Cyb 225 Week 1 Notes

Reasons that Linux has been becoming more popular:

- Risk reduction
- Meeting business needs
- Stability and security
- Flexibility for different hardware platforms
- Ease of customization
- Ease of obtaining support
- Cost reduction

Linux is based on the UNIX operating system developed by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie of AT&T
Bell Laboratories in 1969 and was developed through the efforts of many people as a result of the
hacker culture that formed in the 1980’s.

Linus Torvalds created Linux in 1991.

Hacker Culture

Aspects of hacker culture:

- Software users are treated as developers

- Software is developed primarily for peer recognition and not for money
- The original author of a piece of software is regarded as the owner of that software and
coordinates the cooperative software development
- The use of a particular piece of software determines its value, not cost
- Attacking the author of source code is never done. Instead, bug fixes are either made or
recommended.
- Developers must understand the implied rules of the hacker culture before being accepted into
it.

Two main competing GUI environments available in Linux:

- GNU Network Object Model Environment (GNOME)

- K Desktop Environment (KDE)

Package manager: a software system that installs and maintains software. It keeps track of installed
software, requires a standard format and documentation, and can manage and remove software from a
system by recording all relevant software information in a central software database on your computer.

- A package manager for Linux is like Apps and Features or Programs and Features section in
Windows Settings or Control Panel apps.

Tarball: A compressed archive of files, like WinZIP or RAR files, usually containing scripts that install the
software contents to the correct location on the system, or source code that can be compiled into a
working program and copied to the system.
Linux configurations commonly used today include the following:

- Internet servers
- File and print servers
- Application servers
- Cloud systems
- Supercomputers
- Scientific workstations
- Office/personal workstations
- Cybersecurity workstations
- Mobile devices

Internet servers

Most common services of Linux-based internet servers include the following:

- Web services
- DNS services
- DHCP services
- Time services
- Mail services
- FTP services
- Authentication services
- Certificate services
- Routing services
- Firewall and proxy services
- Advanced security services

Cloud systems

Cloud servers offer the advantage of accessing their data from anywhere on the Internet.

The three main approaches to hosting data and services within the cloud include:

- Software as a Service (SaaS): Refers to hosting a service and the associated data within a cloud
environment, where users can access the service across the Internet. Facebook, Twitter, PayPal,
Dropbox, and Microsoft Office 365 are all examples of SaaS.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS): Differs from SaaS in that companies can create their own Web apps
and services that are hosted by another cloud provider. Companies need to ensure that their
Webb apps and services adhere to the rules set by the cloud provider. Common PaaS cloud
providers include Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM Bluemix, Google App Engine, and Microsoft
Azure.
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Differs from SaaS and PaaS in that the cloud provider provides
the hardware and storage within a data center only, and companies install, manage, and access
their own virtualized operating systems within that data center via cloud platform software.
OpenStack is one of the most popular open source cloud platform software suites and is
supported by nearly all major Linux distros.