Upon arriving at the company, I did not know what it was like to use Linux. I had heard it was an operating system purely for programmers, but I had never tried it. It was an unknown world for me. When I joined, not only did one door opened but many more as well.
When I interacted with this system, the first thing I saw was the terminal. I looked both ways to see how I could run away. With time I realized that the terminal is the strongest point of this system since it allows you to perform almost any possible task by means of commands.
What is the terminal? The terminal is a way to access the system completely without using a graphical interface. Therefore, being used to graphical interfaces, it is utterly shocking to visualize only command lines’ execution.
I began to read a document written by professors from a very prestigious University and there I began to understand the strengths of the systems and commands that I could use, when reading and not applying it, I thought I would go crazy. Still, with a little practice, I started to make friends with the terminal and do incredible things.
Reading that same document I discovered the world of scripts, I quickly got a thousand more doubts on this topic, like anyone when a door to the unknown opens. What is a script? What things can I do with it? Were the commands the same? Would those I learned be useful? And a lot more, but what I thought about how many more doors I needed to open, and if they were too many, I would take it easy.
A script is a mini-program where I can automate a task, a simple code, I understood and learned the commands, and started making simple programs, like the typical Hello World. Anyone who begins with something should begin with the basics. Gradually my scripts became more complex until I started linking them to the databases, where I saw the importance and realized what they were for, and the great utility they had.
Now I have been in the company for almost a month and built the knowledge in Linux that every programmer feels should have by interacting with such a powerful, efficient, and fast system. Basically, today I drive everything from the terminal, and I no longer feel as lost as the first day.
The last topic to talk about is the difference between the common user and the root. When they told me this, I was wondering what root was. The answer is based on the fact that the root is like the God of Linux. Thanks to root, we can execute any command. The question that arose was why I couldn’t execute it with my user?
Well, it was not possible because, by default, the operating system gave certain permissions to my user so that It could not destroy everything. A permit is an authorization to perform certain tasks since the files cannot be manipulated and modified by anyone. Therefore the root had all the permissions provided by the system. How do I change to root user? With the following command:
mnunez@mnunez-Lenovo-V330-14IKB: ~ $ su -
After this, you will be asked for a password that you had to assign to the root user. If all goes well you will get something like this:
root@mnunez-Lenovo-V330-14IKB: ~ #
Here you can start executing the command as superuser (root).
The advantage of using su respect to an administrator converter is that the chances of making a mistake are limited to that one action. While if you act by default as an administrator, you are always exposed to perform some action that you can regret.
