Linux 100 - Why Linux? What makes it so special? by Brian Byrne

Linux 100 - Why Linux? What makes it so special?
by Brian Byrne Very rough draft. April 2023 Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

A big thanks to everyone attending and taking an interest
in Linux. These slides are on Speaker Deck https://speakerdeck.com/brianlinuxing Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 2

My talk is dedicated to Mary Allen Wilkes, an early
assembler programmer on the LINC system: a precursor to much of modern IT. She wanted to be a lawyer but went into computing as it was seen to be less sexist than the legal profession, at the time. See FAQs for more information on her life. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] Mary Allen Wilkes

Please put your hand up if you use any of
these. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

Hands up? Congratulations! You are a Linux user! I am
just like you :) Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

I am Brian. I tweet far to much at: @BrianLinuxing
And if you want a real excess of computing then please follow me on Twitter ! Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

Brian Byrne discovered computing around the time Intel released the
4004 chip, in 1971. After 1979 he professionally worked across most sectors, educational, commercial and finance, in some seriously technical, managerial and hands-on roles. Brian organised Linuxing In London, co-organised Covent Garden Pi Jam and the phenomenal all London Raspberry Pi Jam. He is rather fond of opera and history books. NB: Brian speaks in paragraphs. He is a freelance IT manager, a thinker and do-er for hire. Want your IT systems organised properly? Pay him, he’ll do it for you! Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

My first PC around 1971 Linux 100 © Brian Byrne,
2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

My first non-laptop in 1979 Linux 100 © Brian Byrne,

Brian’s Operating Systems I’ve used, installed, fixed and played with
over 24 operating systems in 40+ years, including but not limited to: TOPS-10, RT-11, RSX, VAX/VMS, CP/M, MS-DOS, AmigaOS, RSTE/E, Classic Mac OS (Lisa), Sinclair_QDOS, Ultrix, OSF/1, SCO Unix, OpenVMS, OS/2, VM/CMS, NetWare 2->3, Windows 1-> Windows 3.1, Windows 95->98 SE, Windows NT 1.0 ->4, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7->8.1, Windows 10 and a lot more. Linux was my 15th or 16th operating system! Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

Enough of me, to the point! Linux 100 © Brian
Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

Linux: technology’s best kept secret Linux 100 © Brian Byrne,

A word about Linux Everything is Linux. Android phones, the
lot. Linux is used on 100% of the world’s supercomputers. Everyone runs Linux: AWS, Netflix, Google, Facebook, even Microsoft Distrowatch lists 269 live Linux distributions, as of April 2023. Linux is free. 269 types to try out! Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

What Google says about Android “The Android kernel is based
on an upstream Linux Long Term Supported (LTS) kernel. At Google, LTS kernels are combined with Android-specific patches to form what are known as Android Common Kernels (ACKs).” https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/kernel Own an Android phone ? You run Linux! Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

Do you run one of these? Linux has you covered!
Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] Plus
another 10+ browsers!

Linux runs everything (free apps): Wordprocessors, managing PDFs, graphic and
image editing, non-linear video, audio editing, databases (SQL, NoSQL), web servers, blogging and lots of coding tools too: git, C, C++, Dart, Swift, Javascript/Node, Python, Go, Ruby, Java, Fortran, PASCAL, COBOL, the lot! All free! Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

Who runs Linux? Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter:
@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

The International Space Station Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023
Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 23

CERN and the Large Hadron Collider Linux 100 © Brian
Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 24

Does Linux cost much? Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023
Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

Zero cost Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing
Email:[email protected]

The Raspberry Pi - the most popular small board computer

The Summit Supercomputer (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) Linux 100 ©
Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

What’s a supercomputer and why are they important? Typically, these
are the most expensive and fastest systems that can be purchased or created. US: Summit (created by IBM for Oak Ridge National Laboratory) uses IBM POWER9 CPUs and Nvidia Tesla GPUs, cost ~ $200 million, High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark ~148.6 petaflops. China: Sunway TaihuLight (created by China’s own NRCPC) uses SW26010 manycore 64-bit RISC processors, cost ~$273 million, LINPACK benchmark ~93 petaflops. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

Top 500 supercomputers If someone is going to spend $200
million on a really, really fast supercomputer then it follows they will probably have spent a lot of time considering which operating system is best for it? In the case of the top 500 supercomputers in the world, they all run Linux. All of them. https://www.top500.org/statistics/details/osfam/1 That should tell you something. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 30

Reasons to use Linux It does everything that Windows does,
but better. It is used extensively in business, and is secure. Most backend computing involves the use of Linux. It is all over the Cloud, even at Microsoft, particularly in Azure. Plenty of choice (269+ varieties). It’s comparatively lightweight on computing resources, thus faster. It is the future, from a ~£36 computer to one costing $200+ millions. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

Linux facts All major Cloud providers offer Linux. 2/3s of
web servers run Linux. ~2.7% on desktop, >40% among devs. Android (based on the Linux kernel) has an approximate 79% market share. Linux’s specialness: It’s largely written in C, simple and small, works on low-end CPUs, and is supported across 10+ computer architectures. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 32

Microsoft and Linux WSL2 - Windows Subsystem for Linux 2
- a Linux kernel and shell directly from Windows 10. “Sasha Levin, Microsoft Linux kernel developer, in a request that Microsoft be allowed to join a Linux security list, revealed that: "the Linux usage on our cloud has surpassed Windows". “ See https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-asks-to-join-private-linux-secu rity-developer-list/ Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 33

You and Linux You can do Linux (mostly) either on
your own laptop or in the Cloud. It is easy to install (one of my other lectures covers it completely) Or sign up for an AWS Free Tier and experiment there. Your choice. Desktop Linux options include (but not limited to): Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, MX Linux, Mint, Manjaro, OpenSuse, Zorin, Kali, Sparky Linux & 100s more. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 34

Practising Linux If you’ve used Windows a lot then Linux
can feel strange and a bit weird. The best way to understand Linux is to use it daily, for everything. I can help you there I run a whole 3 hour class which explains the theory and reality of installing Linux properly, and what to watch out for (the gotchas). Talk to me. [NB: The test laptop should, ideally, be fully working and with no data on it, it will be wiped completely.] Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 35

Cloud Linux Every major Cloud provider offers Linux. Every one.
The simplest way to “play” with Linux is the AWS Free Tier. While Ubuntu is very popular on the “desktop”, typically, in the Cloud RHEL based ones are more prevalent in business, along with Debian. RHEL itself is free, but services for it are paid for. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 37

The big, big question: Why are operating systems so important?

That is why Linux is special and why you should
be using it! Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 41

Brian’s follow-up Linux talks: ➢ A very brief history of
operating systems and computing since the Abacus to the modern server. ➢ The installation of Linux from scratch on bare metal laptops. ➢ Installing Linux with VirtualBox on MacOS or Windows 7/8/8.1 or 10. ➢ Post installation tasks, the Command Line Interface (CLI) and proper package management under Linux. ➢ Linux hardening with Lynis. ➢ Coming soon: Quick guide to the AWS Amazon Linux 2 CLI Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

Thank you for participating. If you enjoyed the presentation and
slides then please buy Brian a nice cup of tea! PS: All images herein are the copyright of their respective owners. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

FAQs Q1: Where can I find out about Mary Allen
Wilkes Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Allen_Wilkes Q2: Why is the LINC machine important? A: It led to the TX-0 and TX-2 transistorized computers, then the PDP-1. It brought a flavour of modern computing, AI, editors, wordprocessing and all in an 18-bit CPU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LINC Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2023 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

Linux 100 - Why Linux? What makes it so special? by Brian Byrne

Linux 100 - Why Linux? What makes it so special? by Brian Byrne

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