LFS101x: Introduction to Linux

My Experience Towards Learning Linux from the Linux Foundation using the edX Platform

Posted by Alexander Villasoto on August 02, 2020 · 3 mins read

tl;dr; I thought I don't need this, turns out I do.


August 3, 2020

It is like I am treading a memory lane when I decided to revisit my previous lessons in the basics of Linux as part of my foray towards  being a certified Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator this August. You see, the prerequisite for the companion certification course is LFS101x so I decided to give it a go and brush up my skills. Turns out I need it more than I think. 

You see, the course started to the promise of the Linux Foundation, the history of Linus Torvalds announcing his pet project to the public in which, to his words, "...won't be big or professional like GNU". The course also tackles the Linux Philosophy and gleans towards common Linux distros particularly from Debian and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. 

Ok, I know  the Linux basics, the Graphical Interface (well, some parts of it since I am a big Ubuntu desktop user) and how to navigate for the most part using the GNOME desktop interface. I also had significant experience using common applications for Ubuntu since I used it as the default operating system of my underpowered machine. Full disclosure, this salvaged me from my college days, with Ubuntu requiring CPU and RAM at a minimum, privileges I could not have to avail Windows at its utmost potential.

My progress in the course is a breeze until Chapter 7: Command Line Operations. I realized that there's more to the command line than the usual commands  that I know for both CentOS and Ubuntu. Aside from the usual commands for working with files, I realized the power of searching for files and an in-depth discussion of pipes from standard input, output and error streams. I also learned locate and find - exec commands which were powerful tools to locate files instead of me just using ls -s | grep <file_that_i_want_to_look_at> which obviously is not the correct and efficient way to go especially when you want to recursively do things from these collections of files you found. I also learned a deeper understanding of dpkg and rpm, in that it is used for package/s without dependencies vs their equivalent apt, yum, and zypper (which I just learned, sorry openSUSE fans) which handle dependency checks for installation and removal. Coming from my usual yum and apt commands, these are all invaluable tools that I can add in my command-line arsenal. 


this is a continuing blog post. see you in the next update...


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