Felix Alvaro - LINUX: Easy Linux For Beginners, Your Step-By-Step Guide To Learning The Linux Operating System And Command Line

What is an Operating System?

A computer, complete with all its parts the CPU, mouse, monitor, and keyboard will not work without a central program that will piece it all together. An operating system, or OS, for short is the software that brings together a computers hardware and the different programs that you want to install on it. When you boot up a PC without an OS, you will be directed to the command prompt that makes no sense to most computer users. You will be unable to watch videos, listen to music, edit photos, or to simply write a note.

An operating system is responsible for doing the following tasks:

• Detect hardware An OS is responsible for validating the components of a computer during boot up (hard drive, CPU, network cards, mouse, etc.) and loading the corresponding drivers and modules for the hardware to properly run.
• Manage processes Similar to the way our mind works, several processes or applications are running on a computer at the same time. It is the OS that is responsible for allocating CPU resources. The OS also provides the user the option to start, stop, or restart a process.
• Manage memory Each application needs a specific amount of RAM and swap memory to function. The OS is responsible for assigning memory allocations and for handling memory requests.
• Initiate user interfaces - An OS offers users ways to access the system either via a command line or a graphical user interface (GUI)
• Establish file systems The OS handles the management of files (access, directories, and structure), including the access to the file system.
• Manage access and user authentication An OS allows for creating user accounts with different permissions for access to files and processes.
• Provide platform for administrative use A computers OS provides a platform for the administrator to add users, allocate disk space, install software, and to perform activities to manage the computer.
• Start up services The OS manages several processes running in the background known as daemon processes .

Lets take it to a setting that we can all relate to a manager at work. An OS is like a manager who keeps the different parts of the team in check, assigns tasks, distributes work load, and checks everyones performance. While every member of a team has specific job responsibilities, a manager keeps the team working together cohesively.

Examples of an operating system that you have probably heard of are Windows 10 (and its predecessors), Mac OS X Yosemite (and the previous releases), and Unix.

So where does Linux fit in? Well discuss it in the next section.

What is Linux?

Linux is an operating system, similar to the examples mentioned in the previous section, and is often described as Unix-like.

The stark difference between Linux and other operating systems lies in the fact that Linux is an open-source operating system. This means that Linux is continuously developed collaboratively and unlike Windows and OS X which are both tied to respective companies (Windows and Apple), not one company owns Linux development and support. Building Linux is a shared vision, with different companies sharing researches, development, and the associated costs. This open source cooperation among companies and developers has led to making Linux one of the best ecosystems for use from small digital wristwatches to servers and supercomputers. Based from statistics, there are at least 100 companies and more than 1000 developers who work together for every kernel release.

Linux is composed of a kernel , the core control software, plus plenty of libraries and utilities that provide different features. Linux is available through many distributions . These are what we can call Linux flavours. Distributions are a group of specific kernels and programs. The most popular ones include Arch, SUSE, Ubuntu, and Red Hat. The book focuses on functions present on most Linux distributions although these distributions have their own specific tools at times.