In this chapter, you will be introduced to the foundations on which the entire book is framed. You will learn (or refresh your knowledge of) how Linux is designed, and you will also learn about the shell, users and groups, process IDs, and thread IDs to be able to use a Linux system proficiently and get prepared for the next chapters. Furthermore, you will also learn how to develop a simple hello world program, and find out about its makefile, and also how to execute and debug it. Another important aspect of this chapter is to learn how Linux deals with errors, from both a shell and a source code point of view. This foundational knowledge is important to understand other advanced topics in the following chapters. You can safely skip this and the next chapters if this refresher is not needed.
This chapter will cover the following recipes:
- Learning the Linux fundamentals – architecture
- Learning the Linux fundamentals – shell
- Learning the Linux fundamentals – users
- Using a makefile to compile and link a program
- Using the GNU Project Debugger (GDB) to debug a program
- Learning the Linux fundamentals – processes and threads
- Handling a Linux bash error
- Handling Linux code error
