What is Linux?
Linux is a UNIX® clone OS
based on MINIX,
created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds from the University of
Helsinki. Torvalds controls all changes and releases of the
Linux kernel.
For close to three decades, Linux has been one of the most
commonly used and most reliable OSs for servers in the market,
no matter what paid third-party reports that are plaguing the
internet indicate.
Most Linux distributions include a collection of programs
that run on the Linux kernel like X, KDE, GNOME, Cinnamon or
other desktop environments as well as LibreOffice and other
office or home utilities. Under the Linux name, you can get
RHEL (paid subscription, enterprise licensing), Fedora, CentOS,
Ubuntu, Mint (currently my distribution of choice), Mandriva,
Debian, Slackware and many others. When Linux became popular
(c. 1995-99), you could buy disks for any distribution from the
developers or third-party vendors. Nowadays you would most
likely download the distribution of your choice as an
.ISO and burn it to USB drive.
dd if=linux_image.iso of=/dev/sdb1
Installing Linux:
Before trying to install Linux, get a full inventory of what
your computer has. In the past, you might have had to help the
installer recognize the hardware. Nowadays the installer takes
care of most the configuration.
Boot from the USB drive and sit back. The only thing you
would have to decide is if you want to format the whole drive
or share it with another OS.
Depending on the distribution (distro), you might
need to update your installation right away. If the
distro is based on Debian and it has apt as
in the case of Ubuntu and its derivatives like Linux Cinnamon
(what I currently use) , you might want to run the following on
the console as root (sudo -i).
apt-get update && # to update repository list
apt-get upgrade -y && # to upgrade local packages
apt-get autoclean -y && # to clean leftover packages
apt-get autoremove -y && # to remove leftover packages
apt-get purge -y && # to purge old packages
reboot now # to reboot machine
The latter runs multiple commands — one after another using
the && (and) operator and then reboot without
confirmation using the -y attribute. Of course if you
do not need to reboot exclude the last && operator
and the reboot now command. I would recommend doing
the latter on a daily basis to make sure your system has the
most up-to-date packages and to avoid security risks.
You can also install packages using apt-get calling
the correct package name.
apt-get install <package_name>
apt-get install build-essential # compiler collection from GNU
apt-get install git # version control system
apt-get install lynx # text-only web browser
apt-get install nano # command line text editor
apt-get install nasm # assembly language
apt-get install neofetch # to get system information
apt-get install pip # package installer for Python
apt-get install python3 # language we must to learn
apt-get install sqlite3 # relational database
apt-get install tidy # utility to clean HTML code
If you do not want the system to ask you for confirmation,
you can include -y attribute before the name of the
package.
apt-get install -y <package_name>
apt-get install -y build-essential
If you are interested in installing multiple packages at the
same time, you would also need to use the double ampersand
operator (&&) after each call.
apt-get install -y build-essential &&
apt-get install -y git &&
apt-get install -y lynx &&
apt-get install -y nano &&
apt-get install -y nasm &&
apt-get install -y neofetch &&
apt-get install -y pip &&
apt-get install -y python3 &&
apt-get install -y sqlite3 &&
apt-get install -y tidy
Single-Board Computers:
Some vendors offer single-board computer (SBC) units. For
example, the Raspberry Pi Foundation released its Raspberry Pi
1 Model A in 02/2012. After several generations with a price
tag under $50, several projects have used Raspberry Pi
hardware.
