Version 2.
Intro to Unix/Linux!
Part 1: History
• Unix released in 1969
• Picture: Ken Thompson (sitting)
and Dennis Ritchie working together
at a PDP-11
• [Link]
tory_of_Unix
In the beginning, there was (no) Unix
• [On a PDP7], in 1969, a team of Bell Labs researchers led by
Thompson and Ritchie, including Rudd Canaday, implemented a
hierarchical file system, the concepts of computer processes and
device files, a command-line interpreter, and some small utility
programs, modeled on the corresponding features in Multics, but
simplified.[3] The resulting system, much smaller and simpler than
Multics, was to become Unix.
[Link]
PDP11
at The National Museum Of Computing, Bletchley, UK.
Multi-user environment
Multi-tasking
Some of Unix Security and authentication
Features
Networking
Drawback: complex/expensive licensing
Origin of Linux Kernel
• IBM introduced PC (personal
computers) based on Intel 8080 (later
on became x86 architecture)
• Linus Torvalds was a student who used
Unix at school, and wanted a similar
OS for himself at home, started
writing a clone of Unix, initially as a
hobby
• Linus Torvalds made “Linux” source
code available for free in 1991
• Free software Foundation, GNU
started using Linux as their kernel
Part 2: What you need to know as a new user
Unix/Linux is files!
• FHS (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard)
• / root
• Everything is located under the
root
• Everything is file!
• Linux/Unix File types:
• Regular files, and directories
• Configurations, settings, data
• Device files
• Storage, Webcams, Network
Cards, Serial Ports, …
• Links
• Etc.
Source: [Link]
NO DRIVE LETTERS!
• A storage volume is mounted in a directory under / (mount and
umount commands)
• Example of Advantages over having drive letters:
• /home can be on a separate physical storage volume from / or /boot
• /boot, where the kernel/OS images are loaded from, can be stored
anywhere, even at a network location
• All of these can be transparent to users!
NO Add/Remove programs!
• GNU/Linux is a “File-based” OS
• all the configurations, devices, and applications are files!
• To run a program:
• Copy binaries anywhere on the disk (that you have permission to write)
• change the permission to allow execution and run!
• No installers, No Registry, No add/remove programs.
• Linux Distros use package management software to aid in
managing software
Linux is Multi-user!
• Every file has “permissions
mode”, owner, and group Command: ls -l
Permission |owner|Group | size| Date |name
• Permissions are assigned for:
• Owner drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Apr 26 2012 acpi
• Group owner -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2981 Apr 26 2012 [Link]
• Others drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 5 20:53 alternatives
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 395 Jun 20 2010 readme
• Notations:
• Octal (777, 644, 650)
• Alphabetic (rwx)
su/sudo command
• Switch/substitute User! #----Example 1----
user@host$ su alice
• su: “makes it possible to change a login session's alice@host$ su
owner (i.e., the user who originally created that root@host#
session by logging in to the system) without the
owner having to first log out of that session.” #-----Example 2----
([Link] # The “passwd” command is used to
change password
• Some Linux Distros use “sudo” instead user@host$ passwd
user@host$ sudo passwd