I was first introduced to the OS Ubuntu in high school in a Cisco networking class. We used a server running Ubuntu to re-image machines and as a mail server. I didn’t interact with it much, but from the times I did the only thing I can remember is “sudo” which lets you run something as someone else, an administrator for example. After installing it on my computer the other day I was greeted with the familiar sound of drums when starting up the computer. I noticed that startup and shutdown times are extremely fast compared to my Windows 7 start and shutdown times. This could be because I don’t have anything installed but even right out of the box Windows wasn’t this fast.

From working at a helpdesk for a few years I’ve come to like Linux as a tool but not as an operating system. At the helpdesk we have linux discs that wipe the memory drive, reset the password, or re-image a machine. I never understood why Linux was used as opposed to anything else, and I never tried to learn anything more about it, I just accepted it. Hopefully this class will answer that question and give me a more in-depth look at what Linux is used for. Hopefully this class won’t be too difficult for this newbie who doesn’t know the first (or second) thing about linux.