Linux for Beginners – A Comprehensive Guide

This book was written to help people that are just beginning to use Linux. It covers the content of the LPI and Comptia Linux+ courses, but it can also be used to simply learn Linux.

This book explains how to download, install, and manage a Linux distribution from the GUI and the Linux shell. You will learn what the shell is and how to administer your Linux installation using only commands. We will cover hard disk management, network configuration, ownership and permissions, and much more.

Here is a list of chapters:

• Chapter 1 - Linux overview - what is Linux, differences between Linux and Unix or Windows, file structure explained.


• Chapter 2 - Installation - change the boot order in BIOS, install Ubuntu and CentOS.


• Chapter 3 - Shell - what is the shell, bash shell explained, essential Linux commands, environment variables.


• Chapter 4 - Editing text - types of text editors, nano, gedit, KWrite explained.


• Chapter 5 - Managing processes - what is a process, list processes with top and ps, kill processes.


• Chapter 6 - Install applications - package managers overview, RPM, yum, APT package managers, apt-get and apt-cache command usage.


• Chapter 7 - Manage users - create, modify, and delete users.


• Chapter 8 - Manage groups - create, modify, and delete groups.


• Chapter 9 - Permissions - manage file ownership, permissions in Linux, change file attributes.


• Chapter 10 - Manage hardware - IRQs, DMA, kernel modules, how to identify your CPU.


• Chapter 11 - Boot Linux - GRUB v1 and v2 explained, runlevels explained.


• Chapter 12 - Network protocols - explanation of basic TCP/IP procotols such as IPv4, DHCP, and DNS.


• Chapter 13 - Basic networking - ifconfig command usage, configure a static IP address, /etc/hosts file, configure hostname.


• Chapter 14 - Network tools - explanation of network tools such as ping, traceroute, dig, tcpdump, and whois.


• Chapter 15 - Overview of file systems - description of basic file systems such as ext2, ext3, ReiserFS.


• Chapter 16 - Disk partitioning - how to partition a disk, MBR and GPT partitions explained.


• Chapter 17 - Configure hard disks - fdisk and parted utilities, mount a file system, mount a USB device.


• Chapter 18 - Configure disk quotas - quotas explained, how to set quotas.


• Chapter 19 - Logging - syslog and rsyslog protocols explained, rotate logs, /var/log/message file.


• Chapter 20 - Schedule jobs - schedule jobs with cron, anacron, and at.


• Chapter 21 - Date and time - set date and time, configure NTP client and NTP server.


• Chapter 22 - Email - what is a mail server, read and send mail.


• Chapter 23 - Shell scripting - shell scripting explained, write and execute scripts.


• Chapter 24 - Miscellaneous - all topics not covered previously.