Hello Dear Readers,
Today here in this series of Linux, I will start with an introduction to depth commands level experiment, so stay tuned currently, below, I will discuss an introduction to Linux and shells.
Linux is an operating system like macOS or Windows. It is also the most popular Open Source and free, as in freedom, operating system. It powers the vast majority of the servers that compose the Internet. It's the base upon which everything is built. But not just that. Android is based on (a modified version of) Linux. The Linux "core" (called kernel) was born in 1991 in Finland, and it went a really long way from its humble beginnings. It went on to be the kernel of the GNU Operating System, creating the duo GNU/Linux.
There's one thing about Linux that corporations like Microsoft and Apple, or Google, will never be able to offer: the freedom to do whatever you want with your computer. They're actually going in the opposite direction, building walled gardens, especially on the mobile side. Linux is the ultimate freedom. It is developed by volunteers, some paid by companies that rely on it, some independently, but there's no single commercial company that can dictate what goes into Linux, or the project priorities. Linux can also be used as your day to day computer. I use macOS because I really enjoy the applications, the design and I also used to be an iOS and Mac apps developer, but before using it I used Linux as my main computer Operating System. No one can dictate which apps you can run, or "call home" with apps that track you, your position, and more. Linux is also special because there's not just "one Linux", like it happens on Windows or macOS. Instead, we have distributions.
A "distro" is made by a company or organization and packages the Linux core with additional programs and tooling. For example, you have Debian, Red Hat, and Ubuntu, probably the most popular. Many, many more exist. You can create your own distribution, too. But most likely, you'll use a popular one, one that has lots of users and a community of people around it, so you can do what you need to do without losing too much time reinventing the wheel and figuring out answers to common problems.
Some desktop computers and
laptops ship with Linux preinstalled. Or you can install it on your
Windows-based computer, or on a Mac. But you don't need to disrupt your
existing computer just to get an idea of how Linux works. I don't have a Linux
computer. If you use a Mac you need to know that under the hood macOS is a UNIX
Operating System, and it shares a lot of the same ideas and software that a
GNU/Linux system uses, because GNU/Linux is a free alternative to UNIX. UNIX is
an umbrella term that groups many operating systems used in big corporations
and institutions, starting from the 70s. Microsoft
has an official Windows Subsystem for Linux which you can (and should!) install
on Windows. This will give you the ability to run Linux in a very easy way on
your PC. But the vast majority of the time you will run a Linux computer in the
cloud via a VPS (Virtual Private Server) like DigitalOcean or by VM (Virtual Machine). A shell is a
command interpreter that exposes to the user an interface to work with the
underlying operating system.
It allows you to
execute operations using text and commands, and it provides users advanced
features like being able to create scripts. This is important: shells let you
perform things in a more optimized way than a GUI (Graphical User Interface)
could ever possibly let you do. Command line tools can offer many different
configuration options without being too complex to use. There are many
different kind of shells. This post focuses on Unix shells, the ones that you
will find commonly on Linux and macOS computers. Many different kind of shells
were created for those systems over time, and a few of them dominate the space:
Bash, Csh, Zsh, Fish and many more! All shells originate from the Bourne Shell,
called sh . "Bourne" because its creator was Steve Bourne. Bash means
Bourne-again shell. sh was proprietary and not open source, and Bash was
created in 1989 to create a free alternative for the GNU project and the Free
Software Foundation. Since projects had to pay to use the Bourne shell, Bash
became very popular. If you use a Mac, try opening your Mac terminal. That by
default, is running ZSH. (or, pre-Catalina, Bash) You can set up your system to
run any kind of shell, for example I use the Fish shell. Each single shell has
its own unique features and advanced usage, but they all share a common
functionality: they can let you execute programs, and they can be programmed.
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good and please complete series early we are exciting to read it
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