In late March, I picked up a book called The Linux Bible by Christopher Negus. It is an in-depth (almost 1000 pages!) book all about Linux and how it works. Linux is a computer OS (like windows) except it has more freedom because it has a heavy emphasis on the command line and programming. Nearly every job in Information Technology requires an understanding of Linux and how to use it. I have been reading this book in all my free time and I have read about half of it so far.
I’ve learned things such as: installing Linux, customizing it to meet my needs, learning basic commands, and also how to manipulate it to do what I want it to do. Lucky for me, I had an old laptop lying around collecting dust; I grabbed it, followed the book’s instructions on where to download the ISO file and then installed it. An ISO is a disk image file, so that is what is burned to a CD (generally DVD’s) and then installed onto the computer.
The Linux Bible recommends using an OS called Fedora, a distribution of Linux (there are more than 1000’s of different “flavors” of Linux – simply different OSes that work for different things). Fedora is a free, Red Hat OS; Red Hat is a big name in the IT sector, they provide multiple different certifications which are necessary to get an IT job – they use Fedora and customs Linux distros to certify users on. Its 27 chapters cover everything from security to enterprise management to cloud servers.
Linux is arguably better than Windows in nearly every aspect. Since I enjoy gaming, I use Windows because Linux is not as good for gaming. If it weren’t for my desire to play video games, I would use Linux instead of Windows for all of my daily tasks. Linux can also run some windows programs, and those that it can not run have their own off-brand designed for Linux. Linux is better for security research and overall experimentation in the cyber world.
My dream job is to become an Informations Security Analyst (basically an ethical hacker – a company gives me permission to find security flaws in their systems) and Linux is going to be critical to that. Linux also has an amazing amount of resources to learn to program, in my case, I can code Python using Linux. Doing this will allow me to both learn Python and learn how to use Linux for my future job.
I am currently working on a lot of small projects and games that I am making with Python. This is another benefit of Linux is that I can code on my new Linux machine and still be able to send it over to my Windows laptop and play with it on there. For my final presentation, I am thinking about presenting all of my projects and all of the code with it to showcase what I have learned.
Learn 2 Python 