Ecole Supérieure des Communications de Tunis

Introduction to UNIX/Linux

Presented by:
Tounsi Yassine
 Definition

Linux is an open source UNIX-like operating

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 What ?
 Linux/UNIX
 Operating system
• What’s an operating system?
 Free (GNU)
• GNU's Not Unix
 Open source
 Not owned by anyone

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 History
 UNIX was developed ~1970s
• Code recycling – the kernel
 Linus Torvalds (Finnish student)
• Wouldn’t it be nice to have a free UNIX for use at
home?
 He released version 0.02 of Linux in 1991. In
1994 version 1.0 of Linux was released.

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 How is Linux different than windows ?
 “Sit closer to your operating system”
• And if you don’t like, fix it yourself
 Multi-user
 Open source
 More secure (bye-bye anti-virus)
 Customization

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 Customization
 Operating system versus windowing system
• Linux windowing systems: Gnome, KDE, etc.
 Flavors of Linux
• Debian, Ubuntu, Backtrack, RedHat, Fedora...
 Which one’s right for me?

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Panoramic view of Linux OS
Applications

Shell
Kernel
Hardware

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Let’s talk specifics…

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 What is a shell ?
 DOS : Windows :: Shell : Linux/UNIX
 An interface
 Command interpreter and a programming
language
 BASH (Bourne Again SHell)
 CSH, KSH, TCSH...
• $ cat /etc/shells
• $ echo $SHELL

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 File system
 There are many file systems for Linux:
• Extend 2
• Extend 3
• ReiserFS
 For Microsft windows:
• FAT (File Allocation Table)
• NTFS (v1.2, v3.0, v3.1)

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 File system
 Owner and group
 Hierarchy, just like Windows
 Home directory (~)
 The top level is the “/” directory.

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 File system
 Under this directory, you’ll often see:
• /etc: Stores system configuration files, password
information
• /usr: Stores user install programs and their configuration
files
• /bin: Base programs that are necessary for unix to boot
up.
• /home: Stores all user accounts
• /var: Stores variable data, such as user email, a database.
• /tmp: Stores temporary files.

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 File permission

Directory? User's Access Group Access Others’ Access

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 Basic commandes
 pwd (identifies current directory)
 cd (change directory), cd .. (up one directory),
cd ../.. (up two directories)
 ls (looks in current directory) ls –l (looks in
current directory and lists all permissions)
 mkdir (make a new directory)
 rm remove/delete file
 rm –R remove/delete folde r
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 Basic commandes
 mv and mv –R moves files and folders
 cp and cp –R copies files and folders
 ps and ps –a (looks for all processes running)
 kill (will kill a process running)
 man command (gives information about a
command)
• man wc

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 Pipes
 | (pipe)
• Passes output of one Linux command to input of
second command
• ls |wc
Passes output of ls command to wc to get file count of
directory
Not limited to just one pipe can string more pipes

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 Redirection
 >, < redirection
• > filename (instead of display on a screen send
information to a file)
ls > file_list
• program < filename (passes content of a file to a
program for execution)
xplor < psf.inp

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 Programming in Linux
 Modern languages are cross-platform, like
Python, Ruby, Perl, Java
 Most Linux distros support these languages and
have their runtimes pre-installed
 GTK+ and Qt are widely used to design
applications for Linux
 IDEs like NetBeans, Anjuta, KDevelop,
MonoDevelop, Eclipse are available for Linux too

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