Question 1

What is Linux?

Accepted Answer

Linux® is an open source operating system (OS). An operating system is the software that directly manages a system’s hardware and resources, like CPU, memory, and storage.

Question 2

What is an operating system?

Accepted Answer

An operating system (OS) is the software that directly manages a system’s hardware and resources, like the CPU, memory, and storage. The operating system sits between applications and hardware and makes the connections between all your software and the physical resources that do the work.

Question 3

How does Linux work?

Accepted Answer

Linux was designed to run on a wide variety of hardware from phones to supercomputers. Every Linux-based operating system (OS) includes the Linux kernel—which manages hardware resources—and a set of software packages that make up the rest of the OS. Linux includes some common core components, like GNU tools, among others. These tools give the user a way to manage the resources provided by the kernel, install additional software, configure performance and security settings, and more. All these tools bundled together make up the functional operating system. Because Linux is an open source OS, combinations of software can vary between Linux distributions.

Question 4

What’s the difference between a GUI and the command line?

Accepted Answer

When you use an operating system (OS), you mainly give the computer commands in 1 of 2 ways: using a graphical user interface (GUI) or the command line interface (CLI). A GUI refers to everything you can see and interact with when you boot up your OS, like the menus, windows, and desktop icons. If you can point at it and click on it with a mouse, it's probably part of the GUI. This is the most straightforward way to use an OS, because the most common user actions are represented as part of the GUI. More complex tasks typically employ the command line, which gives you direct access to the computer. It's where you tell software to perform complicated or specific hardware actions that GUIs can't handle.

Question 5

What does Linux include?

Accepted Answer

Linux includes the Linux kernel, which is effectively the heart of the operating system (OS)—without it, the OS just won't work. The kernel manages the system’s resources and communicates with the hardware, responsible for memory, process, and file management. Linux also includes the system user space, which is an administrative layer for system-level tasks like configuration and software installation. The system user space includes the shell, or command line interface (CLI), daemons, processes that run in the background, and the desktop graphical user interface (GUI) environment. A Linux distribution also includes applications, the various software programs you use to do everything from write documents to browse the web.

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