Chapter 1: Welcome to the Linux Family
This book explores the Linux platform and various Linux-based operating systems – in particular, how Linux can work well for networking services. We'll start by discussing some of the history of the operating system before looking at its basic configuration and troubleshooting. From there, we'll work through building various network-related services on Linux that you may commonly see in most organizations. As we progress, we'll build real services on real hosts, with an emphasis on securing and troubleshooting each service as we go. By the time we're done, you should be familiar enough with each of these services to start implementing some or all of them in your own organization. As they say, every journey begins with a single step, so let's take that step and start with a general discussion of the Linux platform.
In this chapter, we'll start our journey by exploring Linux as a family of operating systems. They're all related, but each is unique in its own way, with different strengths and features.
We'll cover the following topics:
- Why Linux is a good fit for a networking team
- Mainstream data center Linux
- Specialty Linux distributions
- Virtualization
- Picking a Linux distribution for your organization
