Ubuntu has a very humble background and its base is clearly defined by its name “Ubuntu” meaning humanity toward others. It is truly an Operating System that has challenged more richer alternatives namely Microsoft Windows and Mac OS and as majority of humans are not rich this OS stands the test of times , with its all unique and shining qualities it is free of cost and an enterprise standard OS adopted by big enterprise like Dell computers.
Some of the qualities that attract more and more IT savvy businessman in Ubuntu are
Time is Money
We hear this phrase many times , if you compare Ubuntu to its competitors like Windows and Mac OS it is not behind in terms of its performance , infact is it much faster when it comes to high computation tasks such as programming tasks , testing and development tasks and hardware requirement are much low as well.
Homogeneous in nature
Like that of Microsoft OS’s where the client and server operating systems are way apart in there usage , Ubuntu Desktop and Server edition are much natural and can be used for both client server model , desktop computer , and now more recently a choice for cloud computing.
Support is available Free as well as Commercial
Though Enterprise businesses require commercial support , SME’s and startup love to get free support and that is where there is no other competitor to Ubuntu distribution , it is one of the most popular Linux distribution with a huge community support that you can find almost all solution free of cost online, one of the best resource for this purpose is askubuntu.com website. If commercial support is the requirement it is directly supported by Canonical as well as some other vendors that stand by your business to help you out in hard times, and your own hardware vendor might be one of those , example Dell does support Ubuntu Linux installed on there hardware.
Software is Free
Majority of software available on Ubuntu is free of cost including office application and other utilities , many companies which ignored Linux previously have support of there software on Ubuntu these days and it is growing.
Zip , Games , Office application , Editors , and even Microsoft products are not porting with Linux packages for there application.
Compatibility with Microsoft products
With more and more system migrating to Linux OS’s Microsoft has also come to the terms and accepted the reality that Linux is the future of Desktop OS , infact it has the greatest share in Mobile OS (Android) and Server OS (in super computers) , as for Desktop version Linux is growing fast. Microsoft products have are now cloud ready and possible to run on Linux such as there Office Application, MS Windows is also boosting compatibility and allowing to share file systems with Linux File systems as an addon. Most importantly the future of Microsoft company Powershell is freely available for Linux and can be readily used in Ubuntu to manage Windows Servers from Linux console.
Security
As a business person more then anything your data is the value , with just a default install Ubuntu is much more strong and secure as compared to the paid counterparts. Furthermore the security patches for LTS version are available for 5 years and 3 years for the Desktop version.
Future Technology Trends and Ubuntu Usage
As Ubuntu is free of cost , it is an OS of choice for both Developers and users , many famous projects have used Ubuntu as there base OS just because the OS is portable and easy to install and manage. Some famous projects include
Android (mobile OS)
Rasberry PI (robotics)
Openstack (Cloud )
Ubuntu Linux ( Server and Desktop )
There are few other famous derivatives of Ubuntu such as Edubuntu etc which are used for specific purposes.
Conclusion
Ubuntu is slowly but surely taking up the market share leaving behind old traditional rivals like Microsoft OS which had a much greater share in market during Windows XP era , as time passes by and new technologies are produces using Linux and specifically Ubuntu the share of OS is expected to grow and those business that choose Ubuntu at an earlier stage will benefit much greatly with there choice to move to Open Source Operating System and saving much more in terms of cost and features.
RHEL web console allows to perform below user management tasks:
Create new users accounts.
Change their parameters.
Lock accounts.
Terminate the user session.
Adding New account in Web Console
Step 1: Click Account
Step 2: Click Create new account
Step 3: In the create account dialog box add the Real Name
Step 4: Enter a unique username
Step 5: Enter a password
Step 6: Confirm the entered password
(Note: it is always advised to keep a strong password)
Step 7: Click Create
Once created User Name will be available in the list of users. In case you want to give it Administrator rights click the newly created user and click Server Administrator Role , that will add the newly created user to the wheel group used for sudo users.
Setting Expiration for an user
Expiration by default is set to never expire but it is possible to change the value by following below steps
Step 1 : Click Account
Step 2 : Click Account name you want to set the expiration
Step 3 : Add the required password change days
Step 4 : Click Change
Terminating User session
Step 1 : Click Account
Step 2 : Click Terminate Session
If button is not active that means the user is not login to the system
Step 5 : select time interval before restart will take place (optional) or no delay in case of immediate restart
Step 6 : click Restart
Shutdown the system from web console
Step 1 : Click System
Step 2 : Power Option (dropdown)
Step 3 : Shutdown
Step 4 : write reason for shutdown (optional) ->
Step 5 : select time interval
Step 6 : click Shutdown
Naming / Renaming Server from web console
Host name consist of two parts host + domain name. By default hostname is localhost.localdomain but you can change it during installation or from the web console.
For example: rhel8server.testdom.it
You can configure also a pretty host name in the RHEL web console. This is specific to web console and is not considered a real hostname of the server. Capital letters , spaces are accepted characters for a pretty hostname.
Step 1 : Click System
Step 2 : Click Current Hostname
Step 3 : Enter Pretty Hostname
Step 4 : Enter Real Hostname
Step 5 : Click Change
Configuring NTP setting from web console
Step 1 : Click System
Step 2 : Click Current System Time
Step 3 : In the change time dialog box select correct timezone
Step 4 : In the change time dialog box Select "Set Time" drop down.
From the drop down you can select
Manual : for setting time manually
Automatic Using NTP : This is recommended option
Automatically Using specific NTP server : In case your company has there own NTP server select this option.
Step 5 : Click Change
Using web console for selecting performance profile
Performance profile are created and managed by the Tuned service.
Tuned is a service that monitors your system and optimizes the performance under certain workloads.
The core of Tuned are profiles, which tune your system for different use cases. Tuned is distributed with a number of predefined profiles for use cases such as: High throughput Low latency Saving power
RHEL 8 Cockpit Web Console is a web based management tool that allows you to complete many common RHEL tasks from a web browser , it is designed as per cloud OS. As a feature of any web based application it is accessible from remote machines by default.
Enabling Cockpit Web Console
By default cockpit gets installed on all RHEL 8 installations with exception to minimal installs, however it is not enabled by default, use below command to enable the web interface.
systemctl enable --now cockpit.socket
Notice that cockpit is a self contained application and does not require a web server to be installed to run this web application.
If you want to run cockpit dashboard locally from the desktop you can use below command to install the graphical interface.
yum install virt-viewer
The next step is to open a web browser (either from a remote host, or from the RHEL 8 system console), and go to the RHEL 8 systems hostname or IP address, followed by :9090 to specify port 9090, for example: https://localhost.localdomain:9090
Log in to the Web Console with the root account, or with another RHEL account.
This is a common error found when booting after installing Ubuntu 18.04 or later on M2 PCIe SSD. In this article i have added configuration for UEFI / BIOS settings before installing Ubuntu from installation medium.
Graphics are not good quality but explanation is provided for each screen. Please make sure your settings are set accordingly
Desclaimer: This task is very risky and author / company does not take any responsibility for any loss or damage , please make sure you have appropriate backup before performing this task.
Below Images and setting are from DELL Inspiron 14 5000 BIOS / UEFI setup.
M2 PCIe SSD-0 1024 GB , was used for this installation and the problem was no boot device found after installation. To fix it you need to set the below settings in your bios before performing the installation. Please note your bios might show different words but all bios / uefi setup have almost same settings
In boot list option select UEFI selecting Legacy option does provide old setup and drivers might get issue.
For UEFI boot path security set to Never , this will allow the disk to be added in UEFI list.
Keep this default “Deployed Mode”
Keep Secure boot disabled , Please note Secure boot and UEFI boot path security are separate options
Keep Legacy Option ROM enabled as it allows to install from USB , CDROM etc.
Once settings are done boot from your USB or DVD and perform the installation as normal.
Hardware : Linux in general and Red Hat kernel supports lots of different hardware variants as well as virtual environment . A complete list of redhat supported hardware you can verify https://access.redhat.com/ecosystem/search/#/category/Server.
Memory : 1.5GB minimum, 1.5GB per logical CPU recommended
10GB minimum, 20GB recommended
Once requirements are out of the way make sure the boot is set in the physical / virtual environment before performing the boot. Below is the first screen on successful boot of RHEL8 CD. Pressing TAB key will display the actual command that will be executed upon install.
There are multiple ways to install RHEL 8 but the most common for the first installation is using an ISO , others will be discussed during installation below.
The very first installation screen is the installation language , note this is not necessary the language to be used by the users. Select the required language by default US English is selected , press Continue
After selecting the installation language a very clean installation summary is given to select all the required option for the installation , most of these have the default already set such as Language Support and KDUMP , but few of these need to be set such as “Time & Date” , a new window will open for the time and date settings.
from the above you can
set the time in 24 hour / 12 hours
select the date
Select region and city
Keyboard Layout
NTP Server Settings
Click Ok to return to Main Option Menu Screen.
Next is the installation source , you can select different sources for your installation media as below.
Auto-Detect installation media is the ISO image used for booting RHEL 8 setup , there is option to choose a custom ISO , add multiple repositories in your environment (if available) , perform Network Install. Click Done to get back to Main Options.
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Next is Software Selection , Pre Packaged bundles and custom packages , select the one that best suites your requirement.
There are few pre-packaged bundles
Virtualization Host environment contains a set of software packages needed for running virtual machines on the system
Minimal install only installs a basic version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with only a minimal amount of additional software
Server installs infrastructure and networking packages
Server with GUI installs infrastructure and networking + GUI
Workstation is the user friendly desktop , laptop packages
Custom Operating System installs all the packages that admin selects to install.
Once desired packages are selected click Done. Next is the selection of Storage type.
Select installation destination asks for the location to install the OS , it provide the option to select the new disk , select Automatic or Custom partitioning.
Full disk summary and boot loader link shows the options selected for the installation of the new operating system.
Next select Network and Host Name as below, by default in RHEL 8 networking is disabled.
In the above screen you can select Static or Dynamic IP addressing , configure Host Name settings. By clicking on Configure you can set the static settings for route , DNS as well as static ip address.
Security Policy and System Purpose are optional settings.
After all the options are configured click “Begin Installation” and installation will commence. On the next screen there are two option to set the first user and the root password these are required before installation completes.
Once installation has completed you will see the option to reboot the system. Please make sure that the installation media is removed prior to reboot.