Michael Hausenblas - Learning Modern Linux

by Michael Hausenblas

Copyright 2022 Michael Hausenblas. All rights reserved.

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978-1-098-10894-6

[LSI]

A warm welcome to Learning Modern Linux! Im glad that we will walk thisjourney together for a bit. This book is for you if youve already been using Linuxand are looking for a structured, hands-on approach to dive in deeper,or if you already have experience and want to get sometips and tricks to improve your flow when working with Linuxfor example, ina professional setup, such as development or operations.

Well focus on using Linux for your everyday needs, from development tooffice-related tasks, rather than on the system administration side of things.Also, well focus on the command line, not visual UIs.So, while 2022 might be the year of Linux on the desktop after all, well use the terminal as the main way to interact with Linux. This has theadditional advantage that you can equally apply your knowledge in many differentsetups, from a Raspberry Pi to the virtual machine of your cloud provider ofchoice.

Before we start, Id like to provide some context by sharing my own journey:my first hands-on experience with an operating system was not with Linux. Thefirst operating system I used was AmigaOS (in the late 80s), and after that, in technicalhigh school, I mainly used Microsoft DOS and the then-new Microsoft Windows,specifically around the event system and user interfacerelated development.Then, in the mid- to late 1990s, during my studies at university, I mainlyused Unix-based Solaris and Silicon Graphics machines in the university labs. I really only got into Linux inthe mid-2000s in the context of big data and then when I started working with containers,first in 2015 in the context of Apache Mesos (working at Mesosphere), and thenwith Kubernetes (initially at Red Hat on the OpenShift team and then at AWS onthe container service team). Thats where I realized that one needs to master Linux to be effective in this space. Linux is different. Its background, worldwide community of users, and versatility and flexibility make it unique.

Linux is an interesting, ever-growing ecosystem of open source individuals andvendors. It runs on pretty much anything under the sun, from the $50Raspberry Pi to the virtual machines of your favorite cloud provider to a Mars vehicle.After 30 years in the making, Linux will likely stick aroundfor some time, so now is a good time to get into Linux a bit deeper.

Lets first set some ground rules and expectations. In the preface, Illshare how you can get the most out of this book as well as some administrative things,like where and how you can try out the topics well work through together.