Linux fundamentals

Linux is a group of operating systems. Originally released in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, Linux has grown to be the de facto operating system of servers. The Linux foundation claims that Linux servers were almost 80% of all servers running in 2014 (https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-foundation-finds-enterprise-linux-growing-at-windows-expense/). Linux also goes by the name GNU/Linux, because the GNU project created a lot of the utilities bundled with the Linux kernel in most Linux operating system distributions. This is all just dogma though. The key is that the Linux kernel has a few basic tenants and is pretty consistent between distributions. Whether you use Fedora, Centos, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, or something else, the following section should introduce you to the basics of your operating system.

Figure 1: A kernel is the core part of an operating system. It tends to provide the base interface to all hardware of a computer, especially in terms of managing...