Linux 101 - Part 1

I love Linux. I am passionate about Linux. I am a Linux geek. I think I have stated that before in this blog but I wanted to state that claim again for this post.

There was a time that I had attempted to run a YouTube channel to help those interested in learning Linux. However, I found that with the limited time that I had between personal life, work life and school life was a very difficult task to maintain. Since I now have this blogging site, I figured I would try to post some of the content from that video series for those interested in learning about Linux. The information I posted mostly came from my personal knowledge but I also pulled information from the Linux Professional Institute’s Linux Essentials and LPIC-1 certification content. Both of those certifications have some very basic information about Linux but also will have more advanced content for those interested in really learning and obtaining certifications for Linux Systems Administration. In fact, if you wanted to, you could go to their site and download their study guides for free. So, to recycle, this post, and future post, will have some of that same basic content from my old channel.

So here goes…

So, what is Linux? As a whole Linux has been generally labeled an operating system, like Windows and MacOS are operating systems. But really, at the core, it is actually the Linux kernel that runs the operating system. If you were looking to try Linux you would normally look for a Linux distribution (distro, for short) from the many choices across the Linux communities. The different versions available can be broken down to the type of distro in what I generally like to term an rpm, deb or arch based distribution. As a whole the rpm based distros (specifically taken from the software package manager used in the OS) are a branch of the Red Hat operating system, the deb based (again, the software package manager) are a branch of the Debian operating system, and the arch based are a branch of the Arch operating system.

Most of you reading may already know that the UNIX operating system was one of the first “mainstream” successful operating systems that began in the late 1960s’. Well it was Linus Torvald that took the power of UNIX and created his own version in the early 1990s’, called it Linux and made it open and free to anyone who wanted to use it.

You may not know this but you are using Linux right now while you browse the internet. Linux, as a whole, actually powers the internet in the servers that host and serve web sites to the world. It truly is the most widely used operating system in the world because of that. This includes any social media platform and cloud services you may use on a daily basis. On top of that, if you have an Internet of Things device at home, at the core, it is probably powered by the Linux kernel. If you are an Android smartphone user, you are already a Linux user. In all actuality, this post only touches the surface of the definition of Linux. As I go through these sessions in future post each topic will touch the surface more in understanding of what Linux is.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to send me an email noted in my About page.