Linux Isn't Scary

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away (Africa), a boy of great courage dared to use Linux. This is his story (Overdramatic as usual 😅).

What the Heck is Linux?

Linux is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Linux is the brainchild of Linus Torvalds. He made Linux for fun apparently and released the first version of Linux on 17 September 1991.

It is said that the creator of Linux intended to call his invention Freax, but it was changed by a volunteer admin called Ari Lemmke without Linus Torvalds‘s consent.

Learning Linux - My Story

My first exposure to Linux was a year ago when John (not his real name), my mentor who was teaching me front-end web development at the time, had a fault with his PC. Since his PC was faulty and we couldn’t work, I decided to escort him to the IT store in our local vicinity.

The IT guy was super kind, knowledgeable, and helpful. After he repaired his faulty PC he asked if Linux Mint be co-installed with windows 10.

“What is Linux? ” - I asked him.

After 20 minutes of a simplified but geeky explanation, I got super curious and wanted to learn about Linux myself. After 3 months of overthinking using Linux, I decided to install it on my PC. The distro I chose was Linux Mint (influenced by John, of course).

After installing Linux on my machine and using the Graphical User interface (GUI) for a while, I decided I wanted to learn how to use the terminal.

“How to use the Terminal?”

As much as I’d like to say it was super hard for me to use the terminal, the truth is that it wasn’t (except for the typo errors 😅), but then again, to be honest, I had great material from the video tutorials on Youtube by NetworkChuck, a hackernoon writeup by @amirtha255 , and several cheat sheets on Pinterest.

It wasn’t as hard as people around me said it to be. After about 2 weeks of playing around with the terminal, I could install applications, open apps, and SSH servers (i had previous knowledge of bash script, though).

Sources I used to learn the Terminal and Bash script

• NetworkChuck ‘s tutorial (Hard to believe it’s free).

• @amirtha255 ‘sarticle, that made me stop overthinking.

• Bash scrip by freeCodeCamp.

• Google 😅

Advantages of Learning Linux

When I was learning Linux I did it for the fun of it but apparently since most servers run on Linux and Hackers use distros like Kali and parrot OS for pen-testing! With knowledge of Linux, you can choose careers in:

• Security Engineering.

• Technical Support.

• Linux System Developer.

• Kernel Developers.

• Cloud engineering.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed reading my article and found it helpful. Feel free to connect with me and ask questions. Also, any advice on how I can improve as a writer is appreciated.

CIAO!