What’s Linux and How Can I Use It?

What’s Linux?

Linux is a free and open-source operating system kernel. Linux is part of a family of operating systems that bundle various pieces of software to form a complete OS, called Linux distros.

Why Linux?

• It’s truly free!
  • Anyone can view, modify, and redistribute the the kernel and its underlying source code.
  • It’s actually libre/available for no charge.¹
• Linux powers millions of devices like Android smartphones, Chromebooks, and even the top 500 supercomputers in the world!
• Unix-like systems like Linux are widespread in academia. Learning its usage is beneficial to your research and coursework!
• Linux systems are tailored to software development, programming and installing dependencies is far easier on Linux than other operating systems.
• It’s not Windows.
  • Or macOS either...

5 Reasons to Use Linux

How to Install Linux

Recommended Distro

Choosing a Linux distro is hard.

For simplicity, we recommend a Debian-based distribution. Why? Because distros like Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint make up almost half of all Linux installs.

Downloading Linux

Out of the listed Debian-based distros, Ubuntu is by far the most popular. You can download it from Canonical’s website here...

Installing Linux

To install Linux, you need to create a bootable USB drive. Tools like Rufus can do this for you.

There are some important caveats when trying Linux on your machine.

• Installing Linux typically means wiping you hard drive, if you have important files do not do this without backing up first.
• Dual-booting Linux and Windows takes some extra care. If you want to do this setup, consult a LUG officer for more help.
• If you installed Windows with Secure Boot and Bitlocker, you must not disable secure boot or you will need a recovery key from your Microsoft account to decrypt your data.
• If you are on an ARM Macbook (M1, M2, etc.), Linux support is considered alpha quality. Look into Asahi Linux.

Using Linux Without Installing

Methods

You don’t have to install Linux on your machine to learn how to use it. Consider these alternative methods too:

• Virtual Machine using VMWare or Virtualbox
• (Windows) WSL2
• Using a Remote Server

Virtual Machines

Virtual Machine software like VMWare or Virtualbox are perfectly good ways to use Linux!

• VMWare Player https://www.vmware.com/products/desktop-hypervisor/workstation-and-fusion
• Virtualbox https://www.virtualbox.org/

WSL

If you’re on Windows 10 or newer, you can use WSL to get a Linux install on your Windows system.

Run wsl –-install in Powershell.

Remote Server

If all else fails, you can always use other people’s Linux servers too. For example, UIC offers 4 Ubuntu servers for students to use.

Example Connect to a systems<1..4>.cs.uic.edu server! In your Terminal/Powershell, run ssh <netid>@systems<1..4>.cs.uic.edu
Where...

• <netid> is your email without the @uic.edu
• <1..4> is a number between 1 and 4

When prompted for a password, enter your my.uic.edu password.

Closing Remarks

Thank you!

Officers

The information in this presentation will be made available on our website!
https://lug.cs.uic.edu

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2024-10-02