What is 'hostname' for?

[hop-frog]

I installed a distro that asked for my hostname. How do I know what my hostname is?

[copeja]

Hostname is used by the hosts file to get ip address when no dns server is available. It is mainly used for internal network at boot. With a good host file you can ping by host name. The hostname is what ever you want to call the machine you are installing OS on. My laptop is called rover my desk top is lucky and my e-mail server is wizard
my router-firewall is bouncer. this a quote from host file in Gentoo
/etc/hosts: This file describes a number of hostname-to-address mappings for the TCP/IP subsystem. It is mostly used at boot time, when no name servers are running. On small systems, this file can be used instead of a "named" name server. Just add the names, addresses and any aliases to this file...
copeja

[serz]

It's mostly used to name your computer.