The characteristics and application of several kinds of linear plasma sources are introduced. According to the power sources for plasma systems, there are DC, RF, VHF, microwave and dual frequency linear plasma sources, which with a magnet system are called magnetic field enhanced linear plasma sources. Compared with the conventional large scale plasma sources, linear plasma sources take the advantage that they just need to obtain uniform and stable plasma in one dimension. Through the linear plasma array or moving the substrate in horizontal and vertical direction, large scale uniform thin film can be deposited. Recent years, researchers tried to use the magnetic field to confine plasma so as to reduce the recombination loss in plasma and improve the density, uniformity and stability of plasma. The linear plasma sources with the density above 10 11 cm −3 , dis-uniformity below ±5% (L > 1 m), have been applied to fabricate large scale Si 3 N 4 , SiO 2 , intrinsic Si and nano-diamond thin film.