Linux is a #free and #open source Kernel# based on Unix, first initiated and developed by Linus Torvalds. Most of the time, Linux is coupled alongside with GNU utilities to compose a complete operating system which are contributed by Richard Stallman and Free Software Foundation (FSF) where they prefer to refer such combination as GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux.
In the following section, I will use Linux to refer to the kernel and the operating system interchangeably.
The superuser in Linux is called root, which will have a user ID of 0. It has the highest possible privileges within the operating system.
- Linux Container (LXC)#
- Linux Memory Management#
- Linux’s Storage Management#
- Linux CPU Scheduler#
- Systemd#
- Printing in Linux#
- Job Control#
- POSIX Mandatory Lock#
- POSIX Advisory Lock#
- Signal#
File related functionalities
As Linux follows the Unix Philosophy# (or partly), almost all devices or objects are treated as a file. File is an important logic entity in Linux that one should pay attention if they want to master it. The following topics are related to file or its operation.
Graphical User Interface (GUI)
Linux has several GUI to display bitmap. There are several implementations as shown below:
- X Window System#
- Wayland
Resource Control and Security Facilities
Linux provides some facilities to simplify the resource management and fine control on security. The framework or facilities are shown below:
- Control Groups (Cgroups)#
- Namespace Isolation#
- Security Computer Mode (Seccomp)#
- Linux Security Modules (LSM)#
Distributions
There are tons of Linux distributions with different flavour of desktop environment and default programs. The following shows them:
- openSUSE#
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux#
- Fedora#
- Ubuntu#
- Mandriva Linux
- Debian#
- Mageia
- Gentoo