Pass LPI 010-160 Exam in First Attempt Easily

Introduction

1. About the Exam

Let's discuss a few details about the LPI Linux Essential Exam. If you're like most of my students, you're taking this course because you want to earn your certification in Linux Essentials. Maybe you're working on this certification to advance your current career, or maybe it's because you're trying to get your first job as a Linux administrator. Either way, this course is designed to help teach you everything you need to know to pass that certification. To help you focus your studies throughout this course, it's important for you to understand how the exam is designed. Now the Linux Essentials exam is the first certification exam in the Linux Professional Institute's certification path. This certification is designed to test your ability to use the basic console line editor and demonstrate an understanding of the processes, programs, and components of the Linux operating system. The current version of the exam is known as Version One Six, and it's designated under the exam code as a closed-book exam, which means you're not allowed to have any notes, books, or study guides. During the exam itself, the exam is timed, and you're going to get 60 minutes to take the exam. During that 60 minutes, you're going to be given 40 multiple-choice questions to answer. The test is graded with a final point tally between 208 and 300 points, and to pass the exam, you have to earn at least 500 points. Now, to prepare for this exam, I recommend you take some practice exams. We've included quiz questions and two full-length practise exams with this course. When you take these practise exams, I want you to try to aim for 75% or higher to consider it a pass, because this will give you a comfortable ten to 15% buffer in case you have a bad test day or you get nervous when taking timed exams and certification exams in the test facility. Now, there are no prerequisites to take the Linux Essentials Exam because it's the first test in the LPI certification path, and this is considered an introductory-level certification. This exam is also not required to be taken more than once. Unlike some other certifications, passing this exam certifies you as Linux Essentials Certified for life. There is no renewal fee and no continuing education requirements for this exam. To schedule your exam, you need an exam voucher, though, because this is going to cover the cost of the certification exam. You can buy the exam voucher directly from LPI's website at a cost of $120. Now, once you have that exam voucher, you can then schedule your exam at any Pearson View testing centre worldwide at [email protected]. The vouchers you purchase are country-specific, so make sure you select the country you're going to take the exam in when you buy that exam voucher. Also, your exam voucher is good for twelve months from the date of purchase, so you have to take the exam within one year of buying your voucher. All right, so now that you know all about the exam, I hope you're ready to start learning all about Linux.

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Evolution of Linux

1. Introduction to Linux

In this video, let's talk about what Linux is. With the emergence of the Internet and new technologies, Linux has become so common that it's now a household name. But what exactly is it? Well, Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems that is developed as a distribution. It has been the operating system of choice for many educational and commercial institutions due to its robustness and extremely low cost of acquisition. Linux distributions include the Linux kernel and the supporting system software, as well as libraries to provide features that users are going to interact with. You may have heard of popular Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora, but there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other ones currently in development. Linux's popularity is mainly because it's open-source software, which allows anyone to freely download, modify, and redistribute it. Now we're going to focus on the concept of open-source software in much more detail in a future lesson in much more detail. But it's important to realise that much of the success of Linux is due to its open source origins. Most Linux distributions include a windowing system and a desktop environment that provides the user with a graphical user interface, much like you get inside Microsoft Windows. Again, we're going to cover all themajor features and functions of this wonderful operating system throughout this course. Now, there are many Linux distributions out there that are designed just for server use. These distributions will often leave out the graphical user interface altogether. This means the only way to use it is through the command line interface, known as the CLI or the terminal. This command shell does require proper syntax to properly utilise it, though. Now, we're going to spend a lot of time in this course discussing both the graphical user interface used in Linux and the command line interface that's used by the servers. It's definitely worth your time to learn to use Linux in both of these environments to become successful as a Linux end user or a Linux system administrator. So why should we want to learn to use Linux anyway? Well, if you take a quick look at the Internet, you're going to find that Linux is everywhere. We've already talked about the fact that over 96% of web servers are running Linux. Linux is considered the go-to operating system in lots of different industries because of the various disadvantages it has over other operating systems. This includes its low cost, being open source, and its ease of scalability.

2. Open Source Philosophy

As you've browsed the Internet or participated in some online forums, you may have heard the term "open source" before. In this lesson, we're going to discuss what "open source" means and how the open source philosophy impacts the Linux operating system. Open source refers to computer software or programmes in which the source code is readily available for public use or modification from its original design. Now, this encourages a lot of collaboration among programmers and general users that belong to that programme or that software community to help improve its design and its purpose. So what are some examples of great open source software? Well, if you just take a look at a simple web server, you're going to find a tonne of open source software being used. For example, if you're running an Apache webserver, then you're running open source software. How about WordPress? Well, WordPress is used to run over 30% of the Internet's websites these days. And guess what? It's all open-source software. This means you can go to WordPress.org, download the entire code base for the WordPress content management system, and modify it, edit it, and change it as much as you like. This is a great thing about open source software. You have full access to all of the code that's used to make these programmes run, and you can modify them to meet your exact needs. Now that the source code is then released by the software or the program's original designers under the terms of a software licence agreement, the licence will dictate what users can modify in the original packaged distribution and how they can redistribute those modifications, sometimes called versions or forks, to the general community or the general public. Now, there are many different types of software licences used in the open source community. These include the new general public license, the Apache licence, the MIT license, and even the unlicensed. These licences represent the entire spectrum of open source licenses, from highly protective to unconditional. Depending on your specific needs for your open source project, you can choose which of these open source licences works best for you.

3. Linux Distributions

Now, I've already told you that Linux is packaged into something known as a distribution. Distributions are also called "distros" for short. Each distro consists of a Linux kernel, which is the core computer programme with complete control over everything in the system: its supporting software, its libraries, and its configuration files. All of these components make Linux a complete operating system, just like Microsoft Windows or Mac's OS X platform. Linux distributions differ from one another depending on who the developers are and what they want their distribution to achieve. In order for you to understand these differences, we have to take a moment and describe the components of a common Linux distribution in more depth. Now, in the next few videos, we're also going to discuss which distributions are popular and the ways that developers keep these distributions up to date. Now, at the core of any Linux distribution is what's known as a kernel. A kernel is a low-level computer programme that functions as the bridge between the user and the computer's resources. Some of its functions include memory management and management of input and output devices. As the Linux kernel is constantly evolving, two distributions are likely to use two slightly different kernels as the developers make modifications and small changes to fix bugs or add features and functions to their kernel. Now, aside from the Distros kernel, some distros also come packaged with different software and tools like the X Windows system known as X Eleven or simply X, as well as other utilities that are used to manage discs that are critical to the system's normal functions. The X Windows system is an example of software that provides the basic framework for a graphical user interface, or GUI environment. This allows Linux users to draw and move windows on the monitor and interact with them using a mouse and keyboard, similar to what you're used to when you use a Windows or a Mac computer. Now, since the Linux distribution is a complete operating system, additional software such as server and networking programs, desktop environments, and productivity tools also ship with most Linux distributions. This supplemental software helps to provide specific types of branding for some distributions, especially when it comes to the desktop environment and the ability to manage the system easily. For example, you may need to add a printer or you may want to find and install commonly used productivity software like a word processor, a spreadsheet program, or a presentation program. These things can all be bundled as part of the distribution. Now, a unique feature of Linux is the way the startup processes are managed by the system. Different distributions have different scripts and utilities to launch programmes that link the computer to the network or present the login prompt, among many other common functions. Now, this gives each distribution a unique personality, which can then be configured according to your own unique, specific preferences. Typically, Linux distributions are available for download directly from their developers' websites. You can download the image file and then burn it to a CD or DVD. Or you can use a small programme to install that to a USB flash drive and use that as your installation media. Now, if you're a large company or a commercial user, you can also install the distro directly onto a private virtual server or a commercial cloud service, something like Amazon's AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft's Azure cloud service.

4. Distribution Life Cycle

Let's take a look at how Linux developers manage the distro lifecycle. This is commonly referred to as a release schedule. Now, release schedules specify when new versions are going to be released to the public. Generally, only the final release version, which is the most stable, is recommended for you to use. However, developers can also publish versions that are recommended to be used only for testing and debugging. Called prerelease versions, these versions are categorized as alpha, which is the very new and contains lot of bugs or beta, which is where most testing is really done. After beta testing, the final release version is put out, and it's considered stable. Now, most of the release schedules are publicly announced months or years in advance. However, some delays may be encountered due to security enhancements, debugging, and other factors. This practice is generally acceptable as long as the delay doesn't take too long and causes everyone to think that the distro has been abandoned by the developers. Now, this is actually something people do worry about because projects are abandoned all the time. Many smaller distros are created by just one or two people, and since they're usually put out for free, the developer may simply abandon the project because they don't have time to work on it anymore. After all, most of these smaller digital developers are doing it as a hobby or for fun. And if their life circumstances change, sometimes they have to stop the development of that distro so they can get a real job. Now, for that reason, I try to stick with the major and well-known distros for any Linux systems that I'm running. When you're looking at different distros, you're going to see that developers come up with catchy names for different versions. This is really helpful when it comes to referring to a specific version compared to the usual number-point numbering scheme. These catchy names can also differentiate a major version change from a minor one. For example, Ubuntu uses a two-word naming convention that uses an adjective and starts with the first letter of the animal it describes. So the current version is 19.4, which is known as Discodingo, while its previous version, 18.15, was known as Cosmic Cuttlefish. Like I said, these names get a little silly. Now, after the release of a certain version, it's typically going to be supported for a few months or up to a few years. It really does depend on the distro and the developers. During this period, the developers will regularly provide updates to improve the performance and features of that distro. They'll also put up security patches to fix bugs or vulnerabilities in the security of that system. Now, you can continue to use a version beyond its normal end of life support, but you are taking a risk here because it means there are no more updates and no more patches being sent out by the developers. This may be fine if you can patch a system on your own, but this is going to require you to compile it from source code and search for a solution from other users of that version to continue support past its end of life. It is much better for you to instead go to a regularly updated distro and upgrade to the next version before you reach its end of life date, though. Now, there are distributors that offer short-term support and long-term support versions. Long-term support versions, or LTS, are usually going to be favoured over short-term support versions because they're going to be more stable and help minimize disruptions and costs associated with upgrading when you're using them in a production environment. Now, for some Distros versions, upgrades can involve downloading an entirely new image of the new version and installing it as if it were a brand new operating system. However, this type of upgrading is time-consuming and requires a lot of user intervention. There are also other distributors out there that use what's known as a "rolling release schedule," which means that upgrading occurs in an ongoing manner and thus eliminates the hassle of installing it as a brand new operating system. This is probably what you're most familiar with if you're coming to Linux from a Windows or a Mac operating system, because both of those rely on the concept of rolling releases. They do this to send out updates and patches to their security issues and add additional features over time throughout their operating system.

5. Comparing Distributions

In this video, I'm going to compare a couple of different Linux distributions. This includes Ubuntu, openSUSE, Debian, and Gentle. You're going to notice that while they're all Linux, they all look and act just a little bit differently. The first one we want to look at getting is Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is going to come with the Unity desktop environment. By default, this is a very graphically pleasing environment, and it's really nice and well laid out. Now, Ubuntu is nice because it has a very graphical interface. For instance, you can click on those dots in the lower left corner and you'll see all the programmes that are installed, and you can then select them from there. Also on the left side, you have the menu bar, and from there, you can click on the files and you'll be able to have a desktop file system very similar to your Windows Explorer. Next, let's take a look at Web browsing. You can see that we have FireFox in the upper left corner. If you click on that, it'll open up, and you'll be able to go to any website you want. Next, we can go down, and we have the App Store, which is Ubuntu software. From here, you can go and search for whatever programme you need, whether it's audio and video games, productivity, and more. Installing them is just a simple click. In another video, we'll dig into some of those Ubuntu tools and some of those applications to show you how they actually work. The second distribution we want to look at is Open Sousa. I'm using this with a KDE desktop environment, so you can see what KDE looks like. inside an open-source operating system. You'll notice that it's laid out very differently. This looks more like a traditional window system with the Start menu in the bottom left corner. When you click on it, you'll be able to see things like the Power Button, your computer, and your applications. From here, you can click through the different menus and access different programs, just like in a window system. For example, let's go ahead and launch a Web browser. Here I'm going to go ahead and start up Mozilla Firefox, and from here we can open a new tab. We can go to deiontraining.com or whatever other website you want to visit. As you can see, this works just like it's Windows counterpart and it's something you're very familiar with. If you want to close the program, just click the X in the upper right corner and then click the Close button. Now if you don't like this desktop background, you can change that too by right clicking on the desktop and going to "Change background," which will bring up the wallpaper settings. From here, you can select whatever desktop you prefer. Again, one of the things you're going to notice with Linux is that it is highly customizable. Now, inside of Open Source, we also have a filesystem, and just like Windows Explorer, you can go and create files and folders and navigate through them. Finally, let me show you how you can open up something like a word processor. You can go down to the bottom left corner, which acts as your Start menu. Click on it and then find Libre Office Writer. From here, you can open it up, and you can see that this looks just like Microsoft Word. You can go through the file system. You can create a spreadsheet. You can create documents. You can create PowerPoints. All of that is supported from within Libre Office, as you can see here on the screen. Also notice that across the bottom of your screen you'll see multiple tabs, one for each programme that's open. Now again, this is how Open Say does it. But each Linux distro does do it a little bit differently. Also Opens a does have a terminal program. This is your command line. We're going to go into this a lot in this course as we go through the terminal and the shells. Later on in Ubuntu, the third distribution we're going to look at is Debian. And for Debian, I've chosen the NOME desktop. This is a different desktop that will give you a different look and feel than the Unity or the KDE that we looked at before. Debion is more of a flat operating system. It's not nearly as graphically pleasing as Ubuntu was. Again, though, there's a lot of ease to using it. You can go ahead and click on the activities. You can go ahead and type in what you're looking for. And for instance, if I wanted to open up Libre Office again, I could just type Libre, and you'd see all the different parts of Library Office there on the screen. If I wanted to open a spreadsheet, I clicked on LibreOffice Calc, and there we go. We now have our spreadsheet ready to go. If I go back up here to My Activities, I can also launch my web browser. Again, Firefox is installed by default. And to open a website, just open a new tab, type in the website and hit Enter, and up pops the site you want to go to. If you want to close it, click the X in the upper right-hand corner, and that will close out of the program. Very similar to Windows or Mac. Also inside of Debion, we have an application installer. If you click on this, you can search through categories, very similar to an app store or the Windows Store, and you can find what you want to use. Now, the big difference here is that this is all open source software. So there's no cost. All of these programmes are completely free to you. Let's take a look at the file manager inside Debian as well. You'll notice it looks a little bit different. Again, it performs the same functions as the other ones. It's just how this distribution wants to display it. This fourth distribution is known as Gen 2, and with Gen 2 I'm using the Xfce desktop environment. This is a very low-system-requirement and low-intensity desktop. As you can see, it looks a little bit more flat and a little bit more muted than the other desktops we've looked at here you'll notice that we do have buttons and icons just like we did before. This one actually reminds me more of a Macintosh system, though, with its application launch bar located along the bottom of the screen. Now, Generation 2 is known as one of the lower requirement distributions. So if you have a slower computer, Gen 2 is a good option. Now if we right-click on the main screen, you can see we can launch our applications from there. For instance, if I want to open a terminal emulator, I can do that by right clicking, going to Applications, and then going to the terminal emulator. And here is how I can access the shell, which is the text-based environment that exists behind the desktop. You'll also notice that the Applications bar is located in the top left corner. Now, if we want to open up the file system, we can just double click on a file or folder such as the documentation folder, and again, you can see it looks a little differently. Next, if we want to find an application, we can click on the magnifying glass, which serves as our application finder. From here, we can find any application that's installed on the system. If I want to go ahead and launch a web browser, I can do that by going up to the applications in the upper left corner and clicking on Web Browser. This will launch our web browser, which in this case is Firefox. You can install other web browsers if you like as well, but by default that's what comes installed, and once again we can open a new tab, type in a website, hit Enter, and launch that website. Again, this is all very familiar to anyone who has used a Mac or Windows computer. So as you can see, Linux is not that scary. It works very much like you're used to in Mac or Windows. It's just that you have a lot of choices here. You have to choose the distribution you want, and by choosing that, you're going to be choosing what distribution you want and what desktop you want. And by choosing which distribution you want and which desktop you want, you're going to have different choices, and they're going to act and look differently. But, at their core, they're all still Linux, because Linux is the underlying kernel that powers this entire operating system.

6. Embedded Systems

Up to this point I've been discussing Linux as a complete operating system. But this isn't the only purpose that we use Linux for. In this video, we're going to discuss how Linux is used on everyday devices other than computers. These devices are commonly known as embedded systems. Now, an embedded system is a controller with a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electrical system. It's embedded as part of this complete device, often including the hardware and the mechanical parts. Now, as a matter of fact, embedded systems control many of the devices that you use or see every day. These devices include but aren't limited to things like industrial automation, navigation equipment, medical devices, and many others. Linux is now being shipped in many consumer devices such as wearable technology and even home appliances due to its low cost and ease of customization. Some, like the Adreno and the Raspberry Pi, are small credit card-sized embedded systems that can be used to create other complete systems. These include things like robots and ultra-portable computer systems. The Adrenal and Raspberry Pi are available as do-it-yourself (DIY) kits on the market. This Linux-based operating system that's embedded in these kits has a very small footprint and is highly customizable. Android is a Linux kernel-based operating system that was acquired and extended by Google, and it's become a highly competitive platform as well. It's being used in smartphones, tablets, home appliances such as TVs, and even in vehicle entertainment systems. It is a really customizable and truly complete operating system that is based on Linux. Now, applications can be added to Android to further enhance the features of the device that they're installed on. For example, there are applications for media content such as photos and videos and social media as well as games. And these are the things that are most likely to be installed on something like a smart TV or a vehicle entertainment system. Now, due to having Android, TVs are now becoming complete multimedia centers, and they can show you not just TV shows but also the Internet, video streaming, web browsing, video games, and more. Android has really grabbed a huge chunk of the market share for these types of devices. This is because Android is highly scalable, user-friendly, open source, and free to manufacturers.

7. Hardware Requirements

Alright, let's talk about the type of hardware you need to be able to run and install Linux effectively. These prerequisites are known as system requirements, and they are often used as a guide as opposed to an absolute rule. The most common set of system requirements is defined by any Linux distribution as its physical computer hardware requirements. Now, a hardware requirements list is often accompanied by a hardware compatibility list known as an HCL. An HCL is going to list all the tested, compatible, and sometimes incompatible hardware devices for a certain distro. Most distros have two sets of system requirements: minimum requirements and recommended requirements. Now, with increasing demand for higher processing power and resources in newer versions of certain distros, these system requirements tend to increase over time. Now, usually, developers will publish system requirements for a specific version of their distribution on the download page of their website. These lists will typically state the required processor speed, the amount of RAM you need, the free hard drive space, whether you need an optical or removable mediadrive, the type of display you need, and other peripheral devices that are supported and used. So let's go ahead and discuss the minimum system requirements for a moment. These requirements are for the lowest possible amount of hardware that you need to be able to successfully boot Linux and then use it with its basic functionality. Now, as an example, Disco Dingo, which is the latest version of Ubuntu, requires a computer with at least a dual-core processor running on two hard drives. Now, another distro like Antex only requires a computer with at least a Pentium III processor, 256GB of RAM, and a 2.7-gigabyte hard drive. Now, Pentium three computers were manufactured from 1999 to 2001. So it's quite amazing that a modern operating system like ants can run on a system that's more than 20 years old. That's the idea with these minimum requirements. Now, the second type of system requirements is what's called "recommended." Recommended system requirements are going to list the hardware that somebody should have in order to fully maximise the system's potential. This allows someone to use applications like video editing software or play 3D games that require high frame rates for smooth gameplay. Most video graphic cards are going to be specified in the recommended list, not the minimum requirements. Also, anything higher than the minimum system requirements will also become recommended. So if you had a minimum of 2GB of Ram required, well, you might be recommended to have 4GB or 8GB. Now, you need to also be careful about what you're using because some hardware that you add may have incompatibilities with your distro. And so just because it's more powerful than the minimum requirements doesn't mean it's actually better. For example, if I put in a certain video graphics card that has 4GB of RAM, that would be better than the minimum requirements. But if there's no drive drivers that exist for that graphics card. I could render the entire system unstable or unusable.

8. Installing Linux

In this lesson, I want to show you how you can install a version of Linux on your own machine. Now in my case, I'm going to be using a Mac OS X desktop, but you can use a Windows machine or a Linux machine if you already have one. Now we're going to use a bunch. So I'm going to go to Google Chrome, and we're going to go to Abundu.com. Now once we get to Abundo.com, we want to go over to the download section. And underneath downloads, we're going to choose which version we want to download. For my example here, I'm going to go ahead and use the 18.4 LTS version, which stands for Long Term Support Version. We'll just click on that, and it's going to go ahead and start downloading for you. And this is an almost two gigabyte file, so it will take a little bit of time if you have a slower Internet connection. The type of file it's going to download is known as an ISO file. That would be a disc image for a CD or DVD. In this case, because it's 2GB, it's going to be a DVD image. Now as far as how you can install this, you can do it in a couple of different ways. If we go back to that download section, we can go ahead and go back up here and go to our download section. You'll see these tutorials. Now let me go ahead and zoom this in for you. We have a couple of different ways to do this. One is that you can burn a DVD of this, and then you're going to be able to load the DVD into the system and install Ubuntu onto your system. You can also create a bootable USB drive to do this as well. Another nice thing is that they have great guides on how to install Ubuntu's desktop programme right here, and you can click that as well. Let's go ahead and look at how you burn a DVD on a Windows system. So I'm going to right-click on this and open it in a new tab for us to look at. Now again, they have wonderful, wonderful documentation here. It'll tell you exactly what you need. In this case, you need the ISO file that I just downloaded and a blank DVD, and of course, a DVD writing drive. Next you just click on the big red button here and it will go and show you the instructions. You take that ISO file, right-click it, and click Burn. A disc image gives you step-by-step directions. From here, you're going to select your burner. You're going to put a disc in and you'll click Burn. It's really that easy at that point if you're doing it on a Windows 95, 98, ME 2000, XP Server 2003, or Vista machine, which you shouldn't be using because those are older. You're going to have to use some kind of disc burning software like Info Recorder, as they show here. But if you're using Windows 7 or newer, it's built into the operating system, and then you'll go through the tutorial to install it. Like I said, burning a DVD is super simple. Now, if you're using a Mac system, just go ahead and click on the Mac one, and it will walk you through that as well. Let's take a look at how you'd create a bootable USB drive because a lot of people don't have a DVD burner. So again, I'm going to use Windows because that is the more popular operating system for people. And in here again, you're going to see what you need. This will tell you that you can make a USB stick that will be able to install or upgrade Ubuntu. You could test Ubuntu directly from that USB. You can boot it up on a friend's machine or an Internet cafe and you can use that stick to be able to fix a broken configuration as well. Now, as far as creating it, it's pretty simple. And again, they do have tutorials for Mac OS X. If you're a Mac user like me, then again we'll click that right arrow, and here's what you're going to need. You're going to need a four gigabyte or larger USB stick. Isn't that why this image is 2 GB? And so we need to have a large enough disc to hold all of that. Also, we will need Windows XP or newer. So if you're running seven, eight, or ten, you're in good hands. And then you're going to download a free and open source product called Rufus. Rufus. And again, we do need that ISO file. Rufus is the tool that's going to take that DVD image and copy it for you properly to the USB drive, because you can't just drag and drop it. So again, you're going to download the file just like we did here. then we're going to go next. You'll launch that Rufus program, insert your USB thumbstick into your computer, and then select the USB thumbstick to this F drive, which is an eight gigabyte thumb drive, just like they did here. Next we're going to go here and you're going to see that we're going to do the next thing, which is figure out what kind of boot we're going to use. They recommend using Freedom, so we'll just click that and select it, and that will automatically take your master boot record and your BIOS for that system and get it all set up for you. You can also give it a name here. And in this case, they're just going to use Ubuntu 18.4.1 Desktop, which was the default from the ISO. And then we're going to go down and click-select the file here, which is going to be our ISO image that we just downloaded. And then once we get to there, we are now going to go ahead and hit start. Once you hit Start, it's going to go through, and, say, I might need to download some additional files. Go ahead and say yes. Next, you're going to get some warnings. Go ahead and say yes to that and say you're going to write it in ISO mode, and then you're going to go through and it's going to write that ISO to the disc for you. Once it's all done, you're going to go ahead and hit close. And at that point, you have a USB drive that successfully has the ISO for Ubuntu on it. Now once you have that, you're going to go through the installation process. If you don't want to install it onto your system and take over your entire hard drive, though, and you just want to test out Ubuntu, you can do this within a programme called VirtualBox. You just go to virtualbox.org, and from the main page you're going to click the big download button. It will take you to the screen, and you're going to select the version that you need for your operating system. If you're a Windows user, click Windows Host. If you're a Mac user, click OSXHost, which is what I am. This is a fairly small program, so it only takes a couple of seconds for it to download here. And now it's already downloaded. Okay, so let me go ahead and get out of Chrome, and I'm going to go here, and you can see my Ubuntu images here. And below that is the MyVirtualBox image I just downloaded. I'm going to open up VirtualBox. On a Windows machine, you would double click and run through the installer programme here. On a Mac machine, it works a little bit differently, so it's going to open it up as a disc image. And then once it says "disc image," we can double-click on the installer programme here. We'll run through the installer really quickly. Pretty much, we're going to accept all of the defaults. Go ahead and hit Continue. Go ahead and hit Continue. We're going to go ahead and hit Customize and make sure everything is selected. Go ahead and hit install. Putting your username and password offit goes and it's done. Go ahead and hit close and move it to the trash. It's that simple on a Mac. Now it is going to be here inside my programs. You'll see VirtualBox. So I'm going to go ahead and open that up. and from here, I'm going to go ahead and hit New. This is going to create a virtual computer inside my computer. Now you're going to give it a name, and the name I'mgoing to give it is Ubuntu, and I'm going to call it18.4 LTS because that's the version I'm going to use next. We're going to select what it is, and it already recognised that Ubuntu is a Linux machine and it's a 64-bit machine. Go ahead and hit Continue. Here, you're going to select how much memory you want to give it. By default, it only selects 1GB of memory, which is great if you have only 4GB or 8GB on your system. On my computer, I have a lot of memory, so I'm actually going to increase this up to 4096, which is 4GB for my virtual machine. This will allow me to run bigger and faster programmes as I play with it. Next, we're going to create a virtual hard disk, and they are going to, by default, create one that is only 10 GB in size, which will be fine for our purposes. You could make it larger if you wanted to. And then we're going to select it as a VirtualBox disc image. Next we're going to use dynamic allocation, which means it's not going to use all 10 GB until it needs it. It's going to grow as it needs to, up to 10GB in size. From here, we can go ahead and select how big we want that hard disk. Again, 10GB is the default, and I'm going to leave that there for this case. Once you do that, that system is now built, but nothing's been installed yet. So if I go through here and I click on Start, it's going to boot up this virtual computer, and you'll see there is nothing in the disc drive. And so if I hit cancel, nothing's going to happen because it's just an operating system with nothing inside it, and there is no disc found. So what I'm going to do is closethat out and power that machine off. And instead, what I want to do is attach that ISO that we downloaded from that install disk. To do that, we can go here and click on Storage, and then we're going to click on where it has this empty disk. And all we have to do is click the little disc icon and choose a virtual optical diskfile, in this case, an ISO on my system. That's the one I downloaded. It's sitting in my Downloads folder. Go ahead and hit Open and then Okay. Now what I've done is place this virtual disc inside the virtual DVD player. So now when I start up this computer, it's going to try booting up from that disk. Now, before I launch this Ubuntu system and install it, one thing I want to do is to go ahead and change the resolution of my display. The reason for this is that by default, VirtualBox is going to use a very low resolution. And so if I go ahead and start this machine up, you're going to see how tiny it is inside my display because I have a five-k retina display here on this Mac. And so you can see, it's only going to use this small portion of my screen. So what I'm going to do is scroll back over here, and I'm going to change the display resolution on my Mac. And so now I've made the display resolution much bigger. So, with a lower resolution display, I'll see things in a much larger size on my screen. So that's good for us. For right now, I'm going to go ahead and close those display properties and go back to my virtual box, and let me go ahead and make it bigger here and switch back to full screen—that's a little bit easier for us to see. And again, even on a 1080p monitor, it's not going to fill the whole screen yet. Once we install Ubuntu on the machine, we'll be able to configure the display to use all of our screen real estate. From here, we're going to select our language—English or whatever language you want to use. And you have two options. You can try Ubuntu directly from that DVD, or we can install Ubuntu because we're going to be playing with this a lot throughout the course. I'm going to go ahead and install Ubuntu, so we have a full operating system there for us to use. We're going to select our keyboard layout, which is English and English, and if you want to test your keyboard, just click in there and go. This is a test, so make sure all the keys are working the way you want them to, then hit continue. Next, we have a normal installation or a minimal installation. Now, with a normal installation, you're going to get lots of different programmes installed. Things like a web browser, file utilities, office software that's equivalent to Microsoft Word and PowerPoint in Excel, media players, games, and so much more. This does take up more space on that hard drive, though, than a minimal installation. A minimal installation will just give you a web browser and some basic utilities. I'm going to go ahead and use the normal installation because we're going to want to play with some of these different pieces of software as we go through the course together. Next, you want to select downloading updates while installing Ubuntu. This means it's going to go to the Ubuntu server, make sure we get all the latest and greatest software updates and security patches, and install them for us. Additionally, if we want to install third-party software for better graphics, WiFi control, and other formats, we can go ahead and do that. I'm going to say yes. And the reason they're warning you about this is because not all of those are open source. Some of them have different licencing terms. Again, in our case, I want to have all that capability, so I'll accept that and hit Continue. Next, we have to figure out how we want to install Ubuntu. If you're doing this on a real Windows machine, it has a couple of options. One is that we can delete your Windows machine and install Ubuntu. That's what this first option is saying because we're doing this in a virtual box and it's a brand new virtual hard drive. That's fine for us. Now, if you had something where you wanted to multiboot, where when you turn on your computer, it gives you the option of going into Windows or going intoUbuntu, you can do that as well. And that's something under the something else category that does take a little bit more configuration. But there are great manuals online at Ubuntu.com to show you how to do that. For our case, as you're just learning and using Ubuntu, we're going to go ahead and erase the entire disc and install Ubuntu on this virtual machine for us. Next, do we want to write the changes to the disk? The answer is yes, because we want to continue with the installation. And then you're going to select your time zone. I am in the New York Times Zone, so that's fine for me. And next we're going to go in and give ourselves a name on this computer. My name is Jason, and I'm going to go ahead and leave that as the default of Jason's VirtualBox. There's my username. I'm going to go ahead and use Dion Training, and that's also going to change my computer's name. But I can also change that back if I want to and still call it Jason. And then I'm going to give it a password that I want to use. So I'm just going to go ahead and use the Ososecure word for password, and I can choose to log in automatically or require my password each time I log in. now because I'm not worried about security in this case. I'm more interested in doing things faster and quicker as we're playing with this machine. I am going to go ahead and log in automatically if you want to make it a little bit more secure. If this was a physical computer that lots of people had access to, you would want to have the password required to log in. Next, we'll go ahead and hit Continue, and at this point, it's going to go through and install the system, and it's going to go through and give us a lot of different information about Ubuntu as it's copying everything and working its way through. Now what I'm going to do is, instead of making us sit here and watch this, I'm going to go ahead and speed up the video and come back at the end of the installation. All right. Now that the installation is complete, we're going to go ahead and click Restart. Now, once it goes to reboot the machine, it's going to see that that disc is still sitting in the disc drive. Well, that virtual DVD is still sitting in that virtual DVD drive, and so we need to be able to get it out. How do we do that? Well, right now I'm in full screen mode because I hit that little green plus. And so I want to be able to pull myself back into windowed mode. To do that, I'm going to hit Shift Command and F, which brings it back down to a windowed mode. Now from there, I can bring this over, and along the bottom, you're going to see that you have different things down here. One of those is the CD, and you'll notice they had already taken the CD out for us, which is great. so all we have to do is click Enter. Now I'm going to go ahead and make this go full-screen again. And to do that, I can hit Command, Shift, and F. and from here we're going to go ahead and boot into Ubuntu. So we'll hit enter. All right, now we are here at our first boot, and you're going to see what's new in Ubuntu. And this is going to give you a little bit of a walk-around to show you what's different in version 18.4 versus the earlier versions. You can see they have the activities, the files, the calendar notifications, your system memory, your apps button, your dock, and your close button. Go ahead and hit Next. And from here, there is a live patch option. This will allow you to download those updates as needed, and you'd be able to do this without rebooting your system. So I like doing this because it's a little bit more convenient for me to reboot each time. And again, you'll have to put in your password that you set up during the install and then hit Authenticate here. You're going to need to set up a single sign-on account if you want to be able to use their Ubuntu services. If you don't want to do that, you can go ahead and just click Cancel. And if you do cancel that, you're not going to be able to use Live Patch. But if you want to use Live Patch, you're going to have to set up that account. So it's up to you if you want to set one up. It's a great tool. if you want to skip that. For now, you can just go ahead and hit Next. Next. You can help Ubuntu by sending them information from your system. You could say yes or no again. It depends how privacy-minded you are. For right now, I'm going to say no, and we're going to go ahead and hit Next. Now it says we're all ready to go. We've got all these different pieces of software that we can click and start using, or we can just hit Done. And so there we go. Now there is some new, updated software that we need to go ahead and install. So we can either install that now or we can skip it. I am going to install it now because I like having my system up to date with the latest software because that means there are all the latest security protections as well. So we'll go ahead and hit Install now, and it's going to go through there and ask you for your password one more time. Anytime it tries to make a system change, just like Windows, it is going to ask for your permission by using a password. And that's it. That's basically how to set up your brand new Ubuntu 18.4 machine, and we're ready to start using it. At this point, we're on the desktop, and you can see it looks a little bit different than what you're used to on Windows or Mac. All right, now that we're at the desktop and we've gotten everything ready to go, there's one thing that's really bugging me, and it's probably annoying you too, and it's this big black bar going across our screens. Why is it doing this? Well, because by default, VirtualBox doesn't know how to use the entire screen. You have to set up a thing called Guest Editions to allow it to do that. Now on Ubuntu, the first thing we have to do is install some software that will let us install those drivers to take up the full size of the screen. To do that, we're going to go ahead and click on "Show Applications," and then we're going to start typing in the word "Terminal." and then go ahead and click on Terminal. Now once you're in the terminal, we're going to go ahead and run a command. This command is going to install some basic software that we need to be able to install other software later on. We're going to talk a lot more about the terminal later, but for right now, just type the command exactly as you see it on my screen. It has to be letter for letter, uppercase and lowercase, perfect, or it won't work. So make sure to check it twice. So it's going to be pseudo-space, install-space, Linux headers, dollar sign, double-check your work, and make sure it matches exactly pseudo apt Install Linux dash, headers, dash, dollar sign, you name, R, and build essential spacedkms, then press Enter. Once you do that, you'll put in your password and offit goes and say yes, I would like to install it. This will take just about 30 seconds, and once it's done, we're going to get back to that Terminal prompt once again. And here we go. All right, so from here, we can go ahead and close that window. Now, go to your virtual box's menu bar and select Devices, install guest edition CD image. This is going to put a virtual CD into the subunit with the software we need to be able to go full screen. When we do that, Ubuntu is going to recognise it and say, "I found software that can automatically be started." Do you want me to run it? I'm going to say yes or run in this case. And again I'm going to put in my password, then click Authenticate, and off it goes back into the terminal. It will install the script so that it can compile and install the necessary drivers for the sound and video to allow us to go full screen. This installation does take about a minute or two, and so I'm going to speed up as we go through this. All right, now that we're at the end of the installation, go ahead and hit Return to close the window. And now we want to be able to restart this computer so that it's ready to go full screen. What I'm going to do is click here on the power button, go down here to the power button, and then I'm going to click Restart. We're booting up that virtual machine once again. This should take us about 30 to 60 seconds, and we should come back to our desktop because I did select that auto-login feature. And as you can see, we now have a full-screen desktop that is ready to use. All right, now that you have this wonderful Linux system ready to go, we're going to play with it more and the upcoming lessons as we go through the course. And you have this to be able to play with and experiment with as we go through and do it.

9. OS Differences

Now that we have an overview of Linux, let's see how it compares with other operating systems. Now, there are hundreds of other operating systems in use today. These range from the commonly used ones that we're going to use, such as Windows or Mac, to those that are specifically designed for unique systems. Now, in this video, we're going to be looking at Linux and two of the most popular operating systems, Windows and Mac OS X. Now, when we talk about Windows, it dominates the other two, with 90% of home users and companies preferring Windows to other operating systems. Now, this is driven by the fact that most software developers release their products on the Windows platform, making it widely available and widely supported. Now, macOS X, which is made by Apple, has an overall user base of only about 7%, while Linux accounts for less than 2% of total home user market share. Now, this doesn't mean Linux isn't important, though, because these numbers we're talking about are for home users. When it comes to enterprise server environments, Linux dominates over Windows and other operating systems, taking over 75% of the market share. But for home users, the overall user experience of Windows and Mac OS X has made them both very popular. Linux, on the other hand, was infamously known as an OS only for computer experts and hackers. when it comes to the risk of malware. Windows is most prone to this because of its larger user base. And this makes a lot of sense because it's acceptable that attackers who want to circumvent security measures are going to do that to steal data for profit or gain. And because Linux is very unlikely to be affected by malware because its source code is openly available and the community of users can always modify it and detect bugs or vulnerabilities that exist, Now, macOS X, being Unixlike, also enjoys a lesser exposure to vulnerabilities than its Windows counterpart, but it is still susceptible to malware due to its larger user base in comparison to Linux. Now, when you're using Windows, this requires you to buy a license, and you have to pay for that. Linux, on the other hand, is open source, and therefore it is free for you to download and use. Now, macOS is also free to use like Linux, but it's only able to be run on systems built by Apple, which means that in order for you to use MacOSX, you have to purchase the hardware and that system from that tech giant, and that also goes with higher prices. Now, when you want to run Linux as an operating system, you can do this from the command line if you wish, unlike using Windows or Mac. Now, this is especially helpful if you need an OS to be run on a system with limited resources, such as an old computer, or for a specific purpose like a server or an embedded system. Now, we're going to be discussing more about how to use Linux from the command line later on in this course, and we're going to spend a good bit of time covering the different commands in detail to help you become more proficient at it. Now, Mac OS X and Windows run entirely as a graphical user interface, or a Gui. Now, in hindsight, Microsoft did develop a command-line-only OS that was known as MSDOS back in the early 1980s. But with the steady development of GUI-based operating systems from the 1980s on, Das slowly faded away into being merely a command prompt within the Windows environment and not a complete OS on its own. Now, for a Mac OS X system, there is actually a command-line environment inside of it known as the Terminal. Unfortunately, most Mac users never use it and instead rely solely on the graphical user interface. Overall, each of these operating systems has its own positives and negatives. Now, we just mentioned some of these as we went through this lesson, but we're always going to leave it up to you, the user, to choose which OS is best for your needs. Now, OS, since this is a Linux course, we are definitely going to be focusing on Linux mostly throughout the rest of this course. But I'll bring up Mac or Windows as we compare what you're learning in Linux to what you might already know from those operating systems.

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