Operating System Basics

As web developers, we use many libraries and frameworks in our work that abstract many underlying details. Although it is fine to use these abstractions, it is also important to understand what is happening under the hood.

An operating system is one of the critical elements of our knowledge base that we don’t deal with that often but is quite beneficial to know, especially the internal workings of operating systems like Unix/Linux.

Using Linux has several benefits, such as:

• Open Source
• Security
• Revive Older Computer Systems
• Software Updates
• Customization
• Various Distributions
• Large Community Support
• Stability (Reliability)
• Privacy
• Performance
• Fast and Easy Installation
• Multitasking
• Run Multiple Desktops

This is a good primer, which is referred to again in the course.