET="_top" >http://kldp.org/HOWTO/html/Assembly-HOWTO/</A >. Turkish translation of this HOWTO is available at <A HREF="http://belgeler.org/howto/assembly-howto.html" TARGET="_top" >http://belgeler.org/howto/assembly-howto.html</A >. Incomplete Russian translation is available at <A HREF="http://volgograd.lug.ru/wiki/GrableVodstvo/articles/AssembleInLinux/" TARGET="_top" >http://volgograd.lug.ru/wiki/GrableVodstvo/articles/AssembleInLinux/</A >. Also, there was a French translation of the early HOWTO versions, but I can't find it now.</P ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="doyouneed.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >Linux Assembly HOWTO</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" > </TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Do you need assembly?</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >
