Linux at Home and at Work
Perhaps you learned about Linux from a trusted friend, whose enthusiasm and ready answers convinced you to learn more about Linux, or perhaps an article or anecdote that mentioned Linux simply sparked your curiosity. In any case, you may find it interesting to learn what other computer users, ranging from PC
hobbyist to guru, have accomplished by using Linux:
• Tired of slow telephone modem transfer rates, a PC owner leases a cable modem that provides high-speed transfers. He installs the new modem in a Linux system that routes packets to and from the computers of other family members. Now the entire family can simultaneously surf the Web at warp speed.
• Struggling to complete a dissertation, a graduate student determines that most of his problems stem from bugs and inadequate features of his word processing program. Dumping Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Word, he loads Linux onto his computer and uses free text processing software he downloads from the Web. In contrast to the frequent system hangs and lost work he experienced with Windows, his new system runs for over 100 days before needing to be shutdown for installation of new hardware.
• Considered among the world’s best, the experienced graphics artists at Digital Domain have generated visual effects for such films as Apollo 13, Dante’s Peak, The Fifth Element, Interview with the Vampire, and True Lies. But when director James Cameron selected Digital Domain to conjure visual effects for Titanic, the artists faced a task of unprecedented size and complexity. Concerned to obtain enormous computing power at the lowest cost, they purchased 160 DEC Alpha computers. Most DEC Alpha users run Microsoft Windows NT or Digital Unix as an operating system. However, Digital Domain chose to run Linux on 105 of their new computers. If you’ve seen Titanic and Digital Domain’s breathtaking effects, you know what a good decision this was.
• Needing a supercomputer, but having a budget sufficient for only a minicomputer, scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory created Avalon, a system of 70 networked computers that run Linux. Instead of millions of dollars, the scientists spent only about $152,000 — none of it on software, because Linux is free. Their Avalon system performs more than 10 billion floating-point operations per second, roughly on par with the Silicon Graphics Origin2000 system, which costs $1.8 million. Linux-based Avalon ranks as the 315th fastest computer in the world.
Linux began as a hacker’s playground, but has become progressively easier to use and consequently more popular: today, perhaps as many as 7.5 million computers run Linux. Many Linux users are not hackers, but relatively ordinary computer users. Linux has become an operating system of formidable appeal and potential:
• In 1996, computing trade magazine Infoworld named Linux «Best Computer Desktop Operating System.» A year later, they named the Linux community «Best Tech Support Organization.»
• The cover of the August 10, 1998, issue of the influential business magazine Forbes featured super-programmer Linus Torvalds, author of the Linux kernel. The article pointed out that Intel, IBM, Netscape, Oracle, and other computing industry giants have taken a keen commercial interest in Linux and other open-source software.
• Market research firm International Data Corporation reported that in 1998, Linux held 17.2% of the server operating system market, up 212% from 1997. In contrast, Microsoft’s flagship operating system, Windows NT, held a 36% market share — barely twice as great.
• Lawyers defending Microsoft against the U.S. government’s antitrust charges argued that Linux poses a real threat to Microsoft’s domination of the desktop operating systems market.
13 exercises to boost your Linux skills
Work through this Linux fundamentals checklist to make sure you’re ready for whatever comes your way at home, at work, or on certification exams.
Many authors have provided Enable Sysadmin readers with reasons for building a home lab environment or guidance on creating lab environments using virsh, Ansible, and even containers. So, now that you know a home lab is good for you and you’ve used the articles to construct a great setup, what’s next?
Career advice
When I teach, I provide my students with a self-paced lab workbook that offers suggested skills in a logical order that they can use to enhance their Linux knowledge or prepare for certification exams. I’ve modified that workbook for this article to give you 13 things to do with your shiny new Linux lab environment.
This is an immense set of guidelines. Furthermore, there are no step-by-step instructions. In fact, that’s the point. You must research and teach yourself these tasks if you don’t already know how to accomplish them—just like in the real world.
There are Enable Sysadmin articles that cover some of the tasks. The lesson is not that you must know all these answers, but that you must know how to find all these answers. You don’t have to do every section, though some do rely on others.
1. Choose Linux
A home lab can serve many purposes, and you need some idea of what you want to use your lab to achieve.
- If you’re just exploring what’s possible on Linux, installing CentOS Stream or Fedora offers you a flexible environment. You can install either of these distributions on a spare computer, a Raspberry Pi, or as a virtual machine (VM) or container.
- If you want your journey to begin at its destination, you can install Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) on a supported platform. This gets you started with enterprise-quality Linux, which means that once you perfect your setup, it’s ready to migrate into production.
All these distributions derive from Fedora, so the installation process is basically the same regardless which you choose. You can follow our introductory guide if you’re not sure how to start. Use this information to select the distributions to install in the next task and to better understand the Linux landscape.
2. Install at least three distributions
- Create separate boot, var, home, swap, and filesystem root partitions (five partitions total). Leave at least 100MB of empty, unused, unpartitioned hard disk space for a future task.
- Choose whatever desktop graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are available for your selected distributions.
- Create a user during installation, and make that user the administrator. This grants the user sudo permissions.
- Once installation is complete, explore the built-in help features:
- Use man pages to research the fstab file.
- What are the differences between the various man page sections? Admins primarily use sections 1, 5, and 8—why?
- How can you do a keyword search within man pages?
- What can be found at /usr/share/doc ?
- Explore whatever GUI help files might be available.
[ Always keep the Linux commands cheat sheet close at hand while you’re learning and working. ]
3. Adjust user permissions
- Log in using the user account you created during installation. Use the sudo command to gain root privileges when you need to perform systemwide administrative tasks. This is an important best practice in Linux administration.
- Adjust the privileges assigned to your user account by using the sudo command. You need to edit the /etc/sudoers file by using the visudo command.
4. Use text editors
- Create a certification study plan by using Vim. List tasks that you intend to accomplish as part of your Linux skill development.
- List three (or more) resources by using the Nano text editor.
- List three Linux skills you are confident in and three Linux skills you are not confident in using a GUI text editor. This should be the only time you use a GUI editor during this entire activity.
5. Manage users and groups
- Use the /etc/skel directory to define profile settings before adding any user accounts.
- Set password and account expirations using the /etc/login.defs file before adding any user accounts. Use the following password requirements:
- Passwords should expire after 90 days, with a five-day warning period.