Introduction to Linux Operating System

Linux is a community of open-source Unix like operating systems that are based on the Linux
Kernel. It was initially released by Linus Torvalds on September 17, 1991. It is a free and
open-source operating system and the source code can be modified and distributed to anyone
commercially or non commercially under the GNU General Public License.
Initially, Linux was created for personal computers and gradually it was used in other
machines like servers, mainframe computers, supercomputers, etc. Nowadays, Linux is also
used in embedded systems like routers, automation controls, televisions, digital video
recorders, video game consoles, smart watches, etc. The biggest success of Linux is
Android(operating system) it is based on the Linux kernel that is running on smart phones and
tablets. Due to android Linux has the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating
systems. Linux is generally packaged in a Linux distribution.

Linux Distribution

Linux distribution is an operating system that is made up of a collection of software based on

Linux kernel or you can say distribution contains the Linux kernel and supporting libraries and
software. And you can get Linux based operating system by downloading one of the Linux
distributions and these distributions are available for different types of devices like embedded
devices, personal computers, etc. Around 600 + Linux Distributions are available and some of
the popular Linux distributions are:
 MX Linux
 Manjaro
 Linux Mint
 elementary
 Ubuntu
 Debian
 Solus
 Fedora
 openSUSE
 Deepin
Architecture of Linux

Linux architecture has the following components:

1. Kernel: Kernel is the core of the Linux based operating system. It virtualizes the common
hardware resources of the computer to provide each process with its virtual resources. This
makes the process seem as if it is the sole process running on the machine. The kernel is also
responsible for preventing and mitigating conflicts between different processes. Different
types of the kernel are:
 Monolithic Kernel
 Hybrid kernels
 Exo kernels
 Micro kernels
2. System Library: Is the special types of functions that are used to implement the
functionality of the operating system.
3. Shell: It is an interface to the kernel which hides the complexity of the kernel’s functions
from the users. It takes commands from the user and executes the kernel’s functions.
4. Hardware Layer: This layer consists all peripheral devices like RAM/ HDD/ CPU etc.
5. System Utility: It provides the functionalities of an operating system to the user.

Advantages of Linux

 The main advantage of Linux, is it is an open-source operating system. This means the
source code is easily available for everyone and you are allowed to contribute, modify and
distribute the code to anyone without any permissions.
 In terms of security, Linux is more secure than any other operating system. It does not mean
that Linux is 100 percent secure it has some malware for it but is less vulnerable than any
other operating system. So, it does not require any anti-virus software.
 The software updates in Linux are easy and frequent.
 Various Linux distributions are available so that you can use them according to your
requirements or according to your taste.
 Linux is freely available to use on the internet.
 It has large community support.
 It provides high stability. It rarely slows down or freezes and there is no need to reboot it
after a short time.
 It maintain the privacy of the user.
 The performance of the Linux system is much higher than other operating systems. It allows
a large number of people to work at the same time and it handles them efficiently.
 It is network friendly.
 The flexibility of Linux is high. There is no need to install a complete Linux suit; you are
allowed to install only required components.
 Linux is compatible with a large number of file formats.
 It is fast and easy to install from the web. It can also install on any hardware even on your old
computer system.
 It performs all tasks properly even if it has limited space on the hard disk.

Disadvantages of Linux

 It is not very user-friendly. So, it may be confusing for beginners.

 It has small peripheral hardware drivers as compared to windows.
Is There Any Difference between Linux and Ubuntu?
The answer is YES. The main difference between Linux and Ubuntu is Linux is the family of
open-source operating systems which is based on Linux kernel, whereas Ubuntu is a free open-
source operating system and the Linux distribution which is based on Debian. Or in other words,
Linux is the core system and Ubuntu is the distribution of Linux. Linux is developed by Linus
Torvalds and released in 1991 and Ubuntu is developed by Canonical Ltd. and released in 2004.

The Terminal

For most of the time you access a cloud server, you’ll be doing it through a terminal shell. The
shell allows you to execute commands on the droplet.

All administrative tasks can be accomplished through the terminal. This includes file
manipulation, package installation, and user management.

The terminal is interactive. You specify commands to run. The terminal outputs the results of
those commands. Executing any command is done by typing it and pressing Enter.

Linux Basic Commands

Before we go on to the list of commands, you need to open the command line first. If you are
still unsure about the command-line interface.

Although the steps may differ depending on the distribution that you’re using, you can usually
find the command line in the Utilities section.

Here is a list of basic Linux commands:

1. pwd command

Use the pwd command to find out the path of the current working directory (folder) you’re in.
The command will return an absolute (full) path, which is basically a path of all the directories
that starts with a forward slash (/). An example of an absolute path is /home/username.

2. cd command

To navigate through the Linux files and directories, use the cd command. It requires either the
full path or the name of the directory, depending on the current working directory that you’re in.

Let’s say you’re in /home/username/Documents and you want to go to Photos, a subdirectory

of Documents. To do so, simply type the following command: cd Photos.

Another scenario is if you want to switch to a completely new directory, for

example,/home/username/Movies. In this case, you have to type cd followed by the directory’s
absolute path: cd /home/username/Movies.

There are some shortcuts to help you navigate quickly:

 cd .. (with two dots) to move one directory up

 cd to go straight to the home folder
 cd- (with a hyphen) to move to your previous directory

On a side note, Linux’s shell is case sensitive. So, you have to type the name’s directory exactly
as it is.

3. ls command

The ls command is used to view the contents of a directory. By default, this command will
display the contents of your current working directory.

If you want to see the content of other directories, type ls and then the directory’s path. For
example, enter ls /home/username/Documents to view the content of Documents.
There are variations you can use with the ls command:

 ls -R will list all the files in the sub-directories as well

 ls -a will show the hidden files
 ls -al will list the files and directories with detailed information like the permissions, size,
owner, etc.

4. cat command

cat (short for concatenate) is one of the most frequently used commands in Linux. It is used to
list the contents of a file on the standard output (sdout). To run this command, type cat followed
by the file’s name and its extension. For instance: cat file.txt.

Here are other ways to use the cat command:

 cat > filename creates a new file

 cat filename1 filename2>filename3 joins two files (1 and 2) and stores the output of
them in a new file (3)
 to convert a file to upper or lower case use, cat filename | tr a-z A-Z >output.txt

5. cp command

Use the cp command to copy files from the current directory to a different directory. For
instance, the command cp scenery.jpg /home/username/Pictures would create a copy
of scenery.jpg (from your current directory) into the Pictures directory.

6. mv command

The primary use of the mv command is to move files, although it can also be used to rename
files.

The arguments in mv are similar to the cp command. You need to type mv, the file’s name, and
the destination’s directory. For example: mv file.txt /home/username/Documents.

To rename files, the Linux command is mv oldname.ext newname.ext

7. mkdir command

Use mkdir command to make a new directory — if you type mkdir Music it will create a
directory called Music.

There are extra mkdir commands as well:

 To generate a new directory inside another directory, use this Linux basic
command mkdir Music/Newfile
 use the p (parents) option to create a directory in between two existing directories. For
example, mkdir -p Music/2020/Newfile will create the new “2020” file.

8. rmdir command

If you need to delete a directory, use the rmdir command. However, rmdir only allows you to
delete empty directories.

9. rm command

The rm command is used to delete directories and the contents within them. If you only want to
delete the directory — as an alternative to rmdir — use rm -r.

Note: Be very careful with this command and double-check which directory you are in. This will
delete everything and there is no undo.

10. touch command

The touch command allows you to create a blank new file through the Linux command line. As
an example, enter touch /home/username/Documents/Web.html to create an HTML file
entitled Web under the Documents directory.

11. locate command

You can use this command to locate a file, just like the search command in Windows. What’s
more, using the -i argument along with this command will make it case-insensitive, so you can
search for a file even if you don’t remember its exact name.

To search for a file that contains two or more words, use an asterisk (*). For example, locate -i
school*note command will search for any file that contains the word “school” and “note”,
whether it is uppercase or lowercase.

12. find command

Similar to the locate command, using find also searches for files and directories. The difference
is, you use the find command to locate files within a given directory.

As an example, find /home/ -name notes.txt command will search for a file
called notes.txt within the home directory and its subdirectories.

Other variations when using the find are:

 To find files in the current directory use, find . -name notes.txt

 To look for directories use, / -type d -name notes. txt

13. grep command

Another basic Linux command that is undoubtedly helpful for everyday use is grep. It lets you
search through all the text in a given file.

To illustrate, grep blue notepad.txt will search for the word blue in the notepad file. Lines that
contain the searched word will be displayed fully.

14. sudo command

Short for “SuperUser Do”, this command enables you to perform tasks that require
administrative or root permissions. However, it is not advisable to use this command for daily
use because it might be easy for an error to occur if you did something wrong.
15. df command

Use df command to get a report on the system’s disk space usage, shown in percentage and KBs.
If you want to see the report in megabytes, type df -m.

16. du command

If you want to check how much space a file or a directory takes, the du (Disk Usage) command
is the answer. However, the disk usage summary will show disk block numbers instead of the
usual size format. If you want to see it in bytes, kilobytes, and megabytes, add the -h argument to
the command line.

17. head command

The head command is used to view the first lines of any text file. By default, it will show the
first ten lines, but you can change this number to your liking. For example, if you only want to
show the first five lines, type head -n 5 filename.ext.

18. tail command

This one has a similar function to the head command, but instead of showing the first lines,
the tail command will display the last ten lines of a text file. For example, tail -n filename.ext.

19. diff command

Short for difference, the diff command compares the contents of two files line by line. After
analyzing the files, it will output the lines that do not match. Programmers often use this
command when they need to make program alterations instead of rewriting the entire source
code.

The simplest form of this command is diff file1.ext file2.ext

20. tar command

The tar command is the most used command to archive multiple files into a tarball a common
Linux file format that is similar to zip format, with compression being optional.

This command is quite complex with a long list of functions such as adding new files into an
existing archive, listing the content of an archive, extracting the content from an archive, and
many more..

21. chmod command

chmod is another Linux command, used to change the read, write, and execute permissions of
files and directories..

22. jobs command

jobs command will display all current jobs along with their statuses. A job is basically a process
that is started by the shell.

23. ping command

Use the ping command to check your connectivity status to a server. For example, by simply
entering ping google.com, the command will check whether you’re able to connect to Google
and also measure the response time.

24.man Command

Almost all Linux commands are distributed together with man pages. A man or manual page is a
form of documentation that explains what the command does, examples of how you run the
command, and what arguments it accepts.

The man command is used to display the manual page of a given command.

Man command_name
Introduction to Internet

In this Learning Unit, we are going to explore the fascinating and ever-changing world of the
Internet. The Internet is the largest computer network in the world, connecting more than a
billion computer users. The Internet is most often used for three main purposes: 1.
Communication 2. Buying and selling (e-commerce) 3. Searching for information One of the
most important things you need to know about the Internet is that it is a self-publishing medium,
which means that no one is in charge of the content found on it. Anyone can publish anything on
the Internet, whether the information is true or not. Later in this Learning Unit, you will learn
some tips for evaluating the information you find on websites.

Basic Terms and Concepts Let’s start with some basic terms and concepts: Internet: It might be
helpful to think of the Internet as a vast system of roads all connecting to each other. You may
have heard the term “information superhighway.” It’s a vast infrastructure of pathways allowing
computers to “talk” to each other, even though the computers may use different operating
systems. They do this through unique identification numbers called Internet Protocol Addresses
(IP addresses). The abbreviation “www” stands for World Wide Web. Many people think the
World Wide Web is the same thing as the Internet. It isn’t. While the Internet is a large
connection of networks (hardware), the World Wide Web is a way to access the information on
the Internet. It’s like the software you need to run programs on the hardware of your computer.
So, the Internet is broader than the World Wide Web. The Web uses common communication
protocols (sets of rules) and special languages. One of these is called HyperText Markup
Language (HTML). These special languages act as a bridge, allowing computers to communicate
that don’t use compatible operating systems. This means that you don’t have to use a specific
type of computer in order to access a website. Besides the Web, there are other ways to
disseminate information, such as email, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and Telnet. Connecting to
the Internet Now, let’s look at how one goes about connecting to the Internet. Before you can
start using the Internet, you need to have a way to connect to it. This requires you to have the
necessary hardware to make a connection on your end, as well as an Internet Service Provider
(ISP) which provides the Internet service to which your computer will connect. Then, you’ll need
a web browser to begin exploring the World Wide Web.
E-Mail

Email, short for Electronic Mail, consists of messages which are sent and received using the
Internet. There are many different email services available that allow you to create an email
account and send and receive email and attachments, many of which are free. Today we will
focus on the services available through Yahoo! Mail because it is free and one of the more
popular email services available, but we will also give hints, examples and advice for Gmail and
the email software programs Outlook, Outlook Express, and Thunderbird.

E-Mail Address

Each user of email is assigned a unique name for his email account. This name is
known as E-mail address. Different users can send and receive messages
according to the e-mail address.
E-mail is generally of the form username@domainname. For example,
webmaster@tutorialspoint.com is an e-mail address where webmaster is username
and tutorialspoint.com is domain name.
 The username and the domain name are separated by @ (at) symbol.
 E-mail addresses are not case sensitive.
 Spaces are not allowed in e-mail address.
Advantages
E-mail has prooved to be powerful and reliable medium of commmunication.
Here are the benefits of E-mail:
 Reliable
 Convenience
 Speed
 Inexpensive
 Printable
 Global
 Generality

Reliable
Many of the mail systems notify the sender if e-mail message was undeliverable.

Convenience

There is no requirement of stationary and stamps. One does not have to go to post
office. But all these things are not required for sending or receiving an mail.
Disadvantages
Apart from several benefits of E-mail, there also exists some disadvantages as
discussed below:
 Forgery
 Overload
 Misdirection
 Junk
 No response

Forgery

E-mail doesn’t prevent from forgery, that is, someone impersonating the sender,
since sender is usually not authenticated in any way.

Overload

Convenience of E-mail may result in a flood of mail.

 Browsing
A software application used to access information on the World Wide Web is
called a Web Browser. When a user requests some information, the web browser
fetches the data from a web server and then displays the webpage on the user’s
screen.

History of Web Browser

Today web browsers are easily accessible and can be used on devices like
computer, laptops, mobile phones, etc. but this evolution of making browsers
available for easy use took many years.
Given below are some salient points which one must know with regard to the
history of web browsers:

 “WorldWideWeb” was the first web browser created by Tim Berners Lee
in 1990. This is completely different from the World Wide Web we use
today
 In 1993, the “Mosaic” web browser was released. It had the feature of
adding images and an innovative graphical interface. It was the “the world’s
first popular browser”
 After this, in 1994, Marc Andreessen (leader of Mosaic Team) started
working on a new web browser, which was released and was
named “Netscape Navigator”
 In 1995, “Internet Explorer” was launched by Microsoft. It soon overtook
as the most popular web browser
 In 2002, “Mozilla Firefox” was introduced which was equally as competent
as Internet Explorer
 Apple too launched a web browser in the year 2003 and named it “Safari”.
This browser is commonly used in Apple devices only and not popular with
other devices
 Finally, in the year 2008, Google released “Chrome” and within a time span
of 3 years it took over all the other existing browsers and is one of the most
commonly used web browsers across the world
Searching
The most productive way to conduct a search on the internet is through a search
engine. A web search engine is a software system designed to search for
information on the World Wide Web. The search results are generally presented in
a line of results often referred to as search engine results pages (SEROs). The
information may be a mix of web pages, images, and other types of files. Some
search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories.

There are a number of various search engines available and some of them may
seem familiar to you. The top web search engines are Google, Bing, Yahoo,
Ask.com, and AOL.com. For the purpose of this course, we will be searching using
the Google Chrome web browser, and search first with the Google search engine
and then Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

Searching on Chrome

Your supervisor at Rowan Retail asked you to find out what the most popular kids
toys are this year. He wants to have those toys stocked in the store for the
upcoming holiday season. In order for you to find out that information, you turn on
a computer and get ready to conduct a search on the internet.

The first step is to open a Chrome browser by clicking on the desktop icon or the
icon on the computer desktop’s taskbar. Once the browser window is open,
type www.google.com into the address bar on the top of the browser window and
press the Enter (or Return) key on the keyboard.
 The browser now displays the large Google search bar. As you begin to
enter the phrase most popular toys of 2017 into the search bar, notice how
the search bar moves to the top of the screen as the words are typed. This
movement is normal; continue to type the phrase.

As the words are typed, the search engine will display a dropdown list of suggested
search options. At this point either continue typing the phrase or select the option
of most popular toys 2017. Selecting a suggestion option is done in two ways;
either by using the mouse to click on the desired option, or by using the down
arrow key on the keyboard to select an option, then pushing the Enter (or Return)
key.