During my college years in the 90s, we were taught all about DOS (Disk Operating System). Typing commands from the console is fun, and I even love doing batch programming, but then Windows came and it appealed to many, because of its intuitive user interface. No doubt, Windows dominated the personal computers, and most of my programming careers were centered on Windows OS.
Recently Linux is fast becoming one of the well known OS, though it appealed mostly to techno savy users because it has no intuitive interface pleasing to the general public. It's just like DOS where you have to type every command at the console. It didn't caught much of the common users attention until a friendly GUI or Windows like interface have proliferated like Ubuntu, and CentOS to name a few.
Actually I'm one of those that didn't like Linux because I thought, why should I get back to typing long series of every commands which is tiresome, when a simple click of a button would do in a GUI oriented OS. But then recently, I was given a project and got the chance to use CentOS (Red Hat origin) on a 64 bit machine, and I started to admire it. Though most of the task at hand which requires administrative know-how is still best executed thru the terminal. Which, ironically, I started to love again typing every commands just like the old days of DOS. Well I guess, it's part of the excitement of learning and I didn't even find any steep learning curve for Linux. Thanks to its similarities with DOS architecture on how the Linux OS organizes everything like the users, devices, folders, etc. with a few but minor differences.
In just short period of time I manages to learn systems administration, especially on applications like Apache/Nginx and MySQL (which I happen to use also on Windows). Excitingly, there's so much applications to choose from that are freely available. The motivation of learning was driven by a given task/project, coupled with self motivation, it is the easiest and fun way of learning linux. I continued exploring and learning Linux thru Virtualbox, installation is no feat, it feels like doing a Windows installation.
Indeed, Linux is one of the best OS ever created, and is not far from becoming the leading and favorite OS among common users. So those who haven't yet tried or still reluctant to get there feet wet on Linux, don't be afraid, the water is cold only at first, but it gets comfortable soon after. I'm a new convert but of course neither I'm leaving Windows OS for I have built my entire career on it, rather I'm embracing both OS.
Ready to explore? Don't forget though, Linux is case sensitive, it doesn't know that "I" and "i" are just the same (no pun intended).
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