Linux 101

© 2016 Rogue Wave Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

1

Linux 101Bill Weinberg – Linux FoundationJustin Reock – Rogue Wave Software


2

Who’s speaking to me?


3

Bill Weinberg

• Sr. Director & Analyst, Open Source Strategy– Three+ decades experience in embedded/mobile

&enterprise IT– Founding team member at embedded OSS pioneer

MontaVista Software, former analyst at OSDL and principal at Linux Pundit

– Consulting in open source business and technology strategy, open source management and marketing, legacy migration, etc.

– Author of ~200 articles and white papers on open source, mobile/embedded, automotive, security and related topics


4

Justin Reock

• Sr. Director and Lead Architect of Rogue Wave OSS Support Team– FL/OSS enthusiast and evangelist– Early adopter of Linux– Created CentOS Developer Group at Rogue Wave– Puts Linux on everything, because why wouldn’t you?


5

A brief history of UNIX…

Bell Labs (AT&T)

BSD (Berkeley S/W Dist)

FreeBSDNetBSD

OpenBSD

GNU Project GNU Linux

SunOS

Next Step Mac OS X

SVR5IRIX

HP-UXSolaris

AIXSCO UNIX

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Android

iOS


6

A brief history of Linux

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015

Hello everybody out there using minix – I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones

Tux becomes the Linux mascot

SCO Lawsuit (2003)

Invests $1B in Linux

Top 5 Linux Contributor

V2


7

Why develop on Linux?


8

Lots of reasons

• Powerful command line and tools• Many options for productivity improvement – scripting, etc.• Free as in free speech – modifiable, customizable, community-driven• Ease of prototyping• Accurate testing by easy recreation of production environments• Better web development with a natural environment for Apache or nginx• Hardened security options such as SELinux• Paving the way for containers and microservices• Automation through Puppet/Chef/Ansible• Remote administration through ssh• Scale to huge sizes without huge license costs• Linux makes you look cool!


9

It’s great for web development

• Linux is the home of the LAMP stack– Native support for major tools and frameworks

• Linux is a great web app prototyping environment– Easily install multiple servers / instances on one machine– Easy access to error logs for debugging

• Countless other web platforms – Drupal, WordPress, Tomcat . . .


10

Web dev tools

• Web application frameworks– Node.js, Rails, Zend

• Web servers & load balancers– Apache, NGINX, tinyHTTPd

• HTML editors and IDEs and syntax checkers and . . .


11

Any downsides?

• Too many ways to create “Linux apps”– A surfeit of APIs, frameworks, run-times and tools– No clear path to apps and interoperability (cp. Android)– Result is fragmented app space, ISV confusion and costs

• Orphan desktop– Tiny market share– Limited hosting of popular commercial apps– Mixed UX, difficult installation on some notebooks


12

How do I get started?


13

Pick your flavor

• Linux is just the kernel surrounded by a suite of supporting software

• It’s that supporting software that differentiates one flavor of Linux from another

• Pick a flavor that suits your level of expertise, the tools you’re likely to use, and the hardware environment on which you’ll deploy

• Main differences include package management and ecosystem, preinstalled software, and current Linux kernel version

• Pay attention to the community as well – quick releases, fast response to security vulnerabilities, development priorities

• Some distributions are highly focused, such as Kali Linux for Security Professionals


14

Something for everyone…


15

Porting and interoperability

• Cross platform development– Cross compiling with gcc and GNU tools– Cross platform frameworks and libraries

• Emulation and libraries– Full virtual machines – VirtualBox, QEMU et al– Libraries and platforms – Wine, Crossover, Cygwin,

Bash-on-Windows, Steam . . .• File systems

– Samba, NFS, FAT


16

Editors and IDEs on Linux

• Your favorite IDEs are already ported

• Eclipse and IntelliJ both run very well

• UX is nearly identical to other operating systems

• Editors such as Sublime Text and Atom are easy to install

• And classic command line editors such as vim, emacs, and nano let you edit powerfully from the shell


17

Your first install…

• Your Linux flavor’s community will provide installation media, usually in the form of a bootable ISO

• During the install, you’ll be able to configure system, software, and network options

• Many distros will allow you to choose a particular theme for your preinstalled software

• Such as in the next slide, where CentOS 7 allows you to choose between various environments

• From there, you can: – Use the flavor’s preferred package manager to install additional

software– Download packages for anything not provided by the package manager– Build from source!


18

Your first install…


19

Yes, Linux has GUI options too…

Gnome, inspired by Mac OS


20

Yes, Linux has GUI options too…

KDE, inspired by Windows


21

Embrace the shell


22

A quick overview of the filesystem• Everything is a file – if it’s not a file, it’s a process

Everything is a file


23

Go out and play!


24

Bare metal loves Linux…

• Hardware vendors bring-up on Linux, consumer hardware can be inconsistent

• Install it on your laptop or desktop computer (YMMV)

• Or on server hardware in your data center• GRand Unified Bootloader, or grub, is

supported by most modern flavors• Makes it easy to dual boot a Windows PC with

Linux• rEFind for Mac will let you dual boot Linux on

Mac hardware


25

Linux loves VMs…


26

And Linux loves containers…


27

LiveCDs

• Boot from a thumbdrive or CD directly into Linux without modifying your storage or boot sequence

• ISO files available for many flavors, get started quickly without installing anything!

• LinuxLive (Lili) USB Creator for Windows– Fully automated thumbdrive creation– Includes VirtualBox options as well as USB Boot– Maintain persistence wherever you run it from

• Easy way to get started right now!


28

Raspberry Pi

• A full system in a $35 box– 1.2ghz 64-bit quad-core ARMv8 CPU– 1GB RAM– 4 USB Ports– HDMI / Composite Video– MicroSD Storage– 802.11n WiFi / Wired Ethernet– Bluetooth 4.1 / BLE

• Multiple Linux builds available, easy install through NOOBS interface


29

Learn more

• Wealth of content online– Tutorials, MooCs, discussion groups, code exchanges– Online documentation

• Linux Foundation– Online training, MooCs, workshops, webinars– LinuxCon and collaboration summits– Certification and consulting– Legal training (CLE)


30

Questions?