Best Operating System
Linux is open-source, thus allows to look at the internal design i.e., Kernel and ts code. Furthermore, allows to modify and customize it. It is widely used on servers, PCs, mobile devices and embedded devices.
The Linux bears many similarities in terms of directory structure and commands with UNIX.
Various organizations package the Linux Kernel and offer it as distribution or distro.
Distribution of Linux include
Linux Kernel developed by Linus Torvalds, a student at the University of Helsinki, Finland.
RedHat, Fedora, Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, OpenSUSE, Kubuntu, archlinux, foresight Linux, Gentoo Linux, Mandriva, Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS, Sabayon, Slackware, Slax, Xubuntu and many more.
Minimum Hardware Requirement
- RAM: 256MB
- HDD: 1GB
- CPU supporting PAE (Physical Address Extension) that allows X86 processor to access a physical address space larger than 4GB.
Before starting an installation identify your processor using the command
uname -p
It would result as x86_64 or x86_32.
Know Your Linux OS
Multi-User: Many users can open and use the shell at the same time to access kernel.
Shell is a command line to access the kernel of the operating system. Steve Bourne developed the shell for UNIX called Bash (Bourne Again Shell) and all the Linux versions support it from the ‘GNU Project Bash'. The GNOME desktop uses ‘terminal' and KDE uses ‘konsole' shell to get the commands from the keyboard and passes them to the OS. The shell prompt [user-name@machine-name ~] $ or # receives input.
# user with superuser privileges
$ user doesn't have administrator privileges
Important File Directories
/ root directory
/dev device nodes
/var to change users data like DBs, Mails
/home contains account directories for every user
/etc contains system config files and scripts
/bin contains booting file system
/usr/bin entire installed programs for the linux distro
/usr/local contains programs users have installed
/proc virtual file system to show how the kernel organizes computer
File Manager
- Nautilus File Manager (GNOME Environment)
- Dolphin File Manager (KDE Environment)