Book Image

Mastering Linux Administration

By : Alexandru Calcatinge, Julian Balog
Book Image

Mastering Linux Administration

By: Alexandru Calcatinge, Julian Balog

Overview of this book

Linux plays a significant role in modern data center management and provides great versatility in deploying and managing your workloads on-premises and in the cloud. This book covers the important topics you need to know about for your everyday Linux administration tasks. The book starts by helping you understand the Linux command line and how to work with files, packages, and filesystems. You'll then begin administering network services and hardening security, and learn about cloud computing, containers, and orchestration. Once you've learned how to work with the command line, you'll explore the essential Linux commands for managing users, processes, and daemons and discover how to secure your Linux environment using application security frameworks and firewall managers. As you advance through the chapters, you'll work with containers, hypervisors, virtual machines, Ansible, and Kubernetes. You'll also learn how to deploy Linux to the cloud using AWS and Azure. By the end of this Linux book, you'll be well-versed with Linux and have mastered everyday administrative tasks using workflows spanning from on-premises to the cloud. If you also find yourself adopting DevOps practices in the process, we'll consider our mission accomplished.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Section 1: Linux Basic Administration
7
Section 2: Advanced Linux Server Administration
13
Section 3: Cloud Administration

The Linux operating system

Linux is a relatively modern operating system created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, a Finnish computer science student at the time, from Helsinki. Originally released as a free and open source platform prohibiting commercial redistribution, Linux eventually adopted the GNU General Public Licensing (GPL) model in 1992. This move played a significant role in its wide adoption by the developer community and commercial enterprises alike.

It is important to note that the Free Software Foundation community distinctly refers to Linux operating systems (or distributions) as GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU or free software.

Initially made for Intel x86 processor-based computer architectures, Linux has since been ported to a wide variety of platforms, becoming one of the most popular operating systems currently in use.

The genesis of Linux might be considered the open source alternative of its mighty predecessor, Unix. This system was a commercial-grade operating system developed at AT&T Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie in 1969.