Linux?

Last friday, I made my first appearance at RIT’s Linux User Group club meeting. I came in a little bit late, but I got caught up pretty quickly (mostly thanks to some one-on-one help). I wouldn’t consider myself a Linux user (yet), so I was a little nervous as I stepped in to this group without much in the way of prior knowledge.

I didn’t know what I was doing, but the instructions were very helpful for a novice. We went through the process of spinning up a virtual machine, installing a linux distribution, installing apache and getting a basic web server set up, and then replacing the default web page with some php. I don’t Think I’ll be able to repeat all those steps on my own, but I do have some valuable takeaways from the whole ordeal.

Firstly, i learned that there are some very useful tools for getting around what I thought would be a complex process. Tools like ufw and apache exist for the sole purpose of not having to do all the nitty gritty work of messing around with a firewall and starting a webserver on your own. I’m interested in learning more about linux and tools like this seem useful as they are a solid middle ground between doing everything by hand and downloading something to do literally everything for me.

Minty Fresh

Now that I’ve probably made a fool of myself trying to explain what happened at the user group and why I was excited by it, I wanted to share quickly that I’ve started looking more into Linux myself. I’ve downloaded Mint and put it on a boot drive, and I’ve been playing with it on and off between work the past couple days. I know it’s supposedly the most user friendly, entry level Linux distribution, but hey, gotta start somewhere right?