Why Should You Learn Linux

Linux is a critical technology for IT professionals to understand. Linux is in widespread use, and if you use the internet at all, you are probably already interacting with Linux systems in your daily life. Perhaps the most obvious way in which you interact with Linux systems is through browsing the World Wide Web and using e-commerce sites to buy and sell products.

However, Linux is in use for much more than that. Linux manages point-of-sale systems and the world’s stock markets, and also powers smart TVs and in-flight entertainment systems. It powers most of the top 500 supercomputers in the world. Linux provides the foundational technologies powering the cloud revolution and the tools used to build the next generation of container-based microservices applications, software-based storage technologies, and big data solutions.

In the modern data center, Linux and Microsoft Windows are the major players, and Linux is a growing segment in that space. Some of the many reasons to learn Linux include:

  • A Windows user needs to interoperate with Linux.
  • In application development, Linux hosts the application or its runtime.
  • In cloud computing, the cloud instances in the private or public cloud environment use Linux as the operating system.
  • With mobile applications or the Internet of Things (IoT), the chances are high that the operating system of your device uses Linux.
  • If you are looking for new opportunities in IT, Linux skills are in high demand.

What Makes Linux Great

There are many different answers to the question “What makes Linux great?”, however, three of them are:

Linux is open source software

Being open source does not just mean that you can see how the system works. You can also experiment with changes and share them freely for others to use. The open source model means that improvements are easier to make, enabling faster innovation.

Linux provides easy access to a powerful and scriptable command-line interface (CLI)

Linux was built around the basic design philosophy that users can perform all administration tasks from the CLI. It enables easier automation, deployment, and provisioning, and simplifies both local and remote system administration. Unlike other operating systems, these capabilities have been built in from the beginning, and the assumption has always been to enable these important capabilities.

Linux is a modular operating system that allows you to easily replace or remove components

Components of the system can be upgraded and updated as needed. A Linux system can be a general-purpose development workstation or an extremely stripped-down software appliance.

What is Open Source Software

Open-source software is software with source code that anyone can use, study, modify, and share. Source code is the set of human-readable instructions that are used to make a program. It may be interpreted as a script or compiled into a binary executable which the computer runs directly. Upon creating source code, it gets copyrighted, and the copyright holder controls the terms under which the software can be copied, adapted, and distributed. Users can use this software under a software license.

Some software has source code that only the person, team, or organization that created it can see, or change, or distribute. This software is sometimes called “proprietary” or “closed source” software. Typically the license only allows the end-user to run the program, and provides no access, or tightly limited access, to the source. Open-source software is different. When the copyright holder provides software under an open-source license, they grant the user the right to run the program and also to view, modify, compile, and redistribute the source royalty-free to others.

Open source promotes collaboration, sharing, transparency, and rapid innovation because it encourages people beyond the original developers to make modifications and improvements to the software and to share it with others. Just because the software is open source does not mean it is somehow not able to be used or provided commercially. Open source is a critical part of many organizations’ commercial operations. Some open-source licenses allow code to be reused in closed source products. One can sell open-source code, but the terms of true open-source licenses generally allow the customer to redistribute the source code. Most commonly, vendors such as Red Hat provide commercial help with deploying, supporting, and extending solutions based on open source products.

Open source has many benefits for the user:

  • Control: See what the code does and change it to improve it.
  • Training: Learn from real-world code and develop more useful applications.
  • Security: Inspect sensitive code, fix with or without the original developers’ help.
  • Stability: Code can survive the loss of the original developer or distributor.

The bottom line is that open source allows the creation of better software with a higher return on investment by collaboration.

Types Of Open Source Licenses

There is more than one way to provide open-source software. The terms of the software license control how the source can be combined with other code or reused and hundreds of different open-source licenses exist. However, to be open source, licenses must allow users to freely use, view, change, compile, and distribute the code.

There are two broad classes of open source license that are particularly important:

  • Copyleft licenses that are designed to encourage keeping code open source.
  • Permissive licenses that are designed to maximize code reusability.

Copyleft, or “share-alike” licenses, requires that anyone who distributes the source code, with or without changes, must also pass along the freedom for others to also copy, change, and distribute the code. The basic advantage of these licenses is that they help to keep existing code, and improvements to that code, open and add to the amount of open-source code available. Common copyleft licenses include the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL).

Permissive licenses are intended to maximize the reusability of source code. Users can use the source for any purpose as long as the copyright and license statements are preserved, including reusing that code under more restrictive or even proprietary licenses. This makes it very easy for this code to be reused but at the risk of encouraging proprietary-only enhancements. Several commonly used permissive open source licenses include the MIT/X11 license, the Simplified BSD license, and the Apache Software License 2.0.

Who Develops Open Source Software

It is a misconception to think that open source is developed solely by an “army of volunteers” or even an army of individuals plus Red Hat. Open source development today is overwhelmingly professional. Many developers are paid by their organizations to work with open source projects to construct and contribute the enhancements they and their customers need.

Volunteers and the academic community play a significant role and can make vital contributions, especially in new technology areas. The combination of formal and informal development provides a highly dynamic and productive environment.

What is a Linux Distribution

A Linux distribution is an installable operating system constructed from a Linux kernel and supporting user programs and libraries. A complete Linux operating system is not developed by a single organization, but by a collection of independent open source development communities working with individual software components. A distribution provides an easy way for users to install and manage a working Linux system.

In 1991, a young computer science student named Linus Torvalds developed a Unix-like kernel he named Linux, licensed as open-source software under the GPL. The kernel is the core component of the operating system, which manages hardware, memory, and the scheduling of running programs. This Linux kernel could then be supplemented with other open-source software, such as utilities and programs from the GNU Project, the graphical interface from MIT’s X Window System, and many other open-source components, such as the Sendmail mail server or the Apache HTTP web server, in order to build a complete open-source Unix-like operating system.

However, one of the challenges for Linux users was to assemble all these pieces from many different sources. Very early in its history, Linux developers began working to provide a distribution of prebuilt and tested tools that users could download and use to set up their Linux systems quickly. Many different Linux distributions exist, with differing goals and criteria for selecting and supporting the software provided by their distribution. However, distributions generally have many common characteristics:

  • Distributions consist of a Linux kernel and supporting user space programs.
  • Distributions can be small and single-purpose or include thousands of open source programs.
  • Distributions must provide a means of installing and updating the distribution and its components.
  • The provider of the distribution must support that software, and ideally, be participating directly in the community developing that software.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is Red Hat’s commercialized Linux distribution.

Fedora

Fedora is a community project that produces and releases a complete, free, Linux-based operating system. Red Hat sponsors the community and works with community representatives to integrate the latest upstream software into a fast-moving and secure distribution. The Fedora project contributes everything back to the free and open-source world, and anyone can participate.

However, Fedora focuses on innovation and excellence, not long-term stability. New major updates happen every six months, and they can bring significant changes. Fedora only supports releases for about a year (two major updates), which makes it less suitable for enterprise use.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is Red Hat’s enterprise-ready, commercially-supported Linux distribution. It is the leading platform for open source computing, not just a collection of mature open source projects. RHEL is extensively tested, with a large supporting ecosystem of partners, hardware and software certifications, consulting services, training, and multiyear support and maintenance guarantees.

Red Hat bases its major releases of RHEL on Fedora. However, after that Red Hat can pick and choose which packages to include, make further enhancements (contributed back to the upstream projects and Fedora), and make configuration decisions that serve the needs of customers. Red Hat helps vendors and customers engage with the open-source community, and to work with upstream development to develop solutions and fix issues.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses a subscription-based distribution model. Because this is open-source software, this is not a license fee. Instead, it pays for support, maintenance, updates, security patches, and so on. The customer is paying for long-term support and expertise, commitment, and assistance when they need it. When major updates become available, customers can move to them at their convenience without paying more. It simplifies the management of both the economic and practical aspects of system updates.

CentOS

CentOS is a community-driven Linux distribution derived from much of the open-source Red Hat Enterprise Linux codebase and other sources. It is free of charge, is easy to install, and is staffed and supported by an active user community of volunteers that operates independently of Red Hat.