Understanding Linux in production

Linux is used in every aspect of business and production systems today. Simply by being a Linux-based system actually tells us incredibly little about what a device might be doing or how it might be used. Unlike macOS, which essentially guarantees that the use case is either a desktop or a laptop end user device, or Windows Server, which all but assures us that a system is an infrastructure or line of business (LOB) server. Having a system be built on Linux gives us very little to go on when looking to determine the intended use of that system. Linux is used on servers, in virtualization, in desktops, laptops, tablets, routers, firewalls, phones, IoT devices, appliances, and more. Linux is everywhere. And Linux is doing just about everything that there is to do. There are almost no roles that Linux does not cover, at least some of the time.

For the context of a book on Linux Administration, we are going to assume that we are talking about Linux...