The Awkward Beginning

At the beginning of my career, Linux and I weren’t exactly close. Think of that third cousin you only see at family gatherings. You know they exist, you hear the occasional update about what they’re up to, you nod politely when you bump into them, and then go back to hanging out with your usual crowd.

First Encounters

Eventually, I started working with Linux a little more. Still not best friends, but at least we were on speaking terms. I learned just enough to get by:

• cd – Because finding your way through directories is perhaps the most important thing to master.
• ls – Sometimes you need to check if the file is actually there. Trust, but verify.
• yum – Apparently that’s how you install tools on Linux. And here I was expecting a friendly setup wizard.
• vim – Opening it for the first time and having no idea how to get out of simple text editor. A classic rite of passage.
• sudo – when you need to borrow root’s superpowers—just for a moment, not forever. Because we all know what comes with great power and we don’t want none of that.
• curl – Nothing says troubleshooting like throwing a request into the web and hoping for a response.
• df – Nothing stops a service faster than a full disk.
• tail – For those ocasions where you just need to peek at the last few lines of a log file to figure out what went wrong. Like reading the last page of a mystery novel.
• top – Your quick glance at who’s hogging all the CPU and memory.
• ps – Knowing which processes are running is the first step to deciding which ones need to “take a break.”
• systemctl – Back in the day, it was service—yes, I’m that old. Now it’s systemctl, and it’s your best friend when you need to check if a process is running or, more importantly, restart it when it goes sideways.
• history – When you can’t remember what you typed two weeks ago.
  Pro tip: Use !<number> to rerun a command from your history without retyping it. For example, typing !66 will execute Order 66 in your history.
• reboot – The ultimate Hail Mary. When all else fails.

And honestly? That was all I needed at the time. You don’t have to memorize every obscure command or dive into kernel internals to start your DevOps journey. A few basics and the confidence to type them without breaking into a cold sweat will take you surprisingly far.

Why Linux Rules the DevOps World

Linux isn’t just popular, it’s practically the backbone of modern infrastructure. Why? Because it’s open-source, stable, and doesn’t throw a tantrum when you ask it to run on a server with minimal resources. Back in 1991, Linus Torvalds started Linux as a hobby project. Fast forward a few decades, and it’s running everything from your smart fridge to the world’s largest cloud platforms.

In the DevOps universe, Linux is everywhere:

• Servers? Mostly Linux.
• Cloud platforms? Built on Linux.
• Containers? Almost every container image you’ll pull is based on a Linux distribution. (Yes, even that tiny Alpine image you love)

Why does this matter? Because when you’re deploying applications, automating infrastructure, or troubleshooting issues at 3 AM, chances are you’re doing it on Linux. It’s lightweight, secure, and endlessly customizable. Qualities that make it perfect for modern distributed systems.

Distros and Containers

One of the fun things about Linux is that it comes in flavors—called distributions (or distros, if you want to sound cool). Each distro is like a different personality:

• Ubuntu – Friendly, popular, and everywhere. Great for beginners and widely used in cloud environments.
• Debian – The stable, no-nonsense cousin. Many other distros (including Ubuntu) are based on it.
• CentOS / Rocky Linux – The enterprise choice, often seen in production servers.
• Fedora – Cutting-edge and experimental, for those who like living on the bleeding edge.
• Alpine – The minimalist monk of Linux. Tiny, lightweight, and perfect for containers.

Speaking of containers, almost every container image you’ll pull is based on Linux. Why? Because containers run on Linux and share the host system’s kernel. Linux provides the lightweight, secure foundation that container runtimes like Docker depend on. Common base images include:

• Alpine – Super small (around 5 MB), great for microservices.
• Ubuntu – Popular for general-purpose containers.
• Debian – Often used for stability and compatibility.

So when you run docker pull ubuntu or docker pull alpine, you’re basically inviting Linux into your project—whether you realize it or not.

Parting Wisdom

In the world of DevOps, Linux isn’t just another operating system, it’s the stage everyone performs on. You can try to avoid it, but sooner or later, you’ll find yourself staring at a terminal, typing commands like cd and ls while wondering why there’s no “Next” button. The good news? Linux doesn’t demand perfection, it rewards curiosity. Learn the basics, embrace the quirks, and before you know it, you’ll be deploying containers like a pro. Because in DevOps, Linux isn’t optional it’s the default setting.