Getting Started with Linux – An Introduction

Hey bloggers and readers. I am going to post my first [Tutorial] or in other terms [How-To’s]. I had been thinking about posting different tutorials for whatever softwares I came across but was not sure from where to start. Well, here I am going to start a new journey in my blogging life. Hope it helps you, and feedback and suggestions are welcomed so that I can improve the Tutorials. And soon there will be Android App Development tutorials too in following days to come.

This post is an Introduction to Linux. Tutorials are listed accordingly at the end. You can skip the introduction part by clicking here.

Many people who are not into details of Computer science and most of the social networking users and some of students and other users too would not be that familiar with Linux, and some of them not even knowing about them.

Linux was written by Linus Torvalds, a Finnish student, who took up Linux as his personal project to create a free and open source kernel. Linux kernel is based on UNIX. It is also known as GNU/Linux where GNU ‘pronounced g-noo ‘ stands for GNU not Unix. GNU is a recursive acronym which refers to itself. GNU is Unix-like operating system.

GNU/Linux has different distro like Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora etc.

Nowadays the UI has been made graphical and very easy to use and interact with. This is all possible only because of the hard-work and contribution put in by several developers across the Globe, towards these Free and Open Source ‘FOSS ‘ projects.

As a kid I had seen students who were pursuing their degree learning Red Hat and I was like what is this, just a black screen and all you have to do is write commands in the command prompt and what not. I was thinking why can’t they just use Windows 98 (back then in 90’s) and play Age of Empires, Road Rash and other games as I used to do. But now as I am pursuing my Computer Science Engineering, I realised that, what they were doing back then has now become a part of my life, and now I prefer Linux and using Terminal (a dark background screen) and writing commands in the command prompt.

To begin with Linux, it maybe a little difficult for most of you who are porting from Windows to Linux. I know everyone prefers Windows, but there will a time in future when Open Source will be the only thing in. Transition from very user friendly and simple Windows to Linux which asks you lots of questions while setting up, will be initially frustrating and difficult if you do not know what to do and how to go on with the process. But remember, Linux gives more freedom as the source is available openly and the user can modify it according to the their needs.

I myself faced lots of issues while installing Ubuntu – ‘the most used Linux distro’. Issues I faced while installing Ubuntu were Partitioning and had to re-install it a number of times from scratch until it was installed properly, whereas in Windows you just need to select ‘Next’, ‘Next’, ‘Next’ and that’s it. And the user doesn’t know what is going on behind the curtains. Whereas in Linux distro everything is transparent. Whereas Windows Installation can take upto few hours, Ubuntu is much more efficient as it comes with a Live CD – through which the user can preview most of the features of Ubuntu, even without installing the OS. And the important catch of Linux is that it is FREE and frequent updates and security patches are available. Whereas in case of Windows one need to shell out a large amount of hard earned money on something that is limited from user modification, and updates and patches comes with a price tag.

So let’s get started with the Tutorial.

Tutorial:
1. Getting Started with Linux – Ubuntu Installation.
2. Getting Started with Linux – Setting up Ubuntu.