5 reasons to use Linux now and in the future

When technology is stomping, then society will tend to rise above and develop. Linux, the widely used open source operating system, is the foundation and basis for the most progressive modern computing ideas. So even though it hasn’t changed dramatically after nearly three decades of development, Linux is also capable of adapting to that situation. Therefore, it also explains why so many people are still using Linux.

As a result, Linux is in the unique position of being both a sound investment in skills because it changes very little, and a seemingly eternal incentive for you to learn new skills.

2020 has been a tough year — it’s tough on all fronts — but for Linux, it’s a typical development cycle. This article will help you look back on the journey of Linux and what you need to know about Linux this year.

ZFS on Linux

The ZFS file system provides integrity checking for data and metadata, auto backup, support for up to 256 trillion yobibytes of storage, hardware-accelerated native encryption, and efficient replication. ZFS is an improvement of Sun Microsystems, unfortunately there is a license that prohibits ZFS that comes with Linux by default. However, the OpenZFS team has ported the project to BSD and Linux so you can run ZFS on any system, from your laptop to your data center. You might consider using Fedora Linux, when you want to use ZFS.

Linux interrupts

Once you get used to Linux, you need to take it up a notch by diving deeper into how Linux works. How and why the Linux kernel manages interrupt requests (IRQs) might not matter to the average user, but it’s a pretty fascinating study when you’re looking to dig into Linux. Read the article “How the Linux kernel handles interrupts” by Stephan Avenwedde to learn more about this issue.

Understanding Linux

Since Google’s Android operating system runs on the Linux kernel, we’re technically using Linux rather than Android. But Android’s slick Java interface doesn’t always give the Linux feel many Linux users expect. And some users don’t use Android phones at all.

The good news is that you can use Linux on your Android or iOS device, with terminal, Bash, Python, package manager and the things you normally do every day on Linux, can also be done on Android.

If you are using Android, you can learn about Termux. And if you’re on iOS, read Lee Tusman’s great article on how to run Linux commands on iOS.

New Commands on Linux

Time goes by, and sometimes old commands from years past can’t work on modern systems. Although you can still use commands like crontab and ifconfig (iwconfig and wpa_supplicant), there are still perfectly good alternatives to these commands. If you can’t get rid of old commands on your own, get used to Bash aliases because these new commands are worth learning.

• Replace ifconfig with nmcli. At some point you have to admit that the bad combination of ifconfig with iwconfig and wpa_supplicant doesn’t work out too much. Linux now uses nmcli and it’s quite useful, it also has a pretty intuitive interface to communicate with the network.
• Cronjobs, at and batch are the only commands that will probably never be replaced. These commands are great for quick and simple scheduling, but for complex jobs you need to learn more about extras like: systemd timers.
• gcore and gdb are important debuggers that developers are familiar with. A new feature of gcore functionality is Microsoft’s ProcDump, which gets you the Process ID (PID) so you can analyze it with gdb.

Run cloud on Linux

In recent years, the “cloud” has been constantly evolving, the reason being that its main driver is Linux. Cloud is a collection of computers (nodes) with a widely distributed file system (such as Ceph) and it is usually managed with Kubernetes (“KOO-burr-net-eez”]or OpenShift.

If you already know Linux in PCs and data centers and servers, you can test Linux in the cloud for a whole new experience. It can take a while to tweak in a makeshift container, but with some pentesting, you can build some interesting systems and then orchestrate them with Kubernetes.

The growth of open source

Linux users love the consistency and stability of Linux, and it is testament to the original system design of Unix that the operating system can keep the same structure while pushing the boundaries to more exciting new technologies. . Part of the fun of Linux and open source is the sense of discovery you get when you start learning a new command and the joy of seeing it in action.