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me/learningnets
 Table of Contents
TOPIC 1: THE LINUX COMMUNITY AND A CAREER IN OPEN SOURCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Linux Evolution and Popular Operating Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Embedded Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Linux and the Cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.2 Major Open Source Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.2 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Software Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Package Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Package Removal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Office Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Web Browsers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Multimedia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Server Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Data Sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Network Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Programming Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
1.3 Open Source Software and Licensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
1.3 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Definition of Free and Open Source Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Licenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Business Models in Open Source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

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 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
1.4 ICT Skills and Working in Linux. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
1.4 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Linux User Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Industry Uses of Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Privacy Issues when using the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Encryption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
TOPIC 2: FINDING YOUR WAY ON A LINUX SYSTEM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
2.1 Command Line Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
2.1 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Command Line Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Command Behavior Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Quoting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
2.1 Lesson 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Variables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Manipulating Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
2.2 Using the Command Line to Get Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
2.2 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Getting Help on the Command Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

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 Locating files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
2.3 Using Directories and Listing Files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
2.3 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Files and Directories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
File and Directory Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Navigating the Filesystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Absolute and Relative Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
2.3 Lesson 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Home Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
The Special Relative Path for Home. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Relative-to-Home File Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Hidden Files and Directories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
The Long List Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Additional ls Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Recursion in Bash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
2.4 Creating, Moving and Deleting Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
2.4 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Case Sensitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Creating Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Creating Files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Renaming Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Moving Files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

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 Deleting Files and Directories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Copying Files and Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Globbing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
TOPIC 3: THE POWER OF THE COMMAND LINE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
3.1 Archiving Files on the Command Line. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
3.1 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Compression Tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Archiving Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Managing ZIP files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
3.2 Searching and Extracting Data from Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
3.2 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
I/O Redirection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Command Line Pipes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
3.2 Lesson 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Searching within Files with grep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Regular Expressions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
3.3 Turning Commands into a Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

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 3.3 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Printing Output. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Making a Script Executable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Commands and PATH. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Execute Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Defining the Interpreter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Using Quotes with Variables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Returning the Number of Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Conditional Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
3.3 Lesson 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Exit Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Handling Many Arguments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
For Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Using Regular Expressions to Perform Error Checking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
TOPIC 4: THE LINUX OPERATING SYSTEM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
4.1 Choosing an Operating System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
4.1 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
What is an Operating System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Choosing a Linux Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
Non Linux Operating Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264

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 4.2 Understanding Computer Hardware. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
4.2 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
Power Supplies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Motherboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Processors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Storage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Partitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Peripherals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Drivers and Device Files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
4.3 Where Data is Stored . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
4.3 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Programs and their Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
The Linux Kernel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Hardware Devices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Memory and Memory Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
4.3 Lesson 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
System Logging and System Messaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
4.4 Your Computer on the Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
4.4 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326

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 Link Layer Networking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
IPv4 Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
IPv6 Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
DNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
Sockets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
TOPIC 5: SECURITY AND FILE PERMISSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
5.1 Basic Security and Identifying User Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
5.1 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
Accounts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
Getting Information About Your Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
Switching Users and Escalating Privilege . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
Access Control Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
5.2 Creating Users and Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
5.2 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
The File /etc/passwd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
The File /etc/group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
The File /etc/shadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
The File /etc/gshadow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Adding and Deleting User Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
The Skeleton Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
Adding and Deleting Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
The passwd Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
5.3 Managing File Permissions and Ownership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390

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Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
Querying Information about Files and Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
What about Directories? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
Seeing Hidden Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
Understanding Filetypes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
Understanding Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
Modifying File Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Symbolic Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
Numeric Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
Modifying File Ownership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
Querying Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
Special Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
5.4 Special Directories and Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
5.4 Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
Temporary Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
Understanding Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
Guided Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
Answers to Guided Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
Answers to Explorational Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
Imprint. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) |

Topic 1: The Linux Community and a Career in Open Source

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | Topic 1: The Linux Community and a Career in Open Source

1.1 Linux Evolution and Popular Operating Systems

Reference to LPI objectives
Linux Essentials version 1.6, Exam 010, Objective 1.1

Weight
2

Key knowledge areas

• Distributions

• Embedded Systems

• Linux in the Cloud

Partial list of the used files, terms and utilities

• Debian, Ubuntu (LTS)

• CentOS, openSUSE, Red Hat, SUSE

• Linux Mint, Scientific Linux

• Raspberry Pi, Raspbian

• Android

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | 1.1 Linux Evolution and Popular Operating Systems

1.1 Lesson 1
Certificate: Linux Essentials

Version: 1.6

Topic: 1 The Linux Community and a Career in Open

Source

Objective: 1.1 Linux Evolution and Popular Operating

Systems

Lesson: 1 of 1

Introduction
Linux is one of the most popular operating systems. Its development was started in 1991 by Linus
Torvalds. The operating system was inspired by Unix, another operating system developed in the
1970s by AT&T Laboratories. Unix was geared towards small computers. At the time, “small”
computers were considered machines that don’t need an entire hall with air conditioning and cost
less than one million dollars. Later, they were considered as the machines that can be lifted by
two people. At that time, an affordable Unix system was not readily available on computers such
as office computers, which were tended to be based on the x86 platform. Therefore Linus, who
was a student by that time, started to implement a Unix-like operating system which was
supposed to run on this platform.

Mostly, Linux uses the same principles and basic ideas of Unix, but Linux itself doesn’t contain
Unix code, as it is an independent project. Linux is not backed by an individual company but by
an international community of programmers. As it is freely available, it can be used by anyone
without restrictions.

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | Topic 1: The Linux Community and a Career in Open Source

Distributions
A Linux distribution is a bundle that consists of a Linux kernel and a selection of applications that
are maintained by a company or user community. A distribution’s goal is to optimize the kernel
and the applications that run on the operating system for a certain use case or user group.
Distributions often include distribution-specific tools for software installation and system
administration. This is why some distributions are mainly used for desktop environments where
they need to be easy to use while others are mainly used to run on servers to use the available
resources as efficiently as possible.

Another way to classify distributions is by referring to the distribution family they belong to.
Distributions of the Debian distribution family use the package manager dpkg to manage the
software that is run on the operating system. Packages that can be installed with the package
manager are maintained by voluntary members of the distribution’s community. Maintainers use
the deb package format to specify how the software is installed on the operating system and how
it is configured by default. Just like a distribution, a package is a bundle of software and a
corresponding configuration and documentation that makes it easier for the user to install,
update and use the software.

The Debian GNU/Linux distribution is the biggest distribution of the Debian distribution family.
The Debian GNU/Linux Project was launched by Ian Murdock in 1993. Today thousands of
volunteers are working on the project. Debian GNU/Linux aims to provide a very reliable
operating system. It also promotes Richard Stallman’s vision of an operating system that respects
the freedoms of the user to run, study, distribute and improve the software. This is why it does not
provide any proprietary software by default.

Ubuntu is another Debian-based distribution worth mentioning. Ubuntu was created by Mark
Shuttleworth and his team in 2004, with the mission to bring an easy to use Linux desktop
environment. Ubuntu’s mission is to provide a free software to everyone across the world as well
as to cut the cost of professional services. The distribution has a scheduled release every six
months with a long-term support release every 2 years.

Red Hat is a Linux distribution developed and maintained by the identically named software
company, which was acquired by IBM in 2019. The Red Hat Linux distribution was started in 1994
and re-branded in 2003 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, often abbreviated as RHEL. It is provided to
companies as a reliable enterprise solution that is supported by Red Hat and comes with software
that aims to ease the use of Linux in professional server environments. Some of its components
require fee-based subscriptions or licenses. The CentOS project uses the freely available source
code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and compiles it to a distribution which is available completely
free of charge, but in return does not come with commercial support.

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Both RHEL and CentOS are optimized for use in server environments. The Fedora project was
founded in 2003 and creates a Linux distribution which is aimed at desktop computers. Red Hat
initiated and maintains the Fedora distribution ever since. Fedora is very progressive and adopts
new technologies very quickly and is sometimes considered a test-bed for new technologies which
later might be included in RHEL. All Red Hat based distributions use the package format rpm.

The company SUSE was founded in 1992 in Germany as a Unix service provider. The first version
of SUSE Linux was released in 1994. Over the years SUSE Linux became mostly known for its YaST
configuration tool. This tool allows administrators to install and configure software and
hardware, set up servers and networks. Similar to RHEL, SUSE releases SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server, which is their commercial edition. This is less frequently released and is suitable for
enterprise and production deployment. It is distributed as a server as well as a desktop
environment, with fit-for-purpose packages. In 2004, SUSE released the openSUSE project, which
opened opportunities for developers and users to test and further develop the system. The
openSUSE distribution is freely available to download.

Independent distributions have been released over the years. Some of them are based on either
Red Hat or Ubuntu, some are designed to improve a specific propriety of a system or hardware.
There are distributions built with specific functionalities like QubesOS, a very secure desktop
environment, or Kali Linux, which provides an environment for exploiting software
vulnerabilities, mainly used by penetration testers. Recently various super small Linux
distributions are designed to specifically run in Linux containers, such as Docker. There are also
distributions built specifically for components of embedded systems and even smart devices.

Embedded Systems
Embedded systems are a combination of computer hardware and software designed to have a
specific function within a larger system. Usually they are part of other devices and help to control
these devices. Embedded systems are found in automotive, medical and even military
applications. Due to its wide variety of applications, a variety of operating systems based on the
Linux kernel was developed in order to be used in embedded systems. A significant part of smart
devices have a Linux kernel based operating system running on it.

Therefore, with embedded systems comes embedded software. The purpose of this software is to
access the hardware and make it usable. The major advantages of Linux over any proprietary
embedded software include cross vendor platform compatibility, development, support and no
license fees. Two of the most popular embedded software projects are Android, that is mainly
used on mobile phones across a variety of vendors and Raspbian, which is used mainly on
Raspberry Pi.

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | Topic 1: The Linux Community and a Career in Open Source

Android

Android is mainly a mobile operating system developed by Google. Android Inc. was founded in
2003 in Palo Alto, California. The company initially created an operating system meant to run on
digital cameras. In 2005, Google bought Android Inc. and developed it to be one of the biggest
mobile operating systems.

The base of Android is a modified version of the Linux kernel with additional open source
software. The operating system is mainly developed for touchscreen devices, but Google has
developed versions for TV and wrist watches. Different versions of Android have been developed
for game consoles, digital cameras, as well as PCs.

Android is freely available in open source as Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Google offers a
series of proprietary components in addition to the open source core of Android. These
components include applications such as Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Mail, the Chrome
browser as well as the Google Play Store which facilitates the easy installation of apps. Most users
consider these tools an integral part of their Android experience. Therefore almost all mobile
devices shipped with Android in Europe and America include proprietary Google software.

Android on embedded devices has many advantages. The operating system is intuitive and easy to
use with a graphical user interface, it has a very wide developer community, therefore it is easy to
find help for development. It is also supported by the majority of the hardware vendors with an
Android driver, therefore it is easy and cost effective to prototype an entire system.

Raspbian and the Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit-card sized computer that can function as a full-functionality
desktop computer, but it can be used within an embedded Linux system. It is developed by the
Raspberry Pi Foundation, which is an educational charity based in UK. It mainly has the purpose
to teach young people to learn to program and understand the functionality of computers. The
Raspberry Pi can be designed and programmed to perform desired tasks or operations that are
part of a much more complex system.

The specialties of the Raspberry Pi include a set of General Purpose Input-Output (GPIO) pins
which can be used to attach electronic devices and extension boards. This allows using the
Raspberry Pi as a platform for hardware development. Although it was intended for educational
purposes, Raspberry Pis are used today in various DIY projects as well as for industrial
prototyping when developing embedded systems.

The Raspberry Pi uses ARM processors. Various operating systems, including Linux, run on the
Raspberry Pi. Since the Raspberry Pi does not contain a hard disk, the operating system is started
from an SD memory card. One of the most prominent Linux distributions for the Raspberry Pi is

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Raspbian. As the name suggests, it belongs to the Debian distribution family. It is customized to be
installed on the Raspberry Pi hardware and provides more than 35000 packages optimized for this
environment. Besides Raspbian, numerous other Linux distributions exist for the Raspberry Pi,
like, for example, Kodi, which turns the Raspberry Pi into a media center.

Linux and the Cloud

The term cloud computing refers to a standardized way of consuming computing resources, either
by buying them from a public cloud provider or by running a private cloud. As of 2017 reports,
Linux runs 90% of the public cloud workload. Every cloud provider, from Amazon Web Services
(AWS) to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), offers different forms of Linux. Even Microsoft offers
Linux-based virtual machines in their Azure cloud today.

Linux is usually offered as part of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering. IaaS instances are
virtual machines which are provisioned within minutes in the cloud. When starting an IaaS
instance, an image is chosen which contains the data that is deployed to the new instance. Cloud
providers offer various images containing ready to run installations of both popular Linux
distributions as well as own versions of Linux. The cloud user chooses an image containing their
preferred distribution and can access a cloud instance running this distribution shortly after.
Most cloud providers add tools to their images to adjust the installation to a specific cloud
instance. These tools can, for example, extend the file systems of the image to fit the actual hard
disk of the virtual machine.

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | Topic 1: The Linux Community and a Career in Open Source

Guided Exercises
1. How is Debian GNU/Linux different from Ubuntu? Name two aspects.

2. What are the most common environments/platforms Linux is used for? Name three different
environments/platforms and name one distribution you can use for each.

3. You are planning to install a Linux distribution in a new environment. Name four things that
you should consider when choosing a distribution.

4. Name three devices that the Android OS runs on, other than smartphones.

5. Explain three major advantages of cloud computing.

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | 1.1 Linux Evolution and Popular Operating Systems

Explorational Exercises
1. Considering cost and performance, which distributions are mostly suitable for a business that
aims to reduce licensing costs, while keeping performance at its highest? Explain why.

2. What are the major advantages of the Raspberry Pi and which functions can they take in
business?

3. What range of distributions does Amazon Cloud Services and Google Cloud offer? Name at least
three common ones and two different ones.

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | Topic 1: The Linux Community and a Career in Open Source

Summary
In this lesson you learned:

• What distributions does Linux have

• What are Linux embedded systems

• How are Linux embedded systems used

• Different applicabilities of Android

• Different uses of a Raspberry Pi

• What is Cloud Computing

• What role does Linux play in cloud computing

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Answers to Guided Exercises

1. How is Debian GNU/Linux different from Ubuntu? Name two aspects.

Ubuntu is based on a snapshot of Debian, therefore there are many similarities between them.
However, there are still significant differences between them. The first one would be the
applicability for beginners. Ubuntu is recommended for beginners because of its ease of use
and on the other hand Debian is recommended for more advanced users. The major difference
is the complexity of the user configuration that Ubuntu doesn’t require during the installation
process.

Another difference would be the stability of each distribution. Debian is considered to be more
stable compared to Ubuntu. This is because Debian receives fewer updates that are tested in
detail and the entire operating system is more stable. On the other hand, Ubuntu enables the
user to use the latest releases of software and all the new technologies.

2. What are the most common environments/platforms Linux is used for? Name three different
environments/platforms and name one distribution you can use for each.

A few of the common environments/platforms would be smartphone, desktop and server. On

smartphones, it can be used by distributions such as Android. On desktop and server, it can be
used by any distribution that is mostly suitable with the functionality of that machine, from
Debian, Ubuntu to CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

3. You are planning to install a Linux distribution in a new environment. Name four things that
you should consider when choosing a distribution.

When choosing a distribution, a few of the main things that should be considered is cost,
performance, scalability, how stable it is and the hardware demand of the system.

4. Name three devices that the Android OS runs on, other than smartphones.

Other devices that Android runs on are smart TVs, tablet computers, Android Auto and
smartwatches.

5. Explain three major advantages of cloud computing.

The major advantages of cloud computing are flexibility, easy to recover and low use cost.
Cloud based services are easy to implement and scale, depending on the business
requirements. It has a major advantage in backup and recovery solutions, as it enables
businesses to recover from incidents faster and with less repercussions. Furthermore, it
reduces operation costs, as it allows to pay just for the resources that a business uses, on a

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subscription-based model.

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Answers to Explorational Exercises

1. Considering cost and performance, which distributions are mostly suitable for a business that
aims to reduce licensing costs, while keeping performance at its highest? Explain why.

One of the most suitable distributions to be used by business is CentOS. This is because it
incorporates all Red Hat products, which are further used within their commercial operating
system, while being free to use. Similarly, Ubuntu LTS releases guarantee support for a longer
period of time. The stable versions of Debian GNU/Linux are also often used in enterprise
environments.

2. What are the major advantages of the Raspberry Pi and which functions can they take in
business?

Raspberry Pi is small in size while working as a normal computer. Furthermore, it is low cost
and can handle web traffic and many other functionalities. It can be used as a server, a firewall
and can be used as the main board for robots, and many other small devices.

3. What range of distributions does Amazon Cloud Services and Google Cloud offer? Name at least
three common ones and two different ones.

The common distributions between Amazon and Google Cloud Services are Ubuntu, CentOS
and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Each cloud provider also offers specific distributions that the
other one doesn’t. Amazon has Amazon Linux and Kali Linux, while Google offers the use of
FreeBSD and Windows Servers.

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1.2 Major Open Source Applications

Reference to LPI objectives
Linux Essentials version 1.6, Exam 010, Objective 1.2

Weight
2

Key knowledge areas

• Desktop applications

• Server applications

• Development languages

• Package management tools and repositories

Partial list of the used files, terms and utilities

• OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox, GIMP

• Nextcloud, ownCloud

• Apache HTTPD, NGINX, MariaDB, MySQL, NFS, Samba

• C, Java, JavaScript, Perl, shell, Python, PHP

• dpkg, apt-get, rpm, yum

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | 1.2 Major Open Source Applications

1.2 Lesson 1
Certificate: Linux Essentials

Version: 1.6

Topic: 1 The Linux Community and a Career in Open

Source

Objective: 1.2 Major Open Source Applications

Lesson: 1 of 1

Introduction
An application is a computer program whose purpose is not directly tied to the inner workings of
the computer, but with tasks performed by the user. Linux distributions offer many application
options to perform a variety of tasks, such as office applications, web browsers, multimedia
players and editors, etc. There is often more than one application or tool to perform a particular
job. It is up to the user to choose the application which best fits their needs.

Software Packages
Almost every Linux distribution offers a pre-installed set of default applications. Besides those
pre-installed applications, a distribution has a package repository with a vast collection of
applications available to install through its package manager. Although the various distributions
offer roughly the same applications, several different package management systems exist for
various distributions. For instance, Debian, Ubuntu and Linux Mint use the dpkg, apt-get and
apt tools to install software packages, generally referred as DEB packages. Distributions such as
Red Hat, Fedora and CentOS use the rpm, yum and dnf commands instead, which in turn install
RPM packages. As the application packaging is different for each distribution family, it is very

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important to install packages from the correct repository designed to the particular distribution.
The end user usually doesn’t have to worry about those details, as the distribution’s package
manager will choose the right packages, the required dependencies and future updates.
Dependencies are auxiliary packages needed by programs. For example, if a library provides
functions for dealing with JPEG images which are used by multiple programs, this library is likely
packaged in its own package on which all applications using the library depend.

The commands dpkg and rpm operate on individual package files. In practice, almost all package
management tasks are performed by the commands apt-get or apt on systems that use DEB
packages or by yum or dnf on systems that use RPM packages. These commands work with
catalogues of packages, can download new packages and their dependencies, and check for newer
versions of the installed packages.

Package Installation
Suppose you have heard about a command called figlet which prints enlarged text on the
terminal and you want to try it. However, you get the following message after executing the
command figlet:

$ figlet
-bash: figlet: command not found

That probably means the package is not installed on your system. If your distribution works with
DEB packages, you can search its repositories using apt-cache search package_name or apt
search package_name. The apt-cache command is used to search for packages and to list
information about available packages. The following command looks for any occurrences of the
term “figlet” in the package’s names and descriptions:

$ apt-cache search figlet

figlet - Make large character ASCII banners out of ordinary text

The search identified a package called figlet that corresponds to the missing command. The
installation and removal of a package require special permissions granted only to the system’s
administrator: the user named root. On desktop systems, ordinary users can install or remove
packages by prepending the command sudo to the installation/removal commands. That will
require you to type your password to proceed. For DEB packages, the installation is performed
with the command apt-get install package_name or apt install package_name:

$ sudo apt-get install figlet

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Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
figlet
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

At this point the package will be downloaded and installed on the system. Any dependencies that
the package eventually needs will also be downloaded and installed:

Need to get 184 kB of archives.

After this operation, 741 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian stretch/main armhf figlet armhf 2.2.5-2 [184 kB]
Fetched 184 kB in 0s (213 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package figlet.
(Reading database ... 115701 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../figlet_2.2.5-2_armhf.deb ...
Unpacking figlet (2.2.5-2) ...
Setting up figlet (2.2.5-2) ...
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/figlet-figlet to provide /usr/bin/figlet (figlet) in
auto mode
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.6.1-2) ...

After the download is finished, all files are copied to the proper locations, any additional
configuration will be performed and the command will become available:

$ figlet Awesome!
_ _
/ \__ _____ ___ ___ _ __ ___ ___| |
/ _ \ \ /\ / / _ \/ __|/ _ \| '_ ` _ \ / _ \ |
/ ___ \ V V / __/\__ \ (_) | | | | | | __/_|
/_/ \_\_/\_/ \___||___/\___/|_| |_| |_|\___(_)

In distributions based on RPM packages, searches are performed using yum search
package_name or dnf search package_name. Let’s say you want to display some text in a more
irreverent way, followed by a cartoonish cow, but you are not sure about the package that can
perform that task. As with the DEB packages, the RPM search commands accept descriptive terms:

$ yum search speaking cow

Last metadata expiration check: 1:30:49 ago on Tue 23 Apr 2019 11:02:33 PM -03.
==================== Name & Summary Matched: speaking, cow ====================

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cowsay.noarch : Configurable speaking/thinking cow

After finding a suitable package at the repository, it can be installed with yum install
package_name or dnf install package_name:

$ sudo yum install cowsay

Last metadata expiration check: 2:41:02 ago on Tue 23 Apr 2019 11:02:33 PM -03.
Dependencies resolved.
==============================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
==============================================================================
Installing:
cowsay noarch 3.04-10.fc28 fedora 46 k

Transaction Summary
==============================================================================
Install 1 Package

Total download size: 46 k

Installed size: 76 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y

Once again, the desired package and all its possible dependencies will be downloaded and
installed:

Downloading Packages:
cowsay-3.04-10.fc28.noarch.rpm 490 kB/s | 46 kB 00:00
==============================================================================
Total 53 kB/s | 46 kB 00:00
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
Preparing : 1/1
Installing : cowsay-3.04-10.fc28.noarch 1/1
Running scriptlet: cowsay-3.04-10.fc28.noarch 1/1
Verifying : cowsay-3.04-10.fc28.noarch 1/1

Installed:
cowsay.noarch 3.04-10.fc28

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Complete!

The command cowsay does exactly what its name implies:

$ cowsay "Brought to you by yum"

_______________________
< Brought to you by yum >
-----------------------
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||

Although they may seem useless, commands figlet and cowsay provide a way to draw the
attention of other users to relevant information.

Package Removal
The same commands used to install packages are used to remove them. All the commands accept
the remove keyword to uninstall an installed package: apt-get remove package_name or apt
remove package_name for DEB packages and yum remove package_name or dnf remove
package_name for RPM packages. The sudo command is also needed to perform the removal. For
example, to remove the previously installed package figlet from a DEB-based distribution:

$ sudo apt-get remove figlet

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
figlet
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 741 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y

After confirming the operation, the package is erased from the system:

(Reading database ... 115775 files and directories currently installed.)

Removing figlet (2.2.5-2) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.6.1-2) ...

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A similar procedure is performed on an RPM-based system. For example, to remove the

previously installed package cowsay from an RPM-based distribution:

$ sudo yum remove cowsay

Dependencies resolved.
==================================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
==================================================================================
Removing:
cowsay noarch 3.04-10.fc28 @fedora 76 k

Transaction Summary
==================================================================================
Remove 1 Package

Freed space: 76 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y

Likewise, a confirmation is requested and the package is erased from the system:

Running transaction check

Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
Preparing : 1/1
Erasing : cowsay-3.04-10.fc28.noarch 1/1
Running scriptlet: cowsay-3.04-10.fc28.noarch 1/1
Verifying : cowsay-3.04-10.fc28.noarch 1/1

Removed:
cowsay.noarch 3.04-10.fc28

Complete!

The configuration files of the removed packages are kept on the system, so they can be used again
if the package is reinstalled in the future.

Office Applications
Office applications are used for editing files such as texts, presentations, spreadsheets and other

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formats commonly used in an office environment. These applications are usually organised in
collections called office suites.

For a long time, the most used office suite in Linux was the OpenOffice.org suite. OpenOffice.org
was an open source version of the StarOffice suite released by Sun Microsystems. A few years later
Sun was acquired by Oracle Corporation, which in turn transferred the project to the Apache
Foundation and OpenOffice.org was renamed to Apache OpenOffice. Meanwhile, another office
suite based on the same source code was released by the Document Foundation, which named it
LibreOffice.

The two projects have the same basic features and are compatible with the document formats
from Microsoft Office. However, the preferred document format is the Open Document Format, a
fully open and ISO standardized file format. The use of ODF files ensures that documents can be
transferred between operating systems and applications from different vendors, such as Microsoft
Office. The main applications offered by OpenOffice/LibreOffice are:

Writer
Text editor

Calc
Spreadsheets

Impress
Presentations

Draw
Vector drawing

Math
Math formulas

Base
Database

Both LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice are open source software, but LibreOffice is licensed
under LGPLv3 and Apache OpenOffice is licensed under Apache License 2.0. The licensing
distinction implies that LibreOffice can incorporate improvements made by Apache OpenOffice,
but Apache OpenOffice cannot incorporate improvements made by LibreOffice. That, and a more
active community of developers, are the reason most distributions adopt LibreOffice as their
default office suite.

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Web Browsers
For most users, the main purpose of a computer is to provide access to the Internet. Nowadays,
web pages can act as a full featured app, with the advantage of being accessible from anywhere,
without the need of installing extra software. That makes the web browser the most important
application of the operating system, at least for the average user.

One of the best sources for learning about web development is the MDN Web Docs,
TIP available at https://developer.mozilla.org/. Maintained by Mozilla, the site is full of
tutorials for beginners and reference materials on most modern web technologies.

The main web browsers in the Linux environment are Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
Chrome is a web browser maintained by Google but is based on the open source browser named
Chromium, which can be installed using the distribution’s package manager and is fully
compatible with Chrome. Maintained by Mozilla, a non-profit organization, Firefox is a browser
whose origins are linked to Netscape, the first popular web browser to adopt the open source
model. The Mozilla Foundation is deeply involved with the development of the open standards
underlying the modern web.

Mozilla also develops other applications, like the e-mail client Thunderbird. Many users opt to use
webmail instead of a dedicated email application, but a client like Thunderbird offers extra
features and integrates best with other applications on the desktop.

Multimedia
Compared to the available web applications, desktop applications are still the best option for the
creation of multimedia content. Multimedia related activities like video rendering often require
high amounts of system resources, which are best managed by a local desktop application. Some
of the most popular multimedia applications for the Linux environment and their uses are listed
below.

Blender
A 3D renderer to create animations. Blender can also be used to export 3D objects to be printed
by a 3D printer.

GIMP
A full-featured image editor, which can be compared with Adobe Photoshop, but has its own
concepts and tools to work with images. GIMP can be used to create, edit and save most bitmap
files, like JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF and many others.

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Inkscape
A vector graphics editor, similar to Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator. Inkscape’s default format is
SVG, which is an open standard for vector graphics. SVG files can be opened by any web
browser and, due to its nature as a vector graphic, it can be used in flexible layouts of web
pages.

Audacity
An audio editor. Audacity can be used to filter, to apply effects and to convert between many
different audio formats, like MP3, WAV, OGG, FLAC, etc.

ImageMagick
ImageMagick is a command line tool to convert and edit most image file types. It can also be
used to create PDF documents from image files and vice versa.

There are also many applications dedicated to multimedia playback. The most popular application
for video playback is VLC, but some users prefer other alternatives, like smplayer. Local music
playback also has many options, like Audacious, Banshee and Amarok, which can also manage a
collection of local sound files.

Server Programs
When a web browser loads a page from a website, it actually connects to a remote computer and
asks for a specific piece of information. In that scenario, the computer running the web browser is
called the client and the remote computer is called the server.

The server computer, which can be an ordinary desktop computer or specialized hardware, needs
a specific program to manage each type of information it will provide. Regarding serving web
pages, most servers around the world deploy open source server programs. This particular server
program is called an HTTP server (HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) and the most
popular ones are Apache, Nginx and lighttpd.

Even simple web pages may require many requests, which can be ordinary files — called static
content — or dynamic content rendered from various sources. The role of an HTTP server is to
collect and send all the requested data back to the browser, which then arranges the content as
defined by the received HTML document (HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language) and
other supporting files. Therefore, the rendering of a web page involves operations performed on
the server side and operations performed on the client side. Both sides can use custom scripts to
accomplish specific tasks. On the HTTP server side, it is quite common to use the PHP scripting
language. JavaScript is the scripting language used on the client side (the web browser).

Server programs can provide all kinds of information. It’s not uncommon to have a server

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program requesting information provided by other server programs. That is the case when an
HTTP server requires information provided by a database server.

For instance, when a dynamic page is requested, the HTTP server usually queries a database to
collect all the required pieces of information and sends the dynamic content back to the client. In
a similar way, when a user registers on a website, the HTTP server gathers the data sent by the
client and stores it in a database.

A database is an organized set of information. A database server stores contents in a formatted

fashion, making it possible to read, write and link large amounts of data reliably and at great
speed. Open source database servers are used in many applications, not only on the Internet. Even
local applications can store data by connecting to a local database server. The most common type
of database is the relational database, where the data is organized in predefined tables. The most
popular open source relational databases are MariaDB (originated from MySQL) and PostgreSQL.

Data Sharing
In local networks, like the ones found in offices and homes, it is desirable that computers not only
should be able to access the Internet, but also should be able to communicate with each other.
Sometimes a computer acts as a server, sometimes the same computer acts as a client. That is
necessary when one wants to access files on another computer in the network — for instance,
access a file stored on a desktop computer from a portable device — without the hassle of copying
it to a USB drive or the like.

Between Linux machines, NFS (Network File System) is often used. The NFS protocol is the
standard way to share file systems in networks equipped only with Unix/Linux machines. With
NFS, a computer can share one or more of its directories with specific computers on the network,
so they can read and write files in these directories. NFS can even be used to share an entire
operating system’s directory tree with clients that will use it to boot from. These computers, called
thin clients, are mostly often used in large networks to avoid the maintenance of each individual
operating system on each machine.

If there are other types of operating systems attached to the network, it is recommended to use a
data sharing protocol that can be understood by all of them. This requirement is fulfilled by
Samba. Samba implements a protocol for sharing files over the network originally made for the
Windows operating system, but today is compatible with all major operating systems. With
Samba, computers in the local network not only can share files, but also printers.

On some local networks, the authorization given upon login on a workstation is granted by a
central server, called the domain controller, which manages the access to various local and remote
resources. The domain controller is a service provided by Microsoft’s Active Directory. Linux

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workstations can associate with a domain controller by using Samba or an authentication

subsystem called SSSD. As of version 4, Samba can also work as a domain controller on
heterogeneous networks.

If the goal is to implement a cloud computing solution able to provide various methods of web
based data sharing, two alternatives should be considered: ownCloud and Nextcloud. The two
projects are very similar because Nextcloud is a spin-off of ownCloud, which is not unusual
among open source projects. Such spin-offs are usually called a fork. Both provide the same basic
features: file sharing and sync, collaborative workspaces, calendar, contacts and mail, all through
desktop, mobile and web interfaces. Nextcloud also provides private audio/video conferencing,
whilst ownCloud is more focused on file sharing and integration with third-party software. Many
more features are provided as plugins which can be activated later as needed.

Both ownCloud and Nextcloud offer a paid version with extra features and extended support.
What makes them different from other commercial solutions is the ability to install Nextcloud or
ownCloud on a private server, free of charge, avoiding keeping sensitive data on an unknown
server. As all the services depend on HTTP communication and are written in PHP, the installation
must be performed on a previous configured web server, like Apache. If you consider installing
ownCloud or Nextcloud on your own server, make sure to also enable HTTPS to encrypt all
connections to your cloud.

Network Administration
Communication between computers is only possible if the network is working correctly.
Normally, the network configuration is done by a set of programs running on the router,
responsible for setting up and checking the network availability. In order to achieve this, two
basic network services are used: DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) and DNS (Domain
Name System).

DHCP is responsible for assigning an IP address to the host when a network cable is connected or
when the device enters a wireless network. When connecting to the Internet, the ISP’s DHCP
server will provide an IP address to the requesting device. A DHCP server is very useful in local
area networks also, to automatically provide IP addresses to all connected devices. If DHCP is not
configured or if it’s not working properly, it would be necessary to manually configure the IP
address of each device connected to the network. It is not practical to manually set the IP
addresses on large networks or even in small networks, that’s why most network routers come
with a DHCP server pre-configured by default.

The IP address is required to communicate with another device on an IP network, but domain
names like www.lpi.org are much more likely to be remembered than an IP number like
203.0.113.165. The domain name by itself, however, is not enough to establish the

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communication through the network. That is why the domain name needs to be translated to an
IP address by a DNS server. The IP address of the DNS server is provided by the ISP’s DHCP server
and it’s used by all connected systems to translate domain names to IP addresses.

Both DHCP and DNS settings can be modified by entering the web interface provided by the
router. For instance, it is possible to restrict the IP assignment only to known devices or associate
a fixed IP address to specific machines. It’s also possible to change the default DNS server
provided by the ISP. Some third-party DNS servers, like the ones provided by Google or OpenDNS,
can sometimes provide faster responses and extra features.

Programming Languages
All computer programs (client and server programs, desktop applications and the operating
system itself) are made using one or more programming languages. Programs can be a single file
or a complex system of hundreds of files, which the operating system treats as an instruction
sequence to be interpreted and performed by the processor and other devices.

There are numerous programming languages for very different purposes and Linux systems
provide a lot of them. Since open source software also includes the sources of the programs, Linux
systems offer developers perfect conditions to understand, modify or create software according to
their own needs.

Every program begins as a text file, called source code. This source code is written in a more or
less human-friendly language that describes what the program is doing. A computer processor can
not directly execute this code. In compiled languages, the source code is therefore be converted to
a binary file which can then be executed by the computer. A program called compiler is
responsible for doing the conversion from source code to executable form. Since the compiled
binary is specific to one kind of processor, the program might have to be re-compiled to run on
another type of computer.

In interpreted languages, the program does not need to be previously compiled. Instead, an
interpreter reads the source code and executes its instruction every time the program is run. This
makes the development easier and faster, but at the same time interpreted programs tend to be
slower than compiled programs.

Here some of the most popular programming languages:

JavaScript
JavaScript is a programming language mostly used in web pages. In its origins, JavaScript
applications were very simple, like form validation routines. As for today, JavaScript is
considered a first class language and it is used to create very complex applications not only on

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the web, but on servers and mobile devices.

C
The C programming language is closely related with operating systems, particularly Unix, but it
is used to write any kind of program to almost any kind of device. The great advantages of C
are flexibility and speed. The same source code written in C can be compiled to run in different
platforms and operating systems, with little or no modification. After being compiled, however,
the program will run only in the targeted system.

Java
The main aspect of Java is that programs written in this language are portable, which means
that the same program can be executed in different operating systems. Despite the name, Java
is not related to JavaScript.

Perl
Perl is a programming language most used to process text content. It has a strong regular
expressions emphasis, which makes Perl a language suited for text filtering and parsing.

Shell
The shell, particularly the Bash shell, is not just a programming language, but an interactive
interface to run other programs. Shell programs, known as shell scripts, can automate complex
or repetitive tasks on the command line environment.

Python
Python is a very popular programming language among students and professionals not directly
involved with computer science. Whilst having advanced features, Python is a good way to
start learning programming for its easy to use approach.

PHP
PHP is most used as a server side scripting language for generating content for the web. Most
online HTML pages are not static files, but dynamic content generated by the server from
various sources, like databases. PHP programs — sometimes just called PHP pages or PHP
scripts — are often used to generate this kind of content. The term LAMP comes from the
combination of a Linux operating system, an Apache HTTP server, a MySQL (or MariaDB)
database and PHP programming. LAMP servers are a very popular solution for running web
servers. Besides PHP, all of the programming languages described before can be used to
implement such applications too.

C and Java are compiled languages. In order to be executed by the system, source code written in
C is converted to binary machine code, whereas Java source code is converted to bytecode
executed in a special software environment called Java Virtual Machine. JavaScript, Perl, Shell

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script, Python and PHP are all interpreted languages, which are also called scripting languages.

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Guided Exercises
1. For each of the following commands, identify whether it is associated with the Debian
packaging system or the Red Hat packaging system:

dpkg

rpm

apt-get

yum

dnf

2. Which command could be used to install Blender on Ubuntu? After installation, how can the
program be executed?

3. Which application from the LibreOffice suite can be used to work with electronic
spreadsheets?

4. Which open-source web browser is used as the basis for the development of Google Chrome?

5. SVG is an open standard for vector graphics. Which is the most popular application for editing
SVG files in Linux systems?

6. For each of the following file formats, write the name of an application able to open and edit
the corresponding file:

png

doc

xls

ppt

wav

7. Which software package allows file sharing between Linux and Windows machines over the
local network?

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Explorational Exercises
1. You know that configuration files are kept even if the associated package is removed from the
system. How could you automatically remove the package named cups and its configuration
files from a DEB based system?

2. Suppose you have many TIFF image files and want to convert them to JPEG. Which software
package could be used to convert those files directly at the command line?

3. Which software package do you need to install in order to be able to open Microsoft Word
documents sent to you by a Windows user?

4. Every year, linuxquestions.org promotes a survey about the most popular Linux applications.
Visit https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2018-linuxquestions-org-members-choice-
awards-128/ and find out which desktop applications are most popular among experienced
Linux users.

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Summary
In this lesson, you learned:

• The package management systems used in major Linux distributions

• Open source applications that can edit popular file formats

• The server programs underlying many important Internet and local network services

• Common programming languages and their uses

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Answers to Guided Exercises

1. For each of the following commands, identify whether it is associated with the Debian
packaging system or the Red Hat packaging system:

dpkg Debian packaging system

rpm Red Hat packaging system

apt-get Debian packaging system

yum Red Hat packaging system

dnf Red Hat packaging system

2. Which command could be used to install Blender on Ubuntu? After installation, how can the
program be executed?

The command apt-get install blender. The package name should be specified in
lowercase. The program can be executed directly from the terminal with the command
blender or by choosing it on the applications menu.

3. Which application from the LibreOffice suite can be used to work with electronic
spreadsheets?

Calc

4. Which open-source web browser is used as the basis for the development of Google Chrome?

Chromium

5. SVG is an open standard for vector graphics. Which is the most popular application for editing
SVG files in Linux systems?

Inkscape

6. For each of the following file formats, write the name of an application able to open and edit
the corresponding file:

png Gimp

doc LibreOffice Writer

xls LibreOffice Calc

ppt LibreOffice Impress

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wav Audacity

7. Which software package allows file sharing between Linux and Windows machines over the
local network?

Samba

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Answers to Explorational Exercises

1. You know that configuration files are kept even if the associated package is removed from the
system. How could you automatically remove the package named cups and its configuration
files from a DEB based system?

apt-get purge cups

2. Suppose you have many TIFF image files and want to convert them to JPEG. Which software
package could be used to convert those files directly at the command line?

ImageMagick

3. Which software package do you need to install in order to be able to open Microsoft Word
documents sent to you by a Windows user?

LibreOffice or OpenOffice

4. Every year, linuxquestions.org promotes a survey about the most popular Linux applications.
Visit https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2018-linuxquestions-org-members-choice-
awards-128/ and find out which desktop applications are most popular among experienced
Linux users.

Browser: Firefox. Email client: Thunderbird. Media player: VLC. Raster graphics editor: GIMP.

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1.3 Open Source Software and Licensing

Reference to LPI objectives
Linux Essentials version 1.6, Exam 010, Objective 1.3

Weight
1

Key knowledge areas

• Open source philosophy

• Open source licensing

• Free Software Foundation (FSF), Open Source Initiative (OSI)

Partial list of the used files, terms and utilities

• Copyleft, Permissive

• GPL, BSD, Creative Commons

• Free Software, Open Source Software, FOSS, FLOSS

• Open source business models

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | 1.3 Open Source Software and Licensing

1.3 Lesson 1
Certificate: Linux Essentials

Version: 1.6

Topic: 1 The Linux Community and a Career in Open

Source

Objective: 1.3 Open Source Software and Licensing

Lesson: 1 of 1

Introduction
While the terms free software and open source software are widely used, there are still some
misconceptions about their meaning. In particular, the concept of “freedom” needs closer
examination. Let’s start with the definition of the two terms.

Definition of Free and Open Source Software

Criteria of Free Software

First of all, “free” in the context of free software has nothing to do with “free of charge”, or as the
founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), Richard Stallman, succinctly puts it:

To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free
beer”.

— Richard Stallman, What is free software?

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Regardless of whether you have to pay for the software or not, there are four criteria which
constitute free software. Richard Stallman describes these criteria as “the four essential
freedoms”, the counting of which he starts from zero:

• “The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).”

Where, how and for what purpose the software is used can neither be prescribed nor
restricted.

• “The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you
wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.”

Everyone may change the software according to their ideas and needs. This in turn
presupposes that the so-called source code, i.e. all files of which a software consists, must be
available in a form readable by programmers. And, of course, this right applies to a single user
who may want to add a single feature, as well as to software companies that build complex
systems such as smartphone operating systems or router firmware.

• “The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).”

This freedom explicitly encourages each user to share the software with others. It is therefore a
matter of the widest possible distribution and thus the widest possible community of users and
developers who, on the basis of these freedoms, further develop and improve the software for
the benefit of all.

• “The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this
you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source
code is a precondition for this.”

This is not only about the distribution of free software, but about the distribution of modified
free software. Anyone who makes changes to free software has the right to make the changes
available to others. If they do so, they are obliged to do so freely as well, i.e. they must not
restrict the original freedoms when distributing the software, even if they modified or
extended it. For example, if a group of developers has different ideas about the direction of a
specific software than the original authors, it can split off its own development branch (called a
fork) and continue it as a new project. But, of course, all obligations associated with these
freedoms remain.

The emphasis on the idea of freedom is also consistent insofar as every freedom movement is
directed against something, namely an opponent who suppresses the postulated freedoms, who
regards software as property and wants to keep it under lock and key. In contrast to free software,
such software is called proprietary.

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Open Source Software vs. Free Software

For many, free software and open source software are synonyms. The frequently used
abbreviation FOSS for Free and Open Source Software emphasizes this commonality. FLOSS for
Free/Libre and Open Source Software is another popular term, which unmistakably emphasizes the
idea of freedom also for other languages other than English. However, if one considers the origin
and development of both terms, a differentiation is worthwhile.

The term free software with the definition of the described four freedoms goes back to Richard
Stallman and the GNU project founded by him in 1985 — almost 10 years before the emergence of
Linux. The name “GNU is not Unix” describes the intention with a wink of the eye: GNU started as
an initiative to develop a technically convincing solution — namely the operating system
Unix — from scratch, to make it available to the general public and to improve it continuously
with the general public. The openness of the source code was merely a technical and
organizational necessity for this, but in its self-image the free software movement is still a social
and political — some also say ideological — movement.

With the success of Linux, the collaborative possibilities of the Internet, and the thousands of
projects and companies that emerged in this new software cosmos, the social aspect increasingly
receded into the background. The openness of the source code itself changed from a technical
requirement to a defining feature: as soon as the source code was visible, the software was
considered “open source”. The social motives gave way to a more pragmatic approach to software
development.

Free software and open source software work on the same thing, with the same methods and in a
worldwide community of individuals, projects and companies. But since they have come together
from different directions — one social and one pragmatic-technical — there are sometimes
conflicts. These conflicts arise when the results of the joint work do not correspond to the original
goals of both movements. This happens especially when software reveals its sources but does not
respect the four freedoms of free software at the same time, for example when there are
restrictions on disclosure, change, or connections with other software components.

The license under which the software is available determines which conditions a software is
subject to with regard to use, distribution and modification. And because requirements and
motives can be very different, countless different licenses have been created in the FOSS area. Due
to the much more fundamental approach of the free software movement, it is not surprising that
it does not recognize many open source licenses as “free” and therefore rejects them. Conversely,
this is hardly the case due to the much more pragmatic open source approach.

Let’s take a brief look at the actually very complex area of licenses below.

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Licenses
Unlike a refrigerator or a car, software is not a physical product, but a digital product. Thus, a
company cannot actually transfer ownership of such a product by selling it and changing the
physical possession — rather, it transfers the rights of use to that product, and the user
contractually agrees to those rights of use. Which rights of use these are and above all are not is
recorded in the software license, and thus it becomes understandable how important the
regulations contained therein are.

While large vendors of proprietary software, such as Microsoft or SAP, have their own licenses
that are precisely tailored to their products, the advocates of free and open source software have
from the outset striven for clarity and general validity of their licenses, because after all, every
user should understand them and, if necessary, use them himself for his own developments.

However, it should not be concealed that this ideal of simplicity can hardly be achieved because
too many specific requirements and internationally not always compatible legal understandings
stand in the way of this. To give just one example: German and American copyright law are
fundamentally different. According to German law there is one person as author (more precisely:
Urheber), whose work is his intellectual property. While the author can grant permission to use his
work, he can not assign or give up his authorship. The latter is alien to American law. Here, too,
there is an author (who, however, can also be a company or an institution), but he only has
exploitation rights which he can transfer in part or in full and thus completely detach himself
from his work. An internationally valid licence must be interpreted with respect of different
legislation.

The consequences are numerous and sometimes very different FOSS licenses. Worse, still, are
different versions of a license, or a mix of licenses (within a project, or even when connecting
multiple projects) which can cause confusion or even legal disputes.

Both the representatives of free software and the advocates of the clearly economically oriented
open source movement created their own organizations, which today are decisively responsible
for the formulation of software licenses according to their principles and support their members
in their enforcement.

Copyleft

The already mentioned Free Software Foundation (FSF) has formulated the GNU General Public
License (GPL) as one of the most important licenses for free software, which is used by many
projects, e.g. the Linux kernel. In addition, it has released licenses with case-specific
customizations, such as the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), which governs the
combination of free software with modifications made to code where the source code for the

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modifications do not have to be released to the public, the GNU Affero General Public License
(AGPL), which covers selling access to hosted software, or the GNU Free Documentation License
(FDL), which extends freedom principles to software documentation. In addition, the FSF makes
recommendations for or against third-party licenses, and affiliated projects such as GPL-
Violations.org investigate suspected violations of free licenses.

The FSF calls the principle according to which a free license also applies to modified variants of
the software copyleft — in contrast to the principle of restrictive copyright which it rejects. The
idea, therefore, is to transfer the liberal principles of a software license as unrestrictedly as
possible to future variants of the software in order to prevent subsequent restrictions.

What sounds obvious and simple, however, leads to considerable complications in practice, which
is why critics often call the copyleft principle “viral”, since it is transmitted to subsequent
versions.

From what has been said it follows, for example, that two software components that are licensed
under different copyleft licenses might not be combinable with each other, since both licenses
cannot be transferred to the subsequent product at the same time. This can even apply to different
versions of the same license!

For this reason, newer licenses or license versions often no longer grasp the copyleft so rigorously.
Already the mentioned GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is in this sense a concession to
be able to connect free software with “non-free” components, as it is frequently done with so-
called libraries. Libraries contain subroutines or routines, which in turn are used by various other
programs. This leads to the common situation where proprietary software calls such a subroutine
from a free library.

Another way to avoid license conflicts is dual licensing, where one software is licensed under
different licenses, e.g. a free license and a proprietary license. A typical use case is a free version
of a software which might only be used when respecting the copyleft restrictions and the
alternative offering to obtain the software under a different license which frees the licensee from
certain restriction in return for a fee which could be used to fund the development of the
software.

It should therefore become clear that the choice of license for software projects should be made
with much caution, since the cooperation with other projects, the combinability with other
components and also the future design of the own product depend on it. The copyleft presents
developers with special challenges in this respect.

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Open Source Definition and Permissive Licenses

On the open source side, it is the Open Source Initiative (OSI), founded in 1998 by Eric S. Raymond
and Bruce Perens, which is mainly concerned with licensing issues. It has also developed a
standardized procedure for checking software licenses for compliance with its Open Source
Definition. More than 80 recognized open source licenses can currently be found on the OSI
website.

Here they also list licenses as “OSI-approved” that explicitly contradict the copyleft principle,
especially the BSD licenses group. The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) is a variant of the Unix
operating system originally developed at the University of Berkeley, which later gave rise to free
projects such as NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. The licenses underlying these projects are often
referred to as permissive. In contrast to copyleft licenses, they do not have the aim of establishing
the terms of use of modified variants. Rather, the maximum freedom should help the software to
be as widely distributed as possible by leaving the editors of the software alone to decide how to
proceed with the edits — whether, for example, they also release them or treat them as closed
source and distribute them commercially.

The 2-Clause BSD License, also called Simplified BSD License or FreeBSD License, proves how
reduced such a permissive license can be. In addition to the standardized liability clause, which
protects developers from liability claims arising from damage caused by the software, the license
consists of only the following two rules:

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are
permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of
conditions and the following disclaimer.

2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of
conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials
provided with the distribution.

Creative Commons

The successful development concept of FLOSS and the associated technological progress led to
attempts to transfer the open source principle to other, non-technical areas. The preparation and
provision of knowledge, as well as the creative cooperation in solving complex tasks, are now
regarded as evidence of the extended, content-related open source principle.

This led to the need to create reliable foundations in these areas as well, according to which work
results can be shared and processed. Since the available software licenses were hardly suitable for

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this, there were numerous attempts to convert the specific requirements from scientific work to
digitized works of art “in the spirit of open source” into similarly handy licenses.

By far the most important initiative of this kind today is Creative Commons (CC), which
summarizes its concerns as follows:

Creative Commons is a global nonprofit organization that enables sharing and reuse of
creativity and knowledge through the provision of free legal tools.

— https://creativecommons.org/faq/#what-is-creative-commons-and-what-do-you-do

With Creative Commons, the focus of rights assignment goes back from the distributor to the
author. An example: In traditional publishing, an author usually transfers all publishing rights
(printing, translation, etc.) to a publisher, who in turn ensures the best possible distribution of the
work. The significantly changed distribution channels of the Internet now put the author in a
position to exercise many of these publishing rights herself and to decide for herself how her
work may be used. Creative Commons gives the opportunity to determine this simply and legally
reliably, but Creative Commons wants more: authors are encouraged to make their works
available as a contribution to a general process of exchange and cooperation. Unlike traditional
copyright, which gives the author all the rights that they can transfer to others as needed, the
Creative Commons approach takes the opposite approach: the author makes her work available to
the community, but can choose from a set of features those that need to be considered when using
the work — the more features she chooses, the more restrictive the license.

And so the “Choose a License” principle of CC asks an author step by step for the individual
properties and generates the recommended license, which the author can last assign to the work
as text and icon.

For a better understanding, here is an overview of the six possible combinations and licenses
offered by CC:

CC BY (“Attribution”)
The free license that allows anyone to edit and distribute the work as long as they name the
author.

CC BY-SA (“Attribution-ShareAlike”)
As CC BY, except that the modified work may only be distributed under the same license. The
principle reminds of the copyleft, because the license is “inherited” here as well.

CC BY-ND (“Attribution-NoDerivatives”)
Like CC BY, except that the work may only be passed on unmodified.

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CC BY-NC (“Attribution-NonCommercial”)
The work may be edited and distributed by naming the author, but only under non-commercial
conditions.

CC BY-NC-SA (“Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike”)
As BY-NC, except that the work may only be shared under the same conditions (i.e. a copyleft-
like license).

CC BY-NC-ND (“Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives”)
The most restrictive license: the distribution is allowed with attribution of the author, but only
unchanged and under non-commercial conditions.

Business Models in Open Source

In retrospect, the triumph of FLOSS acts like a grassroots movement of technophile idealists who,
independent of economic constraints and free of monetary dependencies, put their work at the
service of the general public. At the same time, companies worth billions have been created in the
FLOSS environment; to name just one, the US company Red Hat founded in 1993 with annual sales
of over 3 billion USD (2018), which was taken over by the IT giant IBM in 2018.

So let’s take a look at the tension between the free and mostly free-of-charge distribution of high-
quality software and the business models for its creators, because one thing should be clear: The
countless highly qualified developers of free software must also earn money, and the originally
purely non-commercial FLOSS environment must therefore develop sustainable business models
in order to preserve its own cosmos.

A common approach, especially for larger projects in the initial phase, is the so-called
crowdfunding, i.e. the collection of money donations via a platform like Kickstarter. In return, the
donors receive a pre-defined bonus from the developers in the event of success, i.e. if previously
defined goals are achieved, be it unlimited access to the product or special features.

Another approach is dual licensing: free software is offered in parallel under a more restrictive or
even proprietary license, which in turn guarantees the customer more extensive services
(response times in the event of errors, updates, versions for certain platforms, etc.). One example
among many is ownCloud, which is being developed under the GPL and offers business customers
a “Business Edition” under a proprietary license.

Let us also take ownCloud as an example of another widespread FLOSS business model:
professional services. Many companies lack the necessary in-house technical knowledge to set up
and operate complex and critical software reliably and, above all, securely. That’s why they buy
professional services such as consulting, maintenance or helpdesk directly from the

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manufacturer. Liability issues also play a role in this decision, as the company transfers the risks
of operation to the manufacturer.

If a software manages to become successful and popular in its field, it is peripheral monetization
possibilities such as merchandising or certificates that customers acquire and thus point out its
special status when using this software. The learning platform Moodle offers the certification of
trainers, who document their knowledge to potential clients, for example, and this is just one
example among countless others.

Software as a Service (SaaS) is another business model, especially for web-based technologies.
Here, a cloud provider runs a software like a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or a
Content Management System (CMS) on their servers and grant their customers access to the
installed application. This saves the customer installation and maintenance of the software. In
return, the customer pays for the use of the software according to various parameters, for
example the number of users. Availability and security play an important role as business-critical
factors.

Last but not least, the model of developing customer-specific extensions into free software by
order is particularly common in smaller projects. It is then usually up to the customer to decide
how to proceed with these extensions, i.e. whether he also releases them or keeps them under lock
and key as part of his own business model.

One thing should have become clear: Although free software is usually available free of charge,
numerous business models have been created in their environment, which are constantly
modified and extended by countless freelancers and companies worldwide in a very creative
form, which ultimately also ensures the continued existence of the entire FLOSS movement.

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Guided Exercises
1. What are — in a nutshell — the “four freedoms” as defined by Richard Stallman and the Free
Software Foundation?

freedom 0

freedom 1

freedom 2

freedom 3

2. What does the abbreviation FLOSS stand for?

3. You have developed free software and want to ensure that the software itself, but also all
future works based on it, remain free as well. Which license do you choose?

CC BY

GPL version 3

2-Clause BSD License

LGPL

4. Which of the following licenses would you call permissive, which would you call copyleft?

Simplified BSD License

GPL version 3

CC BY

CC BY-SA

5. You have written a web application and published it under a free license. How can you earn
money with your product? Name three possibilities.

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Explorational Exercises
1. Under which license (including version) are the following applications available?

Apache HTTP Server

MySQL Community Server

Wikipedia articles

Mozilla Firefox

GIMP

2. You want to release your software under the GNU GPL v3. What steps should you follow?

3. You have written proprietary software and would like to combine it with free software under
the GPL version 3. Are you allowed to do this or what do you have to consider?

4. Why did the Free Software Foundation release the GNU Affero General Public License (GNU
AGPL) as a supplement to the GNU GPL?

5. Name three examples of free software, which are also offered as “Business Edition”, i.e. in a
chargeable version.

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Summary
In this lesson you have learned:

• Similarities and differences between free and open source software (FLOSS)

• FLOSS licenses, their importance and problems

• Copyleft vs. permissive licences

• FLOSS business models

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Answers to Guided Exercises

1. What are — in a nutshell — the “four freedoms” as defined by Richard Stallman and the Free
Software Foundation?

freedom 0 run the software

freedom 1 study and modify the software (source code)

freedom 2 distribute the software

freedom 3 distribute the modified software

2. What does the abbreviation FLOSS stand for?

Free/Libre Open Source Software

3. You have developed free software and want to ensure that the software itself, but also all
future results based on it, remain free as well. Which license do you choose?

CC BY

GPL version 3 X

2-Clause BSD License

LGPL

4. Which of the following licenses would you call permissive, which would you call copyleft?

Simplified BSD License permissive

GPL version 3 copyleft

CC BY permissive

CC BY-SA copyleft

5. You have written a web application and published it under a free license. How can you earn
money with your product? Name three possibilities.

◦ Dual licensing, e.g. by offering a chargeable “Business Edition”

◦ Offering hosting, service, and support

◦ Developing proprietary extensions for customers

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Answers to Explorational Exercises

1. Under which license (including version) are the following applications available?

Apache HTTP Server Apache License 2.0

MySQL Community Server GPL 2.0

Wikipedia articles (English) Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike

license (CC-BY-SA)

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Public License 2.0

GIMP LGPL 3

2. You want to release your software under the GNU GPL v3. What steps should you follow?

◦ If necessary, secure yourself against the employer with a copyright waiver, for example, so
that you can specify the license.

◦ Add a copyright notice to each file.

◦ Add a file called COPYING with the full license text to your software.

◦ Add a reference to the license in each file.

3. You have written proprietary software and would like to combine it with free software under
the GPL version 3. Are you allowed to do this or what do you have to consider?

The FAQs of the Free Software Foundation provide information here: Provided that your
proprietary software and the free software remain separate from each other, the combination
is possible. However, you have to make sure that this separation is technically guaranteed and
recognizable for the users. If you integrate the free software in such a way that it becomes part
of your product, you must also publish the product under the GPL according to the copyleft
principle.

4. Why did the Free Software Foundation release the GNU Affero General Public License (GNU
AGPL) as a supplement to the GNU GPL?

The GNU AGPL closes a license gap that arises especially with free software hosted on a server:
If a developer makes changes to the software, he is not obliged under the GPL to make these
changes accessible, since he allows access to the program, but does not “redistribute” on the
program in the GPL sense. The GNU AGPL, on the other hand, stipulates that the software must
be made available for download with all changes.

5. Name three examples of free software, which are also offered as “Business Edition”, e.g. in a

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chargeable version.

MySQL, Zammad, Nextcloud

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1.4 ICT Skills and Working in Linux

Reference to LPI objectives
Linux Essentials version 1.6, Exam 010, Objective 1.4

Weight
2

Key knowledge areas

• Desktop skills

• Getting to the command line

• Industry uses of Linux, cloud computing and virtualization

Partial list of the used files, terms and utilities

• Using a browser, privacy concerns, configuration options, searching the web and saving
content

• Terminal and console

• Password issues

• Privacy issues and tools

• Use of common open source applications in presentations and projects

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1.4 Lesson 1
Certificate: Linux Essentials

Version: 1.6

Topic: 1 The Linux Community and a Career in Open

Source

Objective: 1.4 ICT Skills and Working in Linux

Lesson: 1 of 1

Introduction
There was a time when working with Linux on the desktop was considered hard since the system
lacked many of the more polished desktop applications and configuration tools that other
operating systems had. Some of the reasons for that were that Linux was a lot younger than many
other operating systems. That being said, it was easier to start by developing more essential
command line applications and just leave the more complex graphical tools for later. In the
beginning, since Linux was first targeted to more advanced users, that should not have been a
problem. But those days are long gone. Today, Linux desktop environments are very mature,
leaving nothing to be desired as regards to features and ease of use. Nevertheless, the command
line is still considered a powerful tool used each and every day by advanced users. In this lesson
we’ll take a look at some of the basic desktop skills you will need in order to choose the best tool
for the right job, including getting to the command line.

Linux User Interfaces

When using a Linux system, you either interact with a command line or with a graphical user
interfaces. Both ways grant you access to numerous applications that support performing almost

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any task with the computer. While objective 1.2 already introduced you to a series of commonly
used applications, we will start this lesson with a closer look at desktop environments, ways to
access the terminal and tools used for presentations and project management.

Desktop Environments

Linux has a modular approach where different parts of the system are developed by different
projects and developers, each one filling a specific need or objective. Because of that, there are
several options of desktop environments to choose from and together with package managers, the
default desktop environment is one of the main differences among the many distributions out
there. Unlike proprietary operating systems like Windows and macOS, where the users are
restricted to the desktop environment that comes with their OS, there is the possibility to install
multiple environments and pick the one that adapts the most to you and your needs.

Basically, there are two major desktop environments in the Linux world: Gnome and KDE. They
are both very complete, with a large community behind them and aim for the same purpose but
with slightly divergent approaches. In a nutshell, Gnome tries to follow the KISS (“keep it simple
stupid”) principle, with very streamlined and clean applications. On the other hand, KDE has
another perspective with a larger selection of applications and giving the user the opportunity to
change every configuration setting in the environment.

While Gnome applications are based on the GTK toolkit (written in the C language), KDE
applications make use of the Qt library (written in C++). One of the most practical aspects of
writing applications with the same graphical toolkit is that applications will tend to share a
similar look and feel, which is responsible for giving the user a sense of unity during their
experience. Another important characteristic is that having the same shared graphical library for
many frequently used applications may save some memory space at the same time that it will
speed up loading time once the library has been loaded for the first time.

Getting to the Command Line

For us, one of the most important applications is the graphical terminal emulator. Those are called
terminal emulators because they really emulate, in a graphical environment, the old style serial
terminals (often Teletype machines) that were in fact clients that used to be connected to a remote
machine where the computing actually happened. Those machines were really simple computers
with no graphics at all that were used on the first versions of Unix.

In Gnome, such an application is called Gnome Terminal, while in KDE it can be found as Konsole.
But there are many other choices available, such as Xterm. Those applications are a way for us to
have access to a command line environment in order to be able to interact with a shell.

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So, you should look at the application menu of your distribution of choice for a terminal
application. Besides any difference between them, every application will offer you what is
necessary to gain confidence in using the command line.

Another way to get into the terminal is to use the virtual TTY. You can get into them by pressing
Ctrl + Alt + F# . Read F# as one of the function keys from 1 to 7, for example. Probably, some of the

initial combinations might be running your session manager or your graphical environment. The
others will show a prompt asking for your login name like the one bellow:

Ubuntu 18.10 arrelia tty3

arrelia login:

arrelia in this case, is the hostname of the machine and tty3 is the terminal available after
using the key combination above, plus the F3 key, like in Ctrl + Alt + F3 .

After providing your login and password, you will finally get into a terminal, but there is no
graphical environment in here, so, you won’t be able to use the mouse or run graphical
applications without first starting an X, or Wayland, session. But that’s beyond the scope of this
lesson.

Presentations and Projects

The most important tool for presentations on Linux is LibreOffice Impress. It’s part of the open
source office suite called LibreOffice. Think about LibreOffice as an open source replacement for
the equivalent Microsoft Office. It can even open and save the PPT and PPTX files that are native to
Powerpoint. But in spite of that, I really recommend you to use the native ODP Impress format.
The ODP is part of the larger Open Document Format, which is a international standard for this
kind of file. This is especially important if you want to keep your documents accessible for many
years and worry less about compatibility problems. Because they are an open standard, it’s
possible for anyone to implement the format without paying any royalties or licenses. This also
makes you free to try other presentations software that you may like better and take your files
with you, as it’s very likely they will be compatible with those newer softwares.

But if you prefer code over graphical interfaces, there are a few tools for you to choose. Beamer is
a LaTeX class that can create slide presentations from LaTeX code. LaTeX itself is a typesetting
system largely used for writing scientific documents at the academy, specially for its capacity to
handle complex math symbols, which other softwares have difficulty to deal with. If you are at the
university and need to deal with equations and other math related problems, Beamer can save
you a lot of time.

The other option is Reveal.js, an awesome NPM package (NPM is the default NodeJS package

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manager) which allows you to create beautiful presentations by using the web. So, if you can write
HTML and CSS, Reveal.js will bring most of the JavaScript necessary to create pretty and
interactive presentations that will adapt well on any resolution and screen size.

Lastly, if you want a replacement for Microsoft Project, you can try GanttProject or ProjectLibre.
Both are very similar to their proprietary counterpart and compatible with Project files.

Industry Uses of Linux

Linux is heavily used among the software and Internet industries. Sites like W3Techs report that
about 68% of the website servers on the Internet are powered by Unix and the biggest portion of
those are known to be Linux.

This large adoption is given not only for the free nature of Linux (as both in free beer and in
freedom of speech) but also for its stability, flexibility and performance. These characteristics
allow vendors to offer their services with a lower cost and a greater scalability. A significant
portion of Linux systems nowadays run in the cloud, either on a IaaS (Infrastructure as a service),
PaaS (Platform as a Service) or SaaS (Software as a Service) model.

IaaS is a way to share the resources of a large server by offering them access to virtual machines
that are, in fact, multiple operating systems running as guests on a host machine over an
important piece of software that is called a hypervisor. The hypervisor is responsible for making it
possible for these guest OSs to run by segregating and managing the resources available on the
host machine to those guests. That’s what we call virtualization. In the IaaS model, you pay only
for the fraction of resources your infrastructure uses.

Linux has three well know open source hypervisors: Xen, KVM and VirtualBox. Xen is probably
the oldest of them. KVM ran out Xen as the most prominent Linux Hypervisor. It has its
development sponsored by RedHat and it is used by them and other players, both in public cloud
services and in private cloud setups. VirtualBox belongs to Oracle since its acquisition of Sun
Microsystems and is usually used by end users because of its easiness of use and administration.

PaaS and SaaS, on the other hand, build up on the IaaS model, both technically and conceptually.
In PaaS instead of a virtual machine, the users have access to a platform where it will be possible
to deploy and run their application. The goal here is to ease the burden of dealing with system
administration tasks and operating systems updates. Heroku is a common PaaS example where
program code can just be run without taking care of the underlying containers and virtual
machines.

Lastly, SaaS is the model where you usually pay for a subscription in order to just use a software
without worrying about anything else. Dropbox and Salesforce are two good examples of SaaS.

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Most of these services are accessed through a web browser.

A project like OpenStack is a collection of open source software that can make use of different
hypervisors and other tools in order to offer a complete IaaS cloud environment on premise, by
leveraging the power of computer cluster on your own datacenter. However, the setup of such
infrastructure is not trivial.

Privacy Issues when using the Internet

The web browser is a fundamental piece of software on any desktop these days, but some people
still lack the knowledge to use it securely. While more and more services are accessed through a
web browser, almost all actions done through a browser are tracked and analyzed by various
parties. Securing access to internet services and preventing tracking is an important aspect of
using the internet in a safe manner.

Cookie Tracking

Let’s assume you have browsed an e-commerce website, selected a product you wanted and
placed that in the shopping cart. But at the last second, you have decided to give it a second
thought and think a little longer if you really needed that. After a while, you start seeing ads of
that same product following you around the web. When clicking on the ads, you are immediately
sent to the product page of that store again. It’s not uncommon that the products you placed in the
shopping cart are still there, just waiting for you to decide to check them out. Have you ever
wondered how they do that? How they show you the right ad at another web page? The answer
for these questions is called cookie tracking.

Cookies are small files a website can save on your computer in order to store and retrieve some
kind of information that can be useful for your navigation. They have been in use for many years
and are one of the oldest ways to store data on the client side. One good example of their use are
unique shopping card IDs. That way, if you ever come back to the same website in a few days, the
store can remember you the products you’ve placed in your cart during your last visit and save
you the time to find them again.

That’s usually okay, since the website is offering you a useful feature and not sharing any data
with third parties. But what about the ads that are shown to you while you surf on other web
pages? That’s where the ad networks come in. Ad networks are companies that offer ads for e-
commerce sites like the one in our example on one side, and monetization for websites, on the
other side. Content creators like bloggers, for example, can make some space available for those
ad networks on their blog, in exchange for a commission related to the sales generated by that ad.

But how do they know what product to show you? They usually do that by saving also a cookie

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from the ad network at the moment you visited or searched for a certain product on the e-
commerce website. By doing that, the network is able to retrieve the information on that cookie
wherever the network has ads, making the correlation with the products you were interested.
This is usually one of the most common ways to track someone over the Internet. The example we
gave above makes use of an e-commerce to make things more tangible, but social media platforms
do the same with their “Like” or “Share” buttons and their social login.

One way you can get rid of that is by not allowing third party websites to store cookies on your
browser. This way, only the website you visit can store their cookies. But be aware that some
“legitimate” features may not work well if you do that, because many sites today rely on third
party services to work. So, you can look for a cookie manager at your browser’s add-on repository
in order to have a fine-grained control of which cookies are being stored on your machine.

Do Not Track (DNT)

Another common misconception is related to a certain browser configuration better known as

DNT. That’s an acronym for “Do Not Track” and it can be turned on basically on any current
browser. Similarly to the private mode, it’s not hard to find people that believe they will not be
tracked if they have this configuration on. Unfortunately, that’s not always true. Currently, DNT is
just a way for you to tell the websites you visit that you do not want them to track you. But, in fact,
they are the ones who will decide if they will respect your choice or not. In other words, DNT is a
way to opt-out from website tracking, but there is no guarantee on that choice.

Technically, this is done by simply sending an extra flag on the header of the HTTP request
protocol (DNT: 1) upon requesting data from a web server. If you want to know more about this
topic, the website https://allaboutdnt.com is good starting point.

“Private” Windows

You might have noticed the quotes in the heading above. This is because those windows are not as
private as most people think. The names may vary but they can be called “private mode”,
“incognito” or “anonymous” tab, depending on which browser you are using.

In Firefox, you can easily use it by pressing Ctrl + Shift + P keys. In Chrome, just press Ctrl + Shift + N .
What it actually does is open a brand new session, which usually doesn’t share any configuration
or data from your standard profile. When you close the private window, the browser will
automatically delete all the data generated by that session, leaving no trace on the computer used.
This means that no personal data, like history, passwords or cookies are stored on that computer.

Thus, many people misunderstand this concept by believing that they can browse anonymous on
the Internet, which is not completely true. One thing that the privacy or incognito mode does is

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avoid what we call cookie tracking. When you visit a website, it can store a small file on your
computer which may contain an ID that can be used to track you. Unless you configure your
browser to not accept third-party cookies, ad networks or other companies can store and retrieve
that ID and actually track your browsing across websites. But since the cookies stored on a private
mode session are deleted right after you close that session, that information is forever lost.

Besides that, websites and other peers on the Internet can still use plenty other techniques in
order to track you. So, private mode brings you some level of anonymity but it’s completely
private only on the computer you are using. If you are accessing your email account or banking
website from a public computer, like in an airport or a hotel, you should definitely access those
using your browser’s private mode. In other situations, there can be benefits but you should know
exactly what risks you are avoiding and which ones have no effect. Whenever you use a public
accessible computer, be aware that other security threats such as malware or key loggers might
exist. Be careful whenever you enter personal information, including usernames and passwords,
on such computers or when you download or copy confidential data.

Choosing the Right Password

One of the most difficult situations any user faces is choosing a secure password for the services
they make use of. You have certainly heard before that you should not use common combinations
like qwerty, 123456 or 654321, nor easily guessable numbers like your (or a relative’s) birthday
or zip code. The reason for that is because those are all very obvious combinations and the first
attempts an invader will try in order to gain access to your account.

There are known techniques for creating a safe password. One of the most famous is making up a
sentence which reminds you of that service and picking the first letters of each word. Let’s assume
I want to create a good password for Facebook, for example. In this case, I could come up with a
sentence like “I would be happy if I had a 1000 friends like Mike”. Pick the first letter of each word
and the final password would be IwbhiIha1000flM. This would result in a 15 characters
password which is long enough to be hard to guess and easy to remember at the same time (as
long as I can remember the sentence and the “algorithm” for retrieving the password).

Sentences are usually easier to remember than the passwords but even this method has its
limitations. We have to create passwords for so many services nowadays and as we use them with
different frequencies, it will eventually be very difficult to remember all the sentences at the time
we need them. So what can we do? You may answer that the wisest thing to do in this case is
creating a couple good passwords and reuse them on similar services, right?

Unfortunately, that’s also not a good idea. You probably also heard you should not reuse the same
password among different services. The problem of doing such a thing is that a specific service
may leak your password (yes, it happens all the time) and any person who have access to it will

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try to use the same email and password combination on other popular services on the Internet in
hope you have done exactly that: recycled passwords. And guess what? In case they are right you
will end up having a problem not only on just one service but on several of them. And believe me,
we tend to think it’s not going to happen to us until it’s too late.

So, what can we do in order to protect ourselves? One of the most secure approaches available
today is using what is called a password manager. Password managers are a piece of software that
will essentially store all your passwords and usernames in an encrypted format which can be
decrypted by a master password. This way you only need to remember one good password since
the manager will keep all the others safe for you.

KeePass is one of the most famous and feature rich open source password managers available. It
will store your passwords in an encrypted file within your file system. The fact it’s open source is
an important issue for this kind of software since it guarantees they will not make any use of your
data because any developer can audit the code and know exactly how it works. This brings a level
of transparency that’s impossible to reach with proprietary code. KeePass has ports for most
operating systems, including Windows, Linux and macOS; as well as mobile ones like iOS and
Android. It also includes a plugin system that is able to extend it’s functionality far beyond the
defaults.

Bitwarden is another open source solution that has a similar approach but instead of storing your
data in a file, it will make use of a cloud server. This way, it’s easier to keep all your devices
synchronized and your passwords easily accessible through the web. Bitwarden is one of the few
projects that will make not only the clients, but also the cloud server available as an open source
software. This means you can host your own version of Bitwarden and make it available to
anyone, like your family or your company employees. This will give you flexibility but also total
control over how their passwords are stored and used.

One of the most important things to keep in mind when using a password manager is creating a
random password for each different service since you will not need to remind them anyway. It
would be worthless if you use a password manager to store recycled or easily guessable
passwords. Thus, most of them will offer you a random password generator you can use to create
those for you.

Encryption
Whenever data is transferred or stored, precautions need to be taken to ensure that third parties
may not access the data. Data transferred over the internet passes by a series of routers and
networks where third parties might be able to access the network traffic. Likewise, data stored on
physical media might be read by anyone who comes into possession of that media. To avoid this
kind of access, confidential information should be encrypted before it leaves a computing device.

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TLS

Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a protocol to offer security over network connections by making
use of cryptography. TLS is the successor of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) which has been
deprecated because of serious flaws. TLS has also evolved a couple of times in order to adapt itself
and become more secure, thus it’s current version is 1.3. It can provide both privacy, and
authenticity by making use of what is called symmetric and public-key cryptography. By saying
that, we mean that once in use, you can be sure that nobody will be able to eavesdrop or alter
your communication with that server during that session.

The most important lesson here is recognizing that a website is trustworthy. You should look for
the “lock” symbol on the browser’s address bar. If you desire, you can click on it to inspect the
certificate that plays an important role in the HTTPS protocol.

TLS is what is used on the HTTPS protocol (HTTP over TLS) in order to make it possible to send
sensitive data (like your credit card number) through the web. Explaining how TLS works goes
way beyond the purpose of this article, but you can find more information on the Wikipedia and
at the Mozilla wiki.

File and E-mail Encryption With GnuPG

There are plenty of tools for securing emails but one of the most important of them is certainly
GnuPG. GnuPG stands for GNU Privacy Guard and it is an open source implementation of OpenPGP
which is an international standard codified within RFC 4880.

GnuPG can be used to sign, encrypt, and decrypt texts, e-mails, files, directories, and even whole
disk partitions. It works with public-key cryptography and is widely available. In a nutshell
GnuPG creates a pair of files which contain your public and private keys. As the name implies, the
public key can be available to anyone and the private key needs to be kept in secret. People will
use your public key to encrypt data which only your private key will be able to decrypt.

You can also use your private key to sign any file or e-mail which can be validated against the
corresponding public key. This digital signage works analogous to the real world signature. As
long as you are the only one who posses your private key, the receiver can be sure that it was you
who have authored it. By making use of the cryptographic hash functionality GnuPG will also
guarantee no changes have been made after the signature because any changes to the content
would invalidate the signature.

GnuPG is a very powerful tool and, in a certain extent, also a complex one. You can find more
information on its website and on Archlinux wiki (Archlinux wiki is a very good source of
information, even though you don’t use Archlinux).

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Disk Encryption

A good way to secure your data is to encrypt your whole disk or partition. There are many open
source softwares you can use to achieve such a purpose. How they work and what level of
encryption they offer also varies significantly. There are basic two methods available: stacked and
block device encryption.

Stacked filesystem solutions are implemented on top of existing filesystem. When using this
method, the files and directories are encrypted before being stored on the filesystem and
decrypted after reading them. This means the files are stored on the host filesystem in an
encrypted form (meaning that their contents, and usually also their file/folder names, are
replaced by random-looking data), but other than that, they still exist in that filesystem as they
would without encryption, as normal files, symlinks, hardlinks, etc.

On the other hand, block device encryption happens below the filesystem layer, making sure
everything that is written to a block device is encrypted. If you look to the block while it’s offline,
it will look like a large section of random data and you won’t even be able to tell what type of
filesystem is there without decrypting it first. This means you can’t tell what is a file or directory;
how big they are and what kind of data it is, because metadata, directory structure and
permissions are also encrypted.

Both methods have their own pros and cons. Among all the options available, you should take a
look at dm-crypt, which is the de-facto standard for block encryption for Linux systems, since it’s
native in the kernel. It can be used with LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup) extension, which is a
specification that implements a platform-independent standard for use with various tools.

If you want to try a stackable method, you should take a look at EncFS, which is probably the
easiest way to secure data on Linux because it does not require root privileges to implement and it
can work on an existing filesystem without modifications.

Finally, if you need to access data on various platforms, check out Veracrypt. It is the successor of
a Truecrypt and allows the creation of encrypted media and files, which can be used on Linux as
well as on macOS and Windows.

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Guided Exercises
1. You should use a “private window” in your browser if you want:

To browse completely anonymous on the

Internet

To leave no trace on the computer you’re

using

To activate TLS to avoid cookie tracking

In order to use DNT

To use cryptography during data transmission

2. What is OpenStack?

A project that allows the creation of private

IaaS

A project that allows the creation of private

PaaS

A project that allows the creation of private

SaaS

A hypervisor

An open source password manager

3. Which of the below options are valid disk encryption softwares?

RevealJS, EncFS and dm-crypt

dm-crypt and KeePass

EncFS and Bitwarden

EncFS and dm-crypt

TLS and dm-crypt

4. Select true or false for dm-crypt device encryption:

Files are encrypted before being written to the

disk

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The entire filesystem is an encrypted blob

Only files and directories are encrypted, not

symlinks

Don’t require root access

Is a block device encryption

5. Beamer is:

An encryption mechanism

A hypervisor

A virtualization software

An OpenStack component

A LaTeX presentation tool

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Explorational Exercises
1. Most distributions come with Firefox installed by default (if yours doesn’t, you will have to
install it first). We are going to install a Firefox extension called Lightbeam. You can do that by
either pressing Ctrl + Shift + A and searching for “Lightbeam” on the search field that will be
shown on the tab opened, or by visiting the extension page with Firefox and clicking on the
“Install” button: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/lightbeam-3-0/. After doing this,
start the extension by clicking on its icon and start visiting some webpages on other tabs to see
what happens.

2. What is the most important thing when using a password manager?

3. Use your web browser to navigate to https://haveibeenpwned.com/. Find out the purpose of the
website and check if your email address was included in some data leaks.

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Summary
The terminal is a powerful way to interact with the system and there are lots of useful and very
mature tools to use in this kind of environment. You can get to the terminal by looking for a
graphical one at your desktop environment menu or pressing Ctrl + Alt + F# .

Linux is largely used in the tech industry to offer IaaS, PaaS and SaaS services. There are three
main hypervisors which play an important role in supporting those: Xen, KVM and Virtualbox.

The browser is an essential piece of software in computing nowadays, but it’s necessary to
understand some things to use it with safety. DNT is just a way to tell the website that you do not
want to be tracked, but there is no guarantee on that. Private windows are private only to the
computer you’re using but this can allow you to escape from cookie tracking exactly because of
that.

TLS is able to encrypt your communication on the Internet, but you have to be able to recognize
when it’s in use. Using strong passwords is also very important to keep you safe, so the best idea is
to delegate that responsibility to a password manager and allow the software to create random
passwords to every site you log into.

Another way to secure your communication is to sign and encrypt your files folders and emails
with GnuPG. dm-crypt and EncFS are two alternatives to encrypt whole disks or partitions that
use respectively block and stack encryption methods.

Finally, LibreOffice Impress is a very complete open source alternative to Microsoft Powerpoint
but there are Beamer and RevealJS if you prefer to create presentations using code instead of
GUIs. ProjectLibre and GanttProject can be the right choice if you need a Microsoft Project
replacement.

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Answers to Guided Exercises

1. You should use a “private window” in your browser if you want:

To browse completely anonymous on the

Internet

To leave no trace on the computer you’re X

using

To activate TLS to avoid cookie tracking

In order to use DNT

To use cryptography during data transmission

2. What is OpenStack?

A project that allows the creation of private X

IaaS

A project that allows the creation of PaaS

A project that allows the creation of SaaS

A hypervisor

An open source password manager

3. Which of the below options are valid disk encryption softwares?

RevealJS, EncFS and dm-crypt

dm-crypt and KeePass

EncFS and Bitwarden

EncFS and dm-crypt X

TLS and dm-crypt

4. Select true or false for dm-crypt device encryption:

Files are encrypted before being written to the T

disk

The entire filesystem is an encrypted blob T

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Only files and directories are encrypted, not F

symlinks

Don’t require root access F

Is a block device encryption T

5. Beamer is:

An encryption mechanism

A hypervisor

A virtualization software

An OpenStack component

A LaTeX presentation tool X

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Answers to Explorational Exercises

1. Most distributions come with Firefox installed by default (if yours doesn’t, you will have to
install it first). We are going to install a Firefox extension called Lightbeam. You can do that by
either pressing Ctrl + Shift + A and searching for “Lightbeam” on the search field that will be
shown on the tab opened, or by visiting the extension page with Firefox and clicking on the
“Install” button: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lightbeam. After doing this,
start the extension by clicking on it’s icon and start visiting some webpages on other tabs to see
what happens.

Remember those cookies we said that can share your data with different services when you
visit a website? That’s exactly what this extension is going to show you. Lightbeam is a Mozilla
experiment that tries to reveal the first and third party sites you interact with upon visiting a
single URL. This content is usually not visible to the average user and it can show that
sometimes a single website is able to interact with a dozen or more services.

2. What is the most important thing when using a password manager?

When using a password manager, the most important thing to have in mind is memorizing
your master password and use a unique random password for each different service.

3. Use your web browser to navigate to https://haveibeenpwned.com/. Find out the purpose of the
website and check if your email address was included in some data leaks.

The website maintains a database of login information whose passwords were affected by a
password leak. It allows searching for an email address and shows if that email address was
included in a public database of stolen credentials. Chances are that your email address is
affected by one or the other leak, too. If that is the case, make sure you have updated your
passwords recently. If you don’t already use a password manager, take a look at the ones
recommended in this lesson.

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Topic 2: Finding Your Way on a Linux System

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | 2.1 Command Line Basics

2.1 Command Line Basics

Reference to LPI objectives
Linux Essentials version 1.6, Exam 010, Objective 2.1

Weight
3

Key knowledge areas

• Basic shell

• Command line syntax

• Variables

• Quoting

Partial list of the used files, terms and utilities

• Bash

• echo

• history

• PATH environment variable

• export

• type

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2.1 Lesson 1
Certificate: Linux Essentials

Version: 1.6

Topic: 2 Finding Your Way on a Linux System

Objective: 2.1 Command Line Basics

Lesson: 1 of 2

Introduction
Modern Linux distributions have a wide range of graphical user interfaces but an administrator
will always need to know how to work with the command line, or shell as it is called. The shell is a
program that enables text based communication between the operating system and the user. It is
usually a text mode program that reads the user’s input and interprets it as commands to the
system.

There are several different shells on Linux, these are just a few:

• Bourne-again shell (Bash)

• C shell (csh or tcsh, the enhanced csh)

• Korn shell (ksh)

• Z shell (zsh)

On Linux the most common one is the Bash shell. This is also the one that will be used in examples
or exercises here.

When using an interactive shell, the user inputs commands at a so-called prompt. For each Linux

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | 2.1 Command Line Basics

distribution, the default prompt may look a little different, but it usually follows this structure:

username@hostname current_directory shell_type

On Ubuntu or Debian GNU/Linux, the prompt for a regular user will likely look like this:

carol@mycomputer:~$

The superuser’s prompt will look like this:

root@mycomputer:~#

On CentOS or Red Hat Linux, the prompt for a regular user will instead look like this:

[dave@mycomputer ~]$

And the superuser’s prompt will look like this:

[root@mycomputer ~]#

Let’s explain each component of the structure:

username
Name of the user that runs the shell

hostname
Name of the host on which the shell runs. There is also a command hostname, with which you
can show or set the system’s host name.

current_directory
The directory that the shell is currently in. A ~ means that the shell is in the current user’s
home directory.

shell_type
$ indicates the shell is run by a regular user.

# indicates the shell is run by the superuser root.

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As we do not need any special privileges, we will use an unprivileged prompt in the following
examples. For brevity, we will just use the $ as prompt.

Command Line Structure

Most commands at the command line follow the same basic structure:

command [option(s)/parameter(s)...] [argument(s)...]

Take the following command as an example:

$ ls -l /home

Let’s explain the purpose of each component:

Command
Program that the user will run – ls in the above example.

Option(s)/Parameter(s)
A “switch” that modifies the behavior of the command in some way, such as -l in the above
example. Options can be accessed in a short and in a long form. For example, -l is identical to
--format=long.

Multiple options can be combined as well and for the short form, the letters can usually be
typed together. For example, the following commands all do the same:

$ ls -al
$ ls -a -l
$ ls --all --format=long

Argument(s)
Additional data that is required by the program, like a filename or path, such as /home in the
above example.

The only mandatory part of this structure is the command itself. In general, all other elements are
optional, but a program may require certain options, parameters or arguments to be specified.

Most commands display a short overview of available options when they are run
NOTE with the --help parameter. We will learn additional ways to learn more about

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | 2.1 Command Line Basics

Linux commands soon.

Command Behavior Types

The shell supports two types of commands:

Internal
These commands are part of the shell itself and are not separate programs. There are around
30 such commands. Their main purpose is executing tasks inside the shell (e.g. cd, set,
export).

External
These commands reside in individual files. These files are usually binary programs or scripts.
When a command which is not a shell builtin is run, the shell uses the PATH variable to search
for an executable file with same name as the command. In addition to programs which are
installed with the distribution’s package manager, users can create their own external
commands as well.

The command type shows what type a specific command is:

$ type echo
echo is a shell builtin
$ type man
man is /usr/bin/man

Quoting
As a Linux user, you will have to create or manipulate files or variables in various ways. This is
easy when working with short filenames and single values, but it becomes more complicated
when, for example, spaces, special characters and variables are involved. Shells provide a feature
called quoting which encapsulates such data using various kinds of quotes (" ", ' '). In Bash, there
are three types of quotes:

• Double quotes

• Single quotes

• Escape characters

For example, the following commands do not act in the same way due to quoting:

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$ TWOWORDS="two words"
$ touch $TWOWORDS
$ ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 carol carol 0 Mar 10 14:56 two
-rw-r--r-- 1 carol carol 0 Mar 10 14:56 words
$ touch "$TWOWORDS"
$ ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 carol carol 0 Mar 10 14:56 two
-rw-r--r-- 1 carol carol 0 Mar 10 14:58 'two words'
-rw-r--r-- 1 carol carol 0 Mar 10 14:56 words
$ touch '$TWOWORDS'
$ ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 carol carol 0 Mar 10 15:00 '$TWOWORDS'
-rw-r--r-- 1 carol carol 0 Mar 10 14:56 two
-rw-r--r-- 1 carol carol 0 Mar 10 14:58 'two words'
-rw-r--r-- 1 carol carol 0 Mar 10 14:56 words

The line with TWOWORDS= is a Bash variable that we have created ourselves. We will
NOTE introduce variables later. This is just meant to show you how quoting affects the
output of variables.

Double Quotes

Double quotes tell the shell to take the text in between the quote marks ("...") as regular
characters. All special characters lose their meaning, except the $ (dollar sign), \ (backslash) and `
(backquote). This means that variables, command substitution and arithmetic functions can still
be used.

For example, the substitution of the $USER variable is not affected by the double quotes:

$ echo I am $USER
I am tom
$ echo "I am $USER"
I am tom

A space character, on the other hand, loses its meaning as an argument separator:

$ touch new file

$ ls -l
-rw-rw-r-- 1 tom students 0 Oct 8 15:18 file
-rw-rw-r-- 1 tom students 0 Oct 8 15:18 new

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | 2.1 Command Line Basics

$ touch "new file"

$ ls -l
-rw-rw-r-- 1 tom students 0 Oct 8 15:19 new file

As you can see, in the first example, the touch command creates two individual files, the
command interprets the two strings as individual arguments. In the second example, the
command interprets both strings as one argument, therefore it only creates one file. It is,
however, best practice to avoid the space character in filenames. Instead, an underscore (_) or a
dot (.) could be used.

Single Quotes

Single quotes don’t have the exceptions of the double quotes. They revoke any special meaning
from each character. Let’s take one of the first examples from above:

$ echo I am $USER
I am tom

When applying the single quotes you see a different result:

$ echo 'I am $USER'

I am $USER

The command now displays the exact string without substituting the variable.

Escape Characters

We can use escape characters to remove special meanings of characters from Bash. Going back to
the $USER environment variable:

$ echo $USER
carol

We see that by default, the contents of the variable are displayed in the terminal. However, if we
were to precede the dollar sign with a backslash character (\) then the special meaning of the
dollar sign will be negated. This in turn will not let Bash expand the variable’s value to the
username of the person running the command, but will instead interpret the variable name
literally:

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | Topic 2: Finding Your Way on a Linux System

$ echo \$USER
$USER

If you recall, we can get similar results to this using the single quote, which prints the literal
contents of whatever is between the single quotes. However the escape character works
differently by instructing Bash to ignore whatever special meaning the character it precedes may
possess.

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | 2.1 Command Line Basics

Guided Exercises
1. Split the lines below into the components of command, option(s)/parameter(s) and
argument(s):

◦ Example: cat -n /etc/passwd

Command: cat

Option: -n

Argument: /etc/passwd

◦ ls -l /etc

Command:

Option:

Argument:

◦ ls -l -a

Command:

Option:

Argument:

◦ cd /home/user

Command:

Option:

Argument:

2. Find what type the following commands are:

Example:

pwd Shell builtin

mv External command

cd

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | Topic 2: Finding Your Way on a Linux System

cat

exit

3. Resolve the following commands that use quotes:

Example:

echo "$HOME is my home directory" echo /home/user is my home directory

touch "$USER"

touch 'touch'

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | 2.1 Command Line Basics

Explorational Exercises
1. With one command and using brace expansion in Bash (review the man page for Bash), create
5 files numbered 1 to 5 with the prefix game (game1, game2, …).

2. Delete all 5 files that you just created with just one command, using a different special
character (review Pathname Expansion in the Bash man pages).

3. Is there any other way to make two commands interact with each other? What are those?

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Summary
In this lab you learned:

• Concepts of the Linux shell

• What is the Bash shell

• The structure of the command line

• An introduction to quoting

Commands used in the exercises:

bash
The most popular shell on Linux computers.

echo
Output text on the terminal.

ls
List the contents of a directory.

type
Show how a specific command is executed.

touch
Create an empty file or update an existing file’s modification date.

hostname
Show or change a system’s hostname.

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Answers to Guided Exercises

1. Split the lines below into the components of command, option(s)/parameter(s) and
argument(s):

◦ ls -l /etc

Command: ls

Option: -l

Argument: /etc

◦ ls -l -a

Command: ls

Option: -l -a

Argument:

◦ cd /home/user

Command: cd

Option:

Argument: /home/user

2. Find what type the following commands are:

cd Shell builtin

cat External command

exit Shell builtin

3. Resolve the following commands that use quotes:

touch "$USER" tom

touch 'touch' Creates a file named touch

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Answers to Explorational Exercises

1. With one command and using brace expansion in Bash (review the man page for Bash), create
5 files numbered 1 to 5 with the prefix game (game1, game2, …).

Ranges can be used to express the numbers from 1 to 5 within one command:

$ touch game{1..5}
$ ls
game1 game2 game3 game4 game5

2. Delete all 5 files that you just created with just one command, using a different special
character (review Pathname Expansion in the Bash man pages).

Since all files start with game and end in a single character (a number from 1 to 5 in this case),
? can be used as a special character for the last character in the filename:

$ rm game?

3. Is there any other way to make two commands interact with each other? What are those?

Yes, one command could, for example, write data to a file which is then processed by another
command. Linux can also collect the output of one command and use it as input for another
command. This is called piping and we will learn more about it in a future lesson.

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | 2.1 Command Line Basics

2.1 Lesson 2
Certificate: Linux Essentials

Version: 1.6

Topic: 2 Finding Your Way on a Linux System

Objective: 2.1 Command Line Basics

Lesson: 2 of 2

Introduction
All shells manage a set of status information throughout the shell sessions. This runtime
information may change during the session and influences how the shell behaves. This data is also
used by programs to determinate aspects of the system’s configuration. Most of this data is stored
in so-called variables, which we will cover in this lesson.

Variables
Variables are pieces of storage for data, such as text or numbers. Once set, a variable’s value can
be accessed at a later time. Variables have a name which allows accessing a specific variable, even
when the variable’s content changes. They are a very common tool in most programming
languages.

In most Linux shells, there are two types of variables:

Local variables
These variables are available to the current shell process only. If you create a local variable and
then start another program from this shell, the variable is not accessible to that program

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anymore. Because they are not inherited by sub processes, these variables are called local
variables.

Environment variables
These variables are available both in a specific shell session and in sub processes spawned
from that shell session. Theses variables can be used to pass configuration data to commands
which are run. Because these programs can access these variables, they are called environment
variables. The majority of the environment variables are in capital letters (e.g. PATH, DATE,
USER). A set of default environment variables provide, for example, information about the
user’s home directory or terminal type. Sometimes the complete set of all environment
variables is referred to as the environment.

Variables are not persistent. When the shell in which they were set is closed, all
variables and their contents are lost. Most shells provide configuration files that
NOTE
contain variables which are set whenever a new shell is started. Variables that
should be set permanently must be added to one of these configuration files.

Manipulating Variables
As a system administrator, you will need to create, modify or remove both local and environment
variables.

Working with Local Variables

You can set up a local variable by using the = (equal) operator. A simple assignment will create a
local variable:

$ greeting=hello

NOTE Don’t put any space before or after the = operator.

You can display any variable using the echo command. The command usually displays the text in
the argument section:

$ echo greeting
greeting

In order to access the value of the variable you will need to use $ (dollar sign) in front of the
variable’s name.

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | 2.1 Command Line Basics

$ echo $greeting
hello

As it can be seen, the variable has been created. Now open another shell and try to display the
contents of the variable created.

$ echo $greeting

Nothing is displayed. This illustrates, that variables always exist in a specific shell only.

To verify that the variable is actually a local variable, try to spawn a new process and check if this
process can access the variable. We can do so by starting another shell and let this shell run the
echo command. As the new shell is run in a new process, it won’t inherit local variables from its
parent process:

$ echo $greeting world

hello world
$ bash -c 'echo $greeting world'
world

NOTE Make sure to use single quotes in the example above.

In order to remove a variable, you will need to use the command unset:

$ echo $greeting
hey
$ unset greeting
$ echo $greeting

unset requires the name of the variable as an argument. Therefore you may not
NOTE add $ to the name, as this would resolve the variable and pass the variable’s value
to unset instead of the variable’s name.

Working with Global Variables

To make a variable available to subprocesses, turn it from a local into an environment variable.
This is done by the command export. When it is invoked with the variable name, this variable is
added to the shell’s environment:

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$ greeting=hello
$ export greeting

Again, make sure to not use $ when running export as you want to pass the name
NOTE
of the variable instead of its contents.

An easier way to create the environment variable is to combine both of the above methods, by
assigning the variable value in the argument part of the command.

$ export greeting=hey

Let’s check again if the variable is accessible to subprocesses:

$ export greeting=hey
$ echo $greeting world
hey world
$ bash -c 'echo $greeting world'
hey world

Another way to use environment variables is to use them in front of commands. We can test this
with the environment variable TZ which holds the timezone. This variable is used by the
command date to determine which timezone’s time to display:

$ TZ=EST date
Thu 31 Jan 10:07:35 EST 2019
$ TZ=GMT date
Thu 31 Jan 15:07:35 GMT 2019

You can display all environment variables using the env command.

The PATH Variable

The PATH variable is one of the most important environment variables in a Linux system. It stores
a list of directories, separated by a colon, that contain executable programs eligible as commands
from the Linux shell.

$ echo $PATH
/home/user/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

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To append a new directory to the variable, you will need to use the colon sign (:).

$ PATH=$PATH:new_directory

Here an example:

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
$ PATH=$PATH:/home/user/bin
$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/home/user/bin

As you see, $PATH is used in the new value assigned to PATH. This variable is resolved during the
command execution and makes sure that the original content of the variable is preserved. Of
course, you can use other variables in the assignment as well:

$ mybin=/opt/bin
$ PATH=$PATH:$mybin
$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/home/user/bin:/opt/bin

The PATH variable needs to be handled with caution, as it is crucial for working on the command
line. Let’s consider the following PATH variable:

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

To find out how the shell invokes a specific command, which can be run with the command’s
name as argument. We can, for example, try to find out where nano is stored:

$ which nano
/usr/bin/nano

As it can be seen, the nano executable is located within the /usr/bin directory. Let’s remove the
directory from the variable and check to see if the command still works:

$ PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
$ echo $PATH

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | Topic 2: Finding Your Way on a Linux System

/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

Let’s look up the nano command again:

$ which nano
which: no nano in (/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games)

As it can be seen, the command is not found, therefore not executed. The error message also
explains the reason why the command was not found and in what locations it was searched.

Let’s add back the directories and try running the command again.

$ PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
$ which nano
/usr/bin/nano

Now our command works again.

The order of elements in PATH also defines the lookup order. The first matching
TIP
executable found while going through the paths is executed.

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 Linux Essentials (Version 1.6) | 2.1 Command Line Basics

Guided Exercises
1. Create a local variable number.

2. Create an environment variable ORDER, using one of the two above methods.

3. Display both the variable names and their contents.

4. What are the scopes of the previously created variables?

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