SivaLabs

Like many people I started working with computers on Windows XP operating system. Even after starting my career as a Java developer I have been working on Windows for all my development activities.

Initially I didn’t get a chance(need) to work on Unix/Linux because we didn’t have access to any of production systems which are using Linux. After few years we got a new client for whom we need to do deployment also in QA/UAT environments which are all Linux based. Then one guy who was doing all these deployment activities shared few documents, shell scripts with all the instructions regarding how to deploy the apps, stop/start the containers etc.

My very first expressions is “Whaaaat?? you do all these deployment activities using these cryptic commands running in this black terminal??? No GUI??”. They smiled and said “No, in Linux you have to do all these using these commands only.” Ok, fine, no problem. I get familiar with few commands like copy, rm, ps, kill, chmod etc which are just enough to get the things done. I never bothered to learn Linux really.

But recently I got to work on Linux more and more, so I thought it is good to get some good hands on experience with Linux.

After little bit of googling I found Ubuntu and LinuxMint are good desktop linux distros for Linux newbies like me. But before settling with one Linux distro I tried the following Linux distros on Oracle Virtualbox.

• Ubuntu
• LinuxMint
• Fedora
• CentOS
• OpenSUSE
• Bodhi
• ElementaryOS
• PeachOSI
• Pinguy
• Zorin

I am sure there are plenty of other linux desktop distros to explore. But among the above mentioned distros I settled with LinuxMint.
You can find lot of blogs to show how to install Linux distro in Virtualbox and also how to install in dual boot mode.

Following links were very helpful for me:
http://itsfoss.com/guide-install-linux-mint-16-dual-boot-windows/
http://itsfoss.com/install-ubuntu-1404-dual-boot-mode-windows-8-81-uefi/

Now, I would like to note down my learning about Linux here for quick reference. Expect some small Linux tips on this blog going forward 🙂