Radiusclient is a /bin/login replacement which gets called by a getty to log in a user and to setup the user's login environment. Normal login programs just check the login name and password which the user entered against the local password file (/etc/passwd, /etc/shadow). In contrast to that Radiusclient also uses the RADIUS protocol to authenticate the user. . This is the development package, to be able to develop programs that uses the RADIUS library.