Lab setup - Linux Tutorial

- [Instructor] This course is an introduction to Linux distributions, including a brief look at their history and mostly focusing on how they differ from each other. It's not an introduction to the Linux command line or to using a Linux system in general. If you'd like to start out learning about Linux at a high level, take a look at Introduction to Linux. And if you're looking for an introduction to using the shell or command line, take a look at Learning Linux Command Line, both here on LinkedIn Learning. In this course, I'll be downloading, installing, and running many different Linux distributions. So, that means we need to consider a few different things before we start out. First, downloading Linux installers can take quite a bit of time depending on the speed of your internet connection, and they can take up quite a bit of disk space. So, as you follow the course, be sure to allow time for downloading these installation disk images. Second, we need somewhere to run our distributions. I'll be using VirtualBox to create virtual machines to run my distributions. For my virtual machines, I'll be using the same machine specifications for all my distributions, though that's not strictly necessary because some of the distros we'll be using can run just fine with less memory and disk space. But to keep things simpler, I'll use four gigabytes of RAM and 80 gigabytes of hard drive and accept the defaults for the rest of the machine creation process in VirtualBox. If you use virtual machines, you may want to tweak the settings in various ways. You could also choose to use a different hypervisor like VMware or Hyper-V. I like VirtualBox, though, because it's free and it runs on all three major platforms: Windows, macOS, and Linux. When we get to the part of the course where we'll install distributions, I won't cover a lot of the details of VirtualBox, and if you're unfamiliar with it, I recommend you take a look at my course. Learning VirtualBox here on LinkedIn Learning to become more familiar with it. We'll primarily be focusing on the operating system installation itself, and we'll use each distribution a little bit before moving on. If you're not able to run virtual machines or you prefer to experiment with Linux distributions on spare hardware, you could install the operating systems directly on a compatible computer instead. To do that, you'll need to create installation disks out of the installer images, and there are tools that can help us do this. Rufus for Windows provides a graphical interface for creating bootable USB drives from ISO images. On Mac and Linux systems, we can use the dd command to create installation disks, and for more in-depth information about doing that, take a look at the video in my Linus Tips Weekly series called Foundations USB Installer. I want to share a note about how I think you should approach this course. I recommend that you watch through the course all the way first, and then come back to sections about distros you're interested in to follow along afterward. Think of the second half of this course like a tasting menu or buffet of various distributions. We won't go into great depth on any of them, but we'll taste each of them to see if there's something we like and want to continue using. Because we'll be installing Linux distributions and exploring some of the same tasks across all of them, some of the later chapters in the course may seem a little bit repetitive, and they are. The installation process is similar for most distros, but it's not exactly the same. Some installers have more options than others, and some have slightly less user-friendly text-based installers that might be intimidating to new users, but we'll walk through all of them regardless. The goal of this course is to help you develop an approach to selecting a distribution to use for yourself, not for you to follow along with me step-by-step as we install and then move on for many different distros. If you want to do that, that's fine, but know that it will take quite a bit longer than the listed time for this course. If you find a particular distribution interesting, and want to learn more, take a look for a more in-depth course about that distribution here on LinkedIn Learning. Most of the distributions I'll demonstrate have whole courses or series of courses here on LinkedIn Learning, dedicated to sharing more detail about them. And finally, if you plan to install a Linux distribution directly on a computer instead of in a virtual machine, be sure that you've backed up any information you want to save from that computer. Installing an operating system will erase any other information on the disk you install it to. Now let's dive in and start exploring what a Linux distribution is.