Hello Guys, today we are going to talk about Linux. This article is for people who are new to Linux and want to learn it. It is open source Operating System. It evolved from kernel created by Linus Trovalds. Don't worry about word Kernel now, we are going to discuss about it soon. The code used to create Linux is available publicly to view, edit and if you are having proper skills you can also contribute in its development. Linux is not just a program or set of programs, it is interface between computer hardware and programs that runs on it.
Linux was a project started by Linus Trovalds in mid of 1991 when he was studying Computer Science at University of Helsinky. From that time a large number of people with varying skill set have contributed in its development. Not only developers and programmers helped in its success but designers, testers, evangelists and people from many other profession have contributed to it over time.
Today many distribution(also known as distros) of Linux is available for us to use and explore. Each of them have different capability and which distro is best for you depends on number of factors. If you are beginner like me and are coming from Windows background, I will recommend Ubuntu or Linux Mint for you as its GUI is easy to use and is similar to Windows in many respect. But if you have some programming skills and want to explore different distros you can go with Fedora or Debian. There are different distributions available for servers as well, I am not going to discuss them in details in this article but some of them are Ubuntu Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS. Note that some have a cost associated with them and Customer support as well.
Lets get some basic idea about Kernel before we proceed further. Kernel is like middle man sitting between your computer hardware and you application programs. It uses a set of well defined interface which we call "system calls" to complete request made by programs you are using. For example if you are using a program for taking a selfie from your webcam, the application uses service of the kernel in order to complete that task. We will discuss it in details in later article to have better understanding of Linux architecture.
The distro that I will be using in all my article is Ubuntu as it is having large and active community and help is really easy to find. If you get stuck in some place, I am pretty sure, someone would have already asked that question in forums and you can get results easily. It is also open source, so anyone can download it for free, which is another important factor for considering it. Ubuntu is also one of the most popular OS running is hosted environments, clouds. So if in near future, you decided to run a VM for mining cryptocurrency or for hosting your website, you can use Ubuntu for it as it is easy to find a hosting provider which support Ubuntu.
Linux is powerful and easy to use, but in beginning it takes time and patience to learn it. My suggestion is install one on your system and start giving it sometime daily. You will be amazed by its power that how easy it is to do some task than in any other OS.
