Page 31 - Raspberry Pi as a Foundation for Boosting Computer and Technology Literacy

3 Fundamentals of the Linux

system and terminal usage 3

As previously mentioned, the Raspberry Pi Foundation markets its 32-
bit Raspberry Pi OS as the officially supported operating system (Rasp-
berry Pi Foundation, n.d.-a). This OS is built upon Debian ( https://
www.debian.org/), a major GNU/Linux distribution. A reader might be
wondering: ‘I have heard of Linux, but what is GNU?’ Stallman (n.d.)
describes it as follows: ‘Linux is the kernel, one of the essential major
components of the system. The system as a whole is basically the GNU
system, with Linux added.’ The kernel is what interacts with hardware.
The GNU system, in turn, encompasses various critical software com-
ponents, including GNU core utilities ( https://gcc.gnu.org/), GNU
bash shell (Free Software Foundation, n.d.), GNU Complier Collection
(GNU Project 2020b), which operate on top of the kernel. Therefore,
GNU can be built with different kernels, with Linus’s Torvalds Linux
being the most popular of them.
Hereinafter, for the sake of simplicity and clarity, GNU/Linux sys-
tems are referred to simply as ‘Linux’. However, when specifically dis-
cussing the Linux kernel, it is explicitly referred to as such.
The process of learning any OS begins by answering the question:
‘What do I want to accomplish with it?’ This is because Linux is essen-
tially a versatile tool that can be employed to fulfil various needs. Con-
sequently, the process of learning is aligned and optimized for a specif-
ic purpose, be it a project or general education. However, the basics of
Linux remain similar, regardless of the end-goal. By understanding the
fundamentals of process spaces, directory hierarchy, basic commands,
package management, and troubleshooting, one could confidently cus-
tomize and utilize the OS to one’s advantage.
The personal experience of one of the authors has demonstrated
that one of the most effective ways to grasp these fundamentals is
through learning to utilize the terminal and its commands. Therefore,
the following several subsections are dedicated to the fundamentals of
Linux systems and the role of the terminal in relation to them. Finally,

31