Welcome, you're watching another great
episode right here on ITProTV. Right now, we're taking a look
at CompTIA's IT Fundamentals for exam FC0-U61. I'm your host, Ronnie Wong. And today, we're gonna be diving
into more operating systems, and more specifically,
taking a look at GNU/Linux. And here to help us of course, well, is
Mr. Linus Torvalds' adopted son himself, Don Pezet. LAUGH]
Don, how are you doing? [LAUGH]
I am doing great, Ronnie. [LAUGH] Ready to jump in and talk about Linux. [LAUGH] That's a good setup for me here. So we are gonna be talking about
the Linux operating system. Which is a very misunderstood
operating system for a lot of people, especially if you’re new to computers or
just getting into IT. Because Linux has a pretty
interesting history. It is primarily a server
based operating system. So you’ll see it used
in tons of website and Internet infrastructure that’s out there. But it also a desktop operating system, which means you may be running it on
your laptop or desktop right now. Odds are you aren't,
it actually has a very, very small market share
in the desktop side. So a lot of us haven't been exposed to it. But when you jump into the server world,
Linux actually has the majority of the market share, and so it is a very
heavily deployed operating system. It is a lot different than the other
OSs that we've talked about, that are owned by corporations. You have the Microsoft Windows and
the Apple macOS. Here you have GNU/Linux, which is an open operating system that
is free, that anybody can download and create, and modify, and
just have ultimate access to it. Which is partly why it's been so
successful in the server world. So in this episode, we're gonna take
a look at Linux, how it functions, what it does, what kinda makes it different than
the other OSs that are out there, and just kinda get our feet wet with
an operating system we don't normally get exposed to. All right, Don. Now, I've previously alluded to
this in my intro of you here. Can you tell us a little
bit more about the history? I do understand that it is from a guy,
that his name is Linus Torvalds. But can you share a little bit and bring us up to date on where we are today? All right, so Linux, it's been around a lot, right? It actually was released in, I believe
in 1991 or 1992, the early 1990s. And basically it's the product
of a hobbyist, right? There was a university student
at a university in, gee, was it Norway or Finland? It was in one of the Nordic shield countries. [LAUGH] But it was a gentleman named Linus Torvalds. And he was at a university where he was
working on a mainframe system that run the MINIX operating system,
it was based on Unix, right? So Unix was an operating system that came
out of AT&T Laboratories in the 1970s. It was designed as a programmer's
operating system, and it was designed for systems that were way too expensive and
complex for any normal person to have. So you only had access to them when you
were working for large corporations or when you were at universities. Well, Linus, he was at a university and
he was working on these systems. And he said, wouldn't it be nice if at
the end of the day I could go home and I could use a system that was similar, that was compatible with what
I was using at the university? But I don't have hundreds of
thousands of dollars to invest in infrastructure like the university does. What could I create on my own? And so he launched the idea of Linux. It came from just one person,
Linus Torvalds. And he said, I'm gonna create an operating
system that is compatible with these bigger systems that
are all based on Unix. So it is a Unix-like operating system. And he just took his name Linus and
combined it with Unix, to create the Linux name that we have for
the operating system today. Now, one man can only create so much. And what Linus actually created
was what was called a kernel, and we've talked about the kernel
in other episodes. That's the heart and
soul of an operating system. It's that piece that's controlling all of
the interaction between the software and the hardware and all of that. So a very, very critical piece, but that's
what he made, just that one little piece. And in the beginning, that kernel,
it was less than a megabyte in size. In fact, most people's kernels today
are still less than a megabyte in size. There's not a huge amount
of construction in there. But by itself,
a kernel is practically useless. I mean, it's the heart and soul. But without everything that goes around
it, imagine as a human being, what would you be if you were just your heart? Right. It's no good, you need everything else. You need lungs and a brain, and all the other components in
order to actually be functional. If you were just a heart, well, first off, it would be really gross. [LAUGH] But second, I mean it would just sit there and
beat, I guess. [LAUGH] So
that's how the kernel is inside of Linux, it's gotta be surrounded by other things. It's gotta be surrounded by
a graphical user interface. It's got to be surrounded by a command
line interface, and commands, the actual tools that we run. Well, Linus didn't create all of that. Instead, his kernel gets
packaged with a number of other tool sets to create what
we generally refer to as Linux. And the most popular tool set
is one called the GNU tools. And the GNU tools are free and open source tools that provide you with
things like a Bash command line interface, and other tools that are available,
to be able to function. It's all from several different projects. So unlike Microsoft Windows where
the entire operating system comes from Microsoft, or macOS where the entire
operating system comes from Apple, when you deal with Linux,
the operating system comes from hundreds, thousands of different companies and
people that have all contributed code for free to come together and
form up an operating system. And because it's all free,
anybody can change it. If Ronnie decided right now,
I'm gonna make my own Linux, he could. And then he could brand it with his name. It could be called Ronix, right, and-
[LAUGH] [CROSSTALK] That's terrible. Not a great ring to it, but we'll work on it. [CROSSTALK] Marketing's
gotta get involved. But he can create Ronix, right? And then he can push it out, and people
can download it, install it and run it, and be like, I just upgraded to Ronix 2.0,
it's awesome. He can do that because it's free. It's free, it's open source,
anybody can run it. It does make it a little difficult
to film episodes like these though, because I wanna show you Linux. But Linux takes so many different forms. A website called DistroWatch put together
what they call the Linux family tree a few years ago. Where they map out all the different Linux
distributions that are available, where people have packaged the Linux kernel with
other systems to make an operating system. And let me just show you,
it is a massive diagram. I'll see if I can maybe get
this one in higher res. But once it loads, it is literally
thousands of different versions. And I know it looks like it is loading
really tiny, but the picture is really, really big. But basically, there are thousands
of Linux distributions out there, and they started with one or
two original distributions. And from there, they have grown,
there we go, now it's loading. They have grown to expand out into all of
these little derivative works, all right? So when I say the Linux operating system, maybe you're running one
of these core versions. This one right here is Slackware. But you'll see where other people have
taken Slackware, and then they modify it, they change it. Maybe they add some more tools into it,
or change some defaults or whatever. And you end up with Sentry Firewall, or
Plamo Linux, or VectorLinux, Freepia, Slax I've never heard of these right? And I use Linux every single day. I've been using Linux for 20 years. I've never heard of half of these. Probably more than half of
these I've never heard of because a lot of them are very small,
purpose built projects. But in the Linux world there are a handful
of distributions that are very, very popular that are considered
core that a lot of people run. So for example here's Fedora Linux. I run Fedora Linux on my
own personal machine. In the workplace I run Red Hat Linux,
which is right here, and you'll see where Red Hat has forked,
and been given numerous names from other companies that have used
it to create their own Linux. But the most popular one is
a distribution called Ubuntu. Ubuntu Linux is probably the most popular
Linux distribution that's out there. And it's actually a derivative itself. It's built off of
a distribution called Debian, which is the one I was
about to say a moment ago. The image is still loading,
it is a massive image. But you can see Ubuntu right here and
see all the lines coming off of it. As it branches out into
all the derivative works, that's because Ubuntu is such
an incredibly popular distribution. And that's probably the one. If you're just getting started with Linux,
if you get never used it before and you want to experiment with it,
Ubuntu is probably the best one, as far as being the most stable, and
user-friendly, and easy to implement. Now, I'll tell you in a business
sense I never use Ubuntu. In a business sense, I typically rely on more stable
versions of Linux like Red Hat. Red Hat is probably the most stable,
and it's commercially supported. Ubuntu is a little more cutting edge,
and as a result is a little less stable. Well, on a workstation I'm okay with that,
right. If my workstation crashes that's not a big
deal, I just reboot, you're fine, right. But on a server, I can have thousands
of customers on that server. If it reboots, that's bad. I want stability there,
and we have that choice. It's not like Windows or
MacOS where you get this one OS, that's what you got to go with. In the Linux world you can pick and
choose. And I can say, hey on my workstation
at home I'm gonna run Fedora because I want something that's cutting edge. Or I'm gonna run Ubuntu because I
want something that's cutting edge. But on my servers I want Red Hat
because it's more stable. And if something goes wrong there
is actually a company behind Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I can sign up for commercial support,
it's not free, I've got to pay for that. But if something goes wrong, I can pick up the phone and
I call them and I can ask for help. But if you think about it,
like Microsoft Windows, it's the most popular
operating system in the world. Ronnie, have you ever called Microsoft for
help? I have called Microsoft for help
And what was that expericence like? Its was nightmareish to say the least. [LAUGH] You are waiting and waiting and waiting. And sometimes it's the call
where you get to that point and they're just like we'll just have to call
you back, and they'll tell you at time period that they may call you back in. [LAUGH] May. May, and it may be after, or it may be way before, but
you never can really guess. And even if you pay for Windows, they still charge you for
support when you call, right? So it is not like you're getting free
support from Microsoft Windows, so it is a very challenging environment,
it's not very friendly. Well, you end up supporting yourself and
if you're used that, if you're used to supporting yourself. You can run Linux absolutely free. Doesn't cost you a dime. And in fact with Linux they're more
willing to support older hardware too because they don't make
money off of hardware sales. So they don't care if you're using
a laptop that came out this year or a laptop that came out 10 years ago. You can load a Linux distribution on
there and it'll typically run really, really well, even on low hardware. All right, now, as I describe this, some
of you are probably thinking, all right. With Microsoft,
they are a multi-billion dollar company. They have hundreds of
thousands of employees. Obviously they're gonna create a great,
rock-solid product. Apple, they're a multi-billion dollar
company with hundreds of thousands of employee. And they create a rock-solid product that
everybody knows and is familiar with. Linux on the other hand is pretty much
cobbled together by hobbyists and amateurs and people that aren't being
directly paid to develop for it. So it's probably not as good, right? But you'd be really surprised. Universities have largely latched on to
Linux, as a great way to learn and teach. And so you have a lot of students, a lot
of people who, ultimately will go and work for Microsoft, or will go and work for Apple,
that are working in the Linux space. And creating better hardware support and
functionality, so that we end up with a fully featured
operating system that it is easy to use, that is able to compete
against Windows and against Mac OS. So what I'm showing you
on the screen here, this is a default install of Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu Linux is made by
a company called Canonical. And it's built off of Debian Linux,
which is another free version. Ubuntu is free, Debian is free,
Fedora is free. Most of the distros that I have talked
about in this episode are free. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not free,
you have to buy that one. But most of the others are free. And then if you want support,
you pay for support if you need it. But if I just wanna throw
Linux onto a desktop, I can. Like here, I did Ubuntu and
I didn't have to pay for it. Now it's up and it's running and
I've got a graphical user interface. I've got tools and resources just like
any other distro that I can use, but it's just a bunch of things put together. So for example, the Linux kernel
is running under the hood, deep down inside it. If I were to,
if I were to open up my terminal and do a uname -a. In the background here I can see this
is running Linux or Ubuntu 4.15, so this is the Linux kernel and right
there I can see it's saying GNU/Linux. That's what's running at the heart of this
but a kernel by itself is not enough. And so the people at Canonical
took the Linux kernel and they put the gnome user
interface on top of this. This user interface is called gnome,
G-N-O-M-E, gnome. It's running the X window manager so that
when I run my applications they are being displayed on screen in various windows and
I can have multiple windows open. They've added,
like that terminal that I just opened, that's actually not part of the kernel,
that's just a terminal called bash. And so,
the bash shell is running right here, so that I can interact with the system and
issue commands and so on. I didn't have to put
this all together myself. Canonical did it for me. And so now I've got this
consistent user environmentྲ. And if I have a hundred laptops, I can put
Ubuntu Linux in all hundred of them and they'll all look and
function the same way. And you'll see that for the most part the screen elements
are aligned with Windows and Mac OS. That if you can use one OS,
you can usually jump over and start to use the other one. So there's a lot of similarity and
overlap in between the different operating systems
Now Don with the idea here of all the different distros that you've shown so
far. Does that mean that there's gonna be a
different user interface for everyone, or do they just kind of fall under Nome
as far as a generally category. So Nome is certainly the most popular,
right. But there are other ones
that are out there. In fact if you go and
download Ubuntu, right. So, if we go to the Ubuntu web page and we
go to download it, I guess I'll safe some time and click that download link that
is now gone, but if I go to download it. When you download Ubuntu, the default
is to have the Gnome interface. Well if you go and download Fedora,
it defaults to Gnome as well. And if you download several different
distros, all default to the Gnome UI. So I can install Fedora, or Ubuntu, or
Debian, and they all look the same, right? They are different under the hood. The people who put them together made
different decisions on different things. Like Ubuntu uses a different
shell than Fedora does. But at first glance,
the desktop does look the same. But there are other desktops out there. When you go to download Ubuntu,
sure it defaults to Gnome, but you have other choices. And so when I download it, see here it's
telling me I can download the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, or long-term support version. But over here,
we've got CR alternative downloads. And if you take a look at
the alternative downloads, they'll show you a number of different. Thought I could just scroll down for
it, let me click over to it. A number of alternative
versions of Ubuntu. Many of which use different
user interfaces and let's see, right here past it's shoot
they call them flavors and let me just search for it and find it. Where they use alternative
user interfaces. So for example there's the XFCE is a user
interface that's very streamlined, there's KDE there's LXDE,
see this screen right here. I'm on www.ubuntu.com/downloads/flavours
[LAUGH] it's spelled European style. Nice. anyhow so these are different ones if you
don't like that GNOME interface, you can always put in a different one. In fact, the current version of
GNOME is GNOME Version three. Some people really don't like it and
they like GNOME Version two. So you'll see down here Ubuntu MATE. MATE is actually GNOME two, GNOME two, the people continue to develop
instead of moving over to GNOME three. So you have that choice. You have that flexibility. You compare that to Windows or
Mac OS or you don't. They've made that choice. You have this one interface. That's what you get. With Linux, it's all about choice. It's all about options. Now, that is a double-edged sword. On one hand,
you have people like me where I like that. I like having the choice that I can
configure it however I want and I can pick and choose the components and
build the OS that's perfect for me. But I'm a technical user. Right? I'm used to that, I've worked with Linux a long time,
I know what I like, and I can do that. Your average end user doesn't want that. Right? They wanna browse the web. They wanna just be able to get in and run
their programs, they don't wanna fidget about changing a user interface, or
tweaking performance, or whatever. They don't wanna worry about it, right? Apple's mantra of, it just works,
well that's what a lot of people want. Or Microsoft, where Microsoft is worried
not so much about giving you choice, but about making it where as many
applications can run as possible. Right? Each company has a different focus. Apple wants thing to be easy, Microsoft wants to support as
many applications as possible, Linux wants to give you the choice to
design things the way that you want. It's different. And that's how people usually end
up picking an operating system. So, each of these user interfaces,
though, are just that. They're just user interfaces. They might look different, but the functionality they provide
is actually very similar. Xubuntu uses the XFCE user interface,
which is very, very streamlined. It doesn't have a lot of bells and
whistles like crazy shadow effects and fade in and
fade out when you launch a window. It's designed for performance. If you have a low end machines, or you still want to waste resources like
memory and processor on fancy graphics? XFCE is great for that. So you have that choice. You pick based on your own needs. And you can even install more than
one UI and switch in-between them. That's easy enough to do. You have that flexibility. I'm showing all this with Ubuntu,
Fedora is the same way. Red Hat, Enterprise, Linux, Santos. They're all the same way. They all have where you can snap on
different user interfaces if you want. If you find one that you're
really really comfortable with. All right Don, in the same way that we access like
the hard drive on the Windows and also the Mac OS. How do we do that here inside of Linux? All right. We have a file manager. And your file manager actually does vary
based on which user interface you're in. So I'm in GNOME right now. So it says the GNOME file manager. And so if I click on my file screen here,
I can browse through. And this is a component of GNOME. If you're using other systems, then they
might have a different file manager. This one, I believe that the actual
code name for it is Nautilus. You'll hear people call it Nautilus. There's another one called Thunar,
T, H, U, N, A, R. Which is the default in XFCE and
some of the other interfaces. But for
the most part they look the same and they look similar to what we've
seen in other operating systems. I can navigate through my file system. I'm seeing my desktop, documents,
downloads, music, writing. And this is all stuff
that's in my home folder. But I can also browse my
regular file system and start to explore the hard drive. So I see computer right here and
I can browse through my hard drive. And find resources and files, so you have simple file management just
like most distributions, right? However, in the Linux world,
they typically use different file systems, than in WIndows or Mac OS. So, in Windows you have the NTFS,
the New Technology File System. In Apple world you have APFS,
the Apple File System, or the older Mac OS, extended file system,
which is called HFS Plus. Well, neither of those work in Linux. There's ways to make them work but
those are commercially licensed software, they're not free. And so Linux distros
typically do not include them because the Linux distributions are trying
to maintain a level of freedom. So they use a different file system called
EXT or the extended file system which is different than the Mac OS extended so
don't confuse those. But they use EXT. There's actually a handful of other
file systems that can be used in Linux, because again, it's about choice. So there's XSF, there is ZFS, there's
a few other ones that are out there. They're not as popular, BTRFS I guess
is becoming a little more popular. They're not as popular,
but it's up to you. If you want to use them, you can,
you can pick and choose. The default though for
most Linux distributions is EXT and EXT gives you the ability to sort files
and folders, what I'm looking at here. You can also do links and aliases. So it might look like you have a file but it's actually pointing to a file
somewhere else, like a short cut. You have that functionality. You can do compression and encryption. That's all functionality built into EXT. Well, all of that is hidden from us. The end user, right? When we're in a graphical user interface,
we don't see that. But it is actually being
managed by the system. If I fire up my Disks utility here,
I can see that I've got a 275 GB disk. And that if I look at it this
one is formatted Ext4, right? So this one has the Ext4 file system
it's been configured that way. They configured it for me,
I just did a default to install it here so that's what they chose. But there are other file systems that are
available when you format a file system. I'm not gonna format this one
because I'm running on it. But when you format it, it actually let
you choose from different file systems. And, even as I say that,
the GUI is only showing me one. But, from the disk, you’ll actually see
there’s a ton of them that are supported. The cool thing about Linux is like most
operating systems it is very powerful. And they give you access to all of that. In the GUI we might not see it. Right? The GUI might have things kind of
simplified like I just saw there. When I went to format the disk Ext4 was
really the only one I could choose. There were other ones like LUX
which were just encrypted EXT. So you know, you have different
ones that are available there. But if I were to drop
down to my terminal and go into the command line,
which is where everything kind of started. We'll find that we have the ability to use all sorts of stuff as far
as ultimate file systems. And, I just have to find them. And we will see, here where it
has support for ext2, 3 and 4. It's got bfs, cramfs, some of these
different file systems that are available. And I can even install more. If I want zfs, btrfs, I can add those and
bring them in and start to make use of it. So that functionality
is there if we need it. If we're a power user we can get in there
and get at it, but for most people, they're not really interested. Now, Don, what about the idea of applications? So is installing an application the same
way as we would see like in what we saw in MacOS and in Windows? All right, this is probably the biggest difference
between Linux and the other distros. In Windows and in MacOS,
it's relatively easy to install software. In Linux, it's actually pretty difficult. [LAUGH] It's really difficult because each distro handles
applications a little bit different. So, applications are installed
one way under Fedora and a different way under Ubuntu,and yet
another way under. It varies from distro to distro. Now, most of our Linux operating systems
provide some kind of application store, and I can see I've got one
right here Ubuntu software. I can go into the store and
I can download applications here. So, if I want a graphics editor,
I can come in and I can search for. Actually, I'll just go to Graphics and
Photography, and I can browse through and I can find Blender,
which is 3D rendering software. The GNU image manipulation program,
Kim, which is like a Photoshop clone. I find these, and I can just click and choose to install for free,
and it's done, all right? But where I get a challenge is not every
software package is available here. I'm gonna have to go and
download it from a vendor, and when you download it from
a vendor website, they may or may not support Linux. There's a lot of software companies out
there that don't make Linux software. Maybe I love Microsoft Office. Well, they make Microsoft Office for
Windows, and they make it for macOS. They don't make it for Linux. I don't have that choice,
I can't get Microsoft Office. I can get a clone,
something like OpenOffice, or LibreOffice, or one of those. I can install that,
in fact I probably have it by default, but let's come in here and just see
what we've got under productivity. And there's LibreOffice right there,
so I can take LibreOffice and it's already installed. I have an office clone, but it's not
the same as actual Microsoft Office, which I may want or need. If that's true, if I have software
that I absolutely need to type, an OS like Linux might not
be a good choice for me. Or I might have to jump
through hoops to get that third party software running here. Remember that Linux started as a operating
system for developers, not for regular people. And so
sometimes when software is distributed, it's distributed source code and
you have to compile it. Well, if you're not a programmer,
that is not an easy feat and there's a lot of things that can go
wrong and problems that can happen. And if you're a hobbiest or
a tech enthusiast it's king of fun, right? You work around that but if you're a regular end user it is not
fun, it is not a good experience, and that's why Linux has less than a 1%
market share on user work stations. Across the entire world it is just
not a popular workstation OS. But let me tell you when it comes to
servers and it's a different story. In this server world, well we want our
servers to be as optimized as possible, to run as fast as they can and Linux gives
us the freedom to come in and eliminate. All the software that we don't need and it
get it very, very small, very efficient, and because it's a free operating system
we can clone it over and over and over again to create a server farm as big as
we want without incurring licensing fees. That's a big deal and that's why Linux does have a commanding
market share in the server world. But remember, on a server you don't see a
graphical user interface like this, right? On a server It boots up, and you see
a black screen, and a command prompt, and it sits there. Because you're supposed to enable some
services, and just let it run and not mess with server again. Right, that's how servers function. So a very different world,
when you get into servers. And And that is the world
where Linux performs the best. Now what about the idea that we saw also in taking a look at what's running
on the machine itself at that time. So in Windows we'd take
a look at the task manager, in MAC OS we talk about
the activity monitor, is there something similar to that? There absolutely is and Linux was the first multi-tasking
operating system that I ever used. So I remember I got an email from a friend
of mine this would have been in 1992 and he told me, he said Don you've
got to try this slackware Linux. It was one of the early distributions,
I still run it today. He said you've got to try this the multi
tasking on it will make you wet your pants. [LAUGH] This is a quote. So [LAUGH] I tried it and he was right. Like it was amazing you could run more
than one application at the same time. In the DOS world at the time and even
in Mac OS, it wasn't doing a great job. Multi tasking operating
systems have come a long way. Well, in the Unix world,
multi tasking was old hat. They've been doing it for a long time so it made sense that Linux would have
that functionality as well and it did. So I can come in here and
I can I can have my terminal open, I can launch a web browser,
I can fire up LibreOffice. So I'm running all these different
applications, all side by side. And they show up here in my side bar,
so I can easily switch between them just through on-screen elements,
or I can use the Alt+Tab. Keyboard shortcut to switch in
between them that way as well so I've got the ease of moving around. There's an application in gnome, so if you're used the different
interface you may not have this, but in the gnome interface there is
an application called the system monitor. And if you fire up the system monitor it
shows you the performance of your system, and the applications that are running so
I can see all the programs, how much CPU they're using,
how much memory they're consuming and if I have a program that's gone crazy
like maybe Firefox goes crazy that I might see it in here at a 100% CPU I can
take it and I can terminate that program. By stopping it or killing it. Stopping it kind of pauses it, and
sometimes you can retrieve your data, or I can just outright kill it, and
that's going to kill out Firefox, and my system stays up and running and happy. That's kind of the nice part of having
a multitasking operating system, so you can see all that activity
that is going on in your system. And really get the most
out of your computer. And this is very similar
to the task manager, and activity monitor from Windows and Mac OS. Now Don, last thing here, as we take a look. We've also talked about user accounts,
too. Can we set up user accounts
inside of our Ubuntu setup? Absolutely. And Linux had user accounts before
any of the other operating systems. So Windows and Mac OS Weren't designed as network
operating systems from the ground up. They were designed as stand alone systems,
and then they added networking later on. Well, Linux was based upon Unix, which
was a network operating system from very, very early on. So, Linux has always been
a network operating system. And a key component to being
a network operating system Is that you have more than one system,
which means more than one user. So that user functionality
is absolutely built in. And when you install Linux, it's actually
gonna create two user accounts for you. One user account is yours, regular
user that you can use to do things. And the second user account
is a special one called root. And the root user is like
a full administrative user, they can do whatever they
want on the computer. And if it's just you using the computer, that's probably all you'll have,
you and root. But if you're sharing the computer or
if you're using it in a corporate environment, you'll want
more than one user account. And if I go into my application
list here and just type users, I'll find inside of the settings
panel where there is a users panel. And I can come in and
I can create additional user accounts. Now, when I look at it right now
I just see myself and that's it. But that's because I'm
logged in as a regular user. If I hit the unlock button here, it's going to ask me to
authenticate as an administrator. And so I can provide my password. And now, not only do I see my account,
but I've got a nice, shiny add user button up here,
and I can add more users. I can make them standard users or
administrators. So maybe I want to create
a user account for Ronnie. And so I'll come in here,
I'll set this password. And so now when he comes to use
this computer, he can sit down, log in as himself instead of login in
as me, and have his own customized and personalized settings, like we've seen
with the other operating systems. This is kind of a key Component of
an operating system is the ability to give people that experience of
using their own environment so now when I go to log in, I get to
pick which user I'm gonna log in as. I'll log in as Ronnie, and when he logs. You'll see his own desktop, which he might
have the same applications as me but he may have different documents on his
desktop or a different wallpaper or whatever. And it's gonna go black for a second here
while he's setting up his profile for the first time that he logs in. And then he's gonna see that
desktop any moment now. I said black, it's actually purple,
I guess, once the, once the GUI starts to load. There we go, and it's treating him
like a brand new user, because he is. What's new in Ubuntu? Let's teach you about this system, and
so you get a little bit of exposure here as it walks you through
some of the basic setup. And then he's in, and now we can start to use the system,
however it is that he chooses to use it. So the key thing here is that,
Linux, while it might be free, while it might be developed by a large
number of hobbyists and enthusiasts, it is actually a very
viable operating system. And in the server world it's already one,
in the work station world we'll see. Each year they seem to get a little
stronger and a little stronger in their desktop presence but
there's usually some application or another that people say I need this
application and it doesn't run on Linux. And so that's kind of what kills it and
holds it back. The video gaming industry is like that
where most video games don't run on Linux and so video games oddly enough
drive technology development, and so that kind of holds Linux back. But we're seeing a lot of that change. And who knows, maybe when we fill
the same show ten years from now, we'll be talking about Linux
as the primary workstation OS. Just, time will tell. All right Don, well thank you again for helping us to get a little bit
more familiar with GNU Linux. It's a great topic. Something that we should also consider. As we sign off, Don, last words here. All right, all of these operating systems are fairly
similar in the functionality they provide. If you're going to be an IT worker, I encourage you to learn a little
bit about all three of them. If you have Windows on your own machine,
you've kinda knocked out one OS. Or if you have Mac OS on your own machine,
you've got that. If you wanna experiment with the others,
though, you'll probably wanna learn
a little bit about virtualization. Programs like Virtual Box or
VMWare Workstation, VMWare Fusion. Those programs, they let you run other
operating systems in a virtual machine, so you can quickly switch between them and
practice and learn without messing up your
underlying operating system. Check that out, check out virtualization
technology cuz it's a great way to learn OSs and
experiment even if you're not quite sure. And Linux,
Linux is a steep learning curve. It's a hard one to jump in and learn. So you don't want to just format your
machine, and go Linux on day one. You want to kind of dip
your toes in the water. Virtualization lets you do that. So definitely check it out
if you want to learn more. All right, thank you again Don, for helping us there with those last good
pieces of advice, and thank you also for watching. Signing off for ITProTV, I'm your host Ronnie Wong. I'm Don Pezet. Stay tuned right here for more the CompTIA IT Fundamentals shows,
coming your way. [MUSIC] Thank you for watching ITPRO.TV.
