Introducing someone to web servers, Linux, and hosting a website can be difficult if they aren’t naturally inclined to learn about this sort of thing. Let’s face it, tech can absolutely be boring to someone. “Someone”, in this case, refers to my 9 year old daughter.
She’s the type of person that would rather play pretend, draw, watch TV, play a mobile game, or just be outside. And that is absolutely lovely.
If you’ve historically used just Windows or MacOS based systems, you’ve likely become accustomed to accessing files/folders through a GUI (Graphical User Interface). You click on icon, which opens a window with moe icons, and you click from one icon to the next to get to the one that you want to interact with. Linux of course has this capability as well, but many environments, especially server environments, will not have a GUI desktop for you to ‘click’ around in.
Security is very complex topic. There’s a lot of things to take into consideration from who should have access to your system, to which methods it’s accessible from. For the sake of this post, I’m going to speak very broadly, addressing the bare minimums of security, and also from the perspective of running a Cloud-based server. Additionally, I’ll provide a link at the end to a guide with some recommended commands for performing these basic steps.
Working from the command line may seem to be a challenge when you’re used to working from a GUI (Graphical User Interface). In essence, everything that happens when you click an icon or option in a GUI corresponds to a command that can be run from the terminal.
In Linux, the command line is quite powerful as you are in direct control of anything that takes place, without the need for said command to be run by clicking on an icon.
Ubuntu? Debian? Centos? Arch? Kali? Bhodie?
Which do I choose? What do these names even mean? I thought Linux was just called Linux. Just like “ice cream” is a type dessert, Linux also comes in just as many flavors.
If you’re curious about the history of Linux, the Wikipedia article covers that pretty well. In a nutshell, if it isn’t Windows or MacOS, it’s probably some variety of Linux. This includes all of your smart speakers, networking devices, Android phones, and your Roku or Fire Stick.