Linux for Starters: Your Guide to Linux – Introduction

Linux Links ^ | 30 April 2021 | Steve Emms

[ShadowAce]

This is a series that offers a gentle introduction to Linux for newcomers. Let’s kick off this series with the very basics.

What is Linux?

The term ‘Linux’ strictly refers to the operating system kernel, a computer program at the core of a computer’s operating system that has complete control over everything in the system. The kernel manages the system’s resources and communicates with the hardware. It’s responsible for memory, process, and file management.

Think of the Linux kernel like a car engine.

Linux is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Anyone can run, study, modify, and redistribute the source code, or even sell copies of their modified code, as long as they do so under the same license.

How does Linux work?

When we talk about Linux, we are usually referring to one of the many hundreds of distributions (known as distros) that use the Linux kernel. A distro is analogous to an actual vehicle that houses the car engine.

A distro does the hard work for you taking all the code from the open-source projects and compiling it for you, combining it into a single operating system you can boot up and install.
While each distro has the Linux kernel at its heart, they differ in many respects.

A distro provides the user with a desktop environment, preloaded applications, and ways to update and maintain the system. Each distro makes different choices, deciding which open source projects to install and provides custom written programs. They can have different philosophies. Some distros are intended for desktop computers, some for servers without a graphical interface, and others for special uses. Because Linux is an open source operating system, combinations of software vary between Linux distros.

Popular distros include Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, Debian, Arch, and many more. Some distros are more suitable for newcomers.

Why use Linux?

There are many advantages that Linux confers compared to proprietary operating systems like Windows and Mac OS X.

We’ll focus on the biggest attractions that Linux offers.

Here’s 8 great reasons why you might want to try Linux.

As Linux is published under an open source license, you have the right to choose your own destiny. You can change and use your machine as you see fit without any restrictive licensing. Install Linux on as many computers as you want.

No charge. Most distros are available to download without any form of payment. Users are free to donate their time, expertise, or money instead.

Stability. Linux machines are often up for hundreds of days compared with the regular reboots required with a Windows system. The crash of an application is much less likely to bring down the operating system under Linux.

Increased security. Linux is much more secure than rival proprietary operating systems. The open source nature of the system means that independent experts can help identify vulnerabilities and fix them. There’s also a significantly lower risk of nasties. For example, there are only a handful of viruses that can affect Linux machines.

A massive range of open source software is available. To whet your appetite see our Best Free and Open Source Software.

Variety – each distro offers a different take on the desktop. Some use very modern user interfaces, others offer a more traditional desktop environment.

Hardware support. Linux runs great on hardware regardless of its age. Hundreds of millions of people rely on PCs that are several years old or even older.

An excellent environment for learning to program. Most Linux distros include a complete programming environment.

What do I need?

A computer that meets a distro’s recommended minimum system requirements. The system requirements for successfully installing Linux are surprisingly low. Even a computer built over 10 years ago will happily run many distros.

For Ubuntu 21.04 the recommended minimum is: 2 GHz dual core processor, 4GB RAM (system memory), 25GB hard-drive space, and graphics capable of 1024×768 resolution.

There are distros designed to run with lower requirements that are fully capable of reviving older hardware.

If you want a dedicated machine for Linux (rather than dual booting) but don’t have one spare, there are quite a few options. One option is to purchase a refurbished (mini) PC. Pictured is a refurbished Lenovo M93 Ultra Small PC. This machine’s hardware far exceeds Ubuntu’s recommended minimum system requirements and is available for around £200 / $200. Obviously, the better specified the system you use, the better experience will be.

USB stick or DVD disc

There’s the option of running a distro directly from either a USB stick (pictured) or a DVD. It offers a quick and easy way to experience Linux and how it works with your hardware. It doesn’t affect your computer’s configuration.

But if you’ve decided that Linux is for you, install the distro onto a computer via USB or DVD. We prefer USB installation. If you don’t have a spare USB key available, they are extremely cheap to buy. Don’t buy a USB stick with a distro pre-installed as they are almost always extremely poor value for money. Most distros need a 4GB or larger USB stick/key. Here’s a useful tutorial which shows how to create a bootable Ubuntu USB stick.

DVD installation requires a blank DVD-R disc, and you’ll need a machine that has a DVD Writer so that you can burn the distro’s image to the disc.

Internet Connection

An internet connection is not essential to install a distro although some require internet access to download things like restricted extras. In any event, an internet connection is essential to make sure your computer stays up to date with the latest updates and patches. You’ll miss out on so much of the goodness that Linux bestows without internet connectivity.

[Openurmind]

And that is another thing I enjoy to watch. As it is doing operations one file at a time during an install it actually explains with notes what each is and what is happening. You can learn a lot about Linux by reading these install operation notes it shares file by file.

Was it you who told me here one time to “never discount the power of the terminal utility”? If so thank you. You were absolutely right. There is still quite a bit of needed stuff out there that requires a command line install. And they only give Command line instructions for them. And it works slicker than snot. :)

[Pollard]

Was it you who told me here one time to “never discount the power of the terminal utility”?

Nope but I do use it for some things, like adding a repository to install a program that's not in Ubuntu's repositories.

I also use a command line program, youtube-dl, dl stands for download. (youtube-dl --list-formats 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8L_x42RieA') Use that minus parentheses to list formats and file size of the video. That will give you a list and one thing on each line is a numeric code. Then to download, (youtube-dl -f 18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU0a-l-amlI) That number 18 seems to always be about the best. Audio & video and not a humongous file size. It will work with 100+ other sites as well, including bitchute.

imagemagik is another command line only program used for manipulating images and will do batch processing. If you have 300 images in a folder that you want to resize and optimize(smaller file size), you can do it with one command. You can also convert from one file format to another. Seems very strange working with images and not using a GUI but the program works great. Comes preinstalled on most Linux distros and also pretty much all web servers. When you upload some huge pic to a website, most of the time they're using imagemagik to shrink the file so their web server doesn't fill up real quick and so that pages don't take forever to load because your pic was 2048px wide and 12mb in size.

The only commands I know off the top of my head are the basic sudo commands. Most of the time, I'm copying and pasting something from the web into the terminal. Yup, most common is add a repository, update, install.

[Openurmind]

Yep, third party stuff not available from the Ubuntu repository, I run into this a lot too.

I am familiar with Imagemagik as a site developer. But I did not know you could use it’s capabilities on a local linux. That is cool! I will have to play with that, THANK YOU! I have found in my Mint that I can right click files and folders and compress them. It creates a compressed Tar file that you can still open and look at.

You know... the more and more I play with Linux the more I realize it is structured like a webserver and a database rather than an OS. There are a lot of similarities in directory file structure function and etc.

I suppose this is why it is so much easier to build a personal server, VPN server,run Apache, set up a MySql database Etc. with Linux than windows.

It is basically a server at heart from what I see. :)

[Pollard]

Yup, Linux’s widespread use was as a web server before they even made a GUI for it. I’ve been building websites since the mid 90s when it was strictly html and css was new and was used inline mostly. One thing I’ve never found for Linux but don’t really need either, is a css compiler like SASS/SCSS.

I finally ditched Filezilla and use Konqueror for ftps. I had been using Sublime for my code text editor but found Atom. Sublime constantly gave me a popup reminder that I haven’t purchased it. Atom is free and reminds me a lot of Sublime. I don’t need to code much as I use CMSs like WordPress and soon, PicoCMS. Pico is a flat file system, no database and is lightweight. Perfect for a basic blog. You write in Markdown and Pico converts the Markdown to html.

Been using CherryTree notekeeping program but it’s got it’s quirks and I just found Joplin in which you use Markdown to format. Joplin can sync itself to Nextcloud on a server so I installed that. Haven’t got my notes copied over and synced to my cloud yet though.

Now I’ve got two reasons to learn markdown. Most documentation CMSs use Markdown as well and I do have a use for a docs site.

[S.O.S121.500]

BBBOOKbump

[ConservativeMind]

There are constant updates to Linux Mint 18.3. The whole package gets updates even weekly, but most are for sub packages that are not pure OS related.

[Openurmind]

Yep... What I do is just turn them all off. Then about once every three months I checkbox and update just the apps that want to update. But... I do not checkbox any OS updates. What I found is that it wants to hand you OS updates that you really do not need or will never use.

I can do without those because of the dependency check when you download and install an app. At that point it will go look to see if you have what it needs to run the program and only add the bare minimum additional dependencies it takes to the download and install anyhow.

What I have found is that the OS or the kernel it’s self once it is working working all your hardware, never needs an update unless there is a new known critical security issue. and with Linux this is far and few between. It just doesn’t get security issues weekly like MS does. Other than that if it isn’t broken then don’t try to fix it. :)

[Openurmind]

Fortunately most webhosts now provide Cpanel or other in server tools that replaces the need for FTP. Downloader, rename, uploader, text Editor and all right in the server panel. And here is something kind of cool about my local Linux. The default “Text editor” that comes boxed with this Mint, and opens all text files, is indeed that, You can root the containing folder and edit any type of text file/code you like.

[StAnDeliver]

I install a new flavor on Linux on my Linux box at least once a year to see what’s up. Zorin was kind of fun. Although it’s Irish, so the box needs 10 beers a day...

[Bikkuri]

I thought Lenovo was on the “Do Not Buy” list because of Chinese hardcoded spy chips..

[SuperLuminal]

Bump for later...

[Pollard]

Text editors I use

Mousepad
Leafpad
Sublime
Atom

Mousepad pretty basic with no syntax highlighting but as you say, they will open and edit most anything. I think it’s funny that you don’t even have to give a text file an extension. Of course if you want to be able to open it in windows, you have to add .txt to it. Mousepad does have line numbers.

Leafpad has line numbers, themes, syntax highlighting etc.

Technically, I have one more text editor I just installed. It’s a terminal text editor called markdown. You type “markdown” in the terminal and it starts in the terminal, Type some markdowm, hit enter and it gives you back html. Not what I was thinking it was.

For my Nextcloud, I just found PicoCMS can be integrated. You end up wuth a cruddy looking url though. example.com/cloud/index.php/apps/cms_pico/pico/blog — which doesn’t work for me.

Yukuake is a pretty cool terminal app. Set it to autostart and when you hit F12 and it drops down from the top of the screen.

If you build websites, you’re probably familiar with google’s webP image format. Insanely small file size. Gwenview is a Gnome app for viewing, resizing, cropping images and you can save them in other formats, including webP. Even when you crop and/or resize and save in the same file format, they come out pretty small in file size.

Inkscape is a vector graphic editor that saves as svg or exports as png and the png will be tiny in file size.

GIMP for photos aka jpg/jpeg.

Falkon is a fairly new web browser made by KDE. It’s yet another Chromium based browser, similar to Brave but not a whole lot of features. Fast though.

[Bikkuri]

For beginners, I would recommend Mint Cinnamon (or Mate, it is less resource heavy).

If you want to have more control of your computer, KDE (I think Kubuntu would be the better choice for KDE, it’s simple and stable).

[Openurmind]

Oh yes... Inkscape is my go to for image adjustments. As for line numbers I only pay attention to those if it is the first time I am editing that file and someone actually shared the lione number. So many directions are “find this” with a couple lines of code to look for and do not give line numbers anyhow. And once you have edited the same file a few times those line numbers change anyhow. :)

So the default “text editor”in this Mint works fine, and it does highlight in different colors as to functions. That helps a LOT... the “find this” reference is a serious burr under the saddle of anyone who does web work... “Finding that” is not always as easy as they make it sound. lol

[tbw2]

How do you think the new Linux Code of Conduct will affect coding? Has anyone walked away with their code, making it harder for the kernel and OS to work?

[aquila48]

Thanks.

[Pollard]

Line numbers are handy when tweaking CSS because the web dev Inspector/DOM in firefox/chromium based browsers show you what line number the offending css is on and some css files can be thousands of lines long.

Good for debugging php too as php errors tell you what line it stalled on. Doesn’t mean that’s the line with bad code but gives you a starting point.

I don’t know much of any php though so css is the only thing I use line numbers for.

Looks like I’m going with Grav CMS instead of PicoCMS. Pico doesn’t have an image lightbox as far as I could see. Both use Markdown written in your favorite text editor. Guess you could use the cpanel > File Manager text editor.

The other CMS I use is b2evolution. Was forked from the same ancestor as WordPress, b2/cafelog but went a totally different direction almost 20 years ago. It’s quite a bit faster than WP and unlike WP(or win), you don’t need to update things every other day. It’s by a French guy but he’s a conservative Frenchman.

Has most content types built in, landing page, blogs, forums, bug tracking, portfolios, manuals(docs), as many as you want of each. Also has private messaging, newsletter. Ads/banner system with metrics. Extensive groups/permissions system. You can build most any page layout using content blocks in a 1-3 column layout.

[ShadowAce]

This system is so fast, it’s hard to believe its immediate response.

I recently purchased a new laptop. I timed it--12 seconds from power button to logging in.

[ShadowAce]

I thought Lenovo was on the “Do Not Buy” list because of Chinese hardcoded spy chips..

I know I wont buy a Lenovo.

[minnesota_bound]

Here are the different flavors of 'Linus'...