Category: Linux

How to start learning Linux being a complete beginner to Computer Science? How long will it take to learn Linux? Why is Linux so hard to learn? Which distro should a complete beginner use? These are questions that have no single correct answer. If you ask these questions to a Linux professional you will get an answer which starts with the phrase “it depends…”. If you are reading this article then I guess you are looking for answers to these questions, which is a good thing as it says that you are ready to learn Linux..!! In this video I...

As a beginner to the Linux world you will often hear the words “Lightweight distros”, but what does it mean? What are Lightweight Distros? Lightweight distros are Linux distributions specially made keeping old and resource constraint hardware in mind so that the user can have a responsive and lag-free computing experience even on your old hardware that has low specs in terms of processing power, disk space, and RAM. What are Heavyweight Distros? “Heavyweight distro” is a subjective term made up by users of Lightweight distros. These distros are usually at the other end of the spectrum, with the latest...

As a beginner to the Linux world some time back, when I came across the word Distro-hopping, I thought it is some kind of a game that Linux users play and that idea sounded so cool that even I wanted to be a part of it and play this distro-hopping game! What is Distro Hopping? Distro-Hopping is a term that refers to the activity or hobby of Linux users to switch between distros frequently, exploring them and trying several distros out in an attempt to find the one that best suits their needs. That’s the short version of the answer...

If you look at the desktop market, the majority of it is occupied by Windows, Mac OSX comes second and Linux takes the 3rd place. But if you look into it, you will realize that there is no such thing as Linux OS, but there are distributions based on the Linux kernel and there are literally thousands of these available for us to download and try! What is the reason behind the existence of these many Linux distributions? Are these just small variations or are these significantly different (like how significantly different Mac and Windows are)? Won’t a general one...

As a beginner to the Linux world, as you are in the introduction phase to using a new distro, you will hear something like This distro X uses this Y desktop environment. It is easy to get into the trap of thinking that “each given distro is different when it comes to how its desktop looks”, which is not entirely true. Once you get introduced to more distros, you will see that many distros are similar looking and you will inevitably get into the confusion of “why these are different distro’s even though they look alike?“ That is a good...

During their journey in exploring the Linux universe every Linux beginner will come across to these 3 very similar terms, Distro, Flavors, and Derivatives. In this article, I have presented the differences between these 3 terms in a beginner-friendly format along with the prior knowledge every beginner needs to have to understand them. So let’s begin! Let’s have a brief look at the differences. The differences at a glance original Distros Derived Distros Flavors These are usually put together from zero These are forks (Taking a copy and making changes)of original Distros. The core packages need not be the same...

In this article let’s look at the 2 most popular package management software apt and dnf and analyze their similarities and differences in detail. A Quick Comparison of APT and DNF APT DNF APT stands for Advanced Packaging Tool DNF stands for DaNdiFied (Dandified) Yum apt works with packages in the .deb format dnf works with packages in .rpm format apt is the front-end of dpkg (Debian Package Manager) dnf is the front-end of RPM (RedHat Package Manager) apt needs manual updating of the repo lists dnf updates the repo lists automatically apt was first introduced in Debian Distro dnf...

When I started my distro-hopping journey experimenting with various Linux distros, I noticed a pattern where one set of distros used apt commands while the other set of distros used the dnf or yum command to install software on my system. Let’s go ahead and look at a list of Linux Distros that use the apt commands. List of Distros that use apt commands Debian Ubuntu Lubuntu Xubuntu Kubuntu Linux Mint Knoppix Deepin peppermint bodhi linux and the list can go on and on! But why do all these distros use apt commands and more importantly why do others don’t? Let’s address these questions...

When I started my distro-hopping journey experimenting with various Linux distros, I noticed a pattern where one set of distros used dnf or yum commands while the other set of distros used the apt command to install software on my system. Let’s go ahead and look at a list of Linux Distros that use the yum or dnf commands. List of Distros that use Yum or DNF RedHat Enterprise Linux Fedora CentOS Oracle Enterprise Linux Scientific CERN SUSE OpenSUSE Mageia PCLinuxOS Berry Elastix ClearOS FrameOS Fermi Turbolinux and the list can go on and on! But why do all these...

When I was a beginner in Linux and I wanted to install any software, the online instructions I found would ask me to type something like this on my Fedora’s or CentO’s terminal or something like this So I used to wonder what are these yum and dnf commands. In this article, I am trying to explain the need for these commands and what they do internally to install software and how they do it. What is yum? YUM stands for YellowDog Updater Modified. It is a package manager that is used for managing the installation, updating, and removal of...