Journey with Linux.

Sourabh Deshmukh | Aug 23, 2018 min read

It all started back in 2016 around Jan/Feb, when I first saw Virtual box having kali linux installed in my laptop. It is installed by one of my friend as he took my laptop for learning about penetration and security tools workshop. Earlier I had only heard the name of kali in some of the hollywood movies so I was knowing about little about it such as this OS is used by bad people to destroy others mostly enemies. So journey started from VM. At that time I was in second semester of my degree college. With this I was anaware about the concepts of virtualisation, virtual images etc.

when I first started the Kali VM I was told that it has default username and password which are root and root. It was very amazing and new to me as I was learning about something new which nobody from my knew in my class. So I was exited to learn more about using it. I started using GUI of kali as I was knowing about windows systems to name few Windows(XP/Vista/7/8). I got familier with some of the functionalities and file system of kali linux using GUI.

After completing my first year I was officially entered in my degree course i.e computer science & engineering department. One day I saw one of my friend from other class using kali with some black screen, he was typing something and some operations was getting executed, which seems like I was entered into some hollywood movie and bad guy tried to do something big. I gently walked towards him annnnnnnnnd asked him, what the hell on the earth he is doing on that black screen. He simply replied me that he is extracting zip file. I laughed so badly at that moment because in windows it can be done by 2-3 mouse click operations. I was not knowing importance and usage of terminal at that time.

I started digging more information about using terminal and learned some basic operations such as cd, mv, cp, mkdir, touch etc. Along with that I wanted to learn about how this OS(kali linux) is installed. So at that time google and youtube helped me a lot, while watching videos and by reading tutorials from websites and blog I learnt to install kali linux on Virtual Box. While browsing on the web I came to know about two Operating systems can be installed on single hardware, the blogs were having titles such as how dualboot your pc? So I started getting information about it. I downloaded the required iso file but creating a bootable pendrive using iso which was new for me. One of my senior told me that their is a guy who can help me out in dual booting the system. After my college hours I rushed towards college hostel and started searching about the guy. One of my friend Sonalkumar Kadelwar was also eager to learn about it. So hopefully we found the guy. He helped us to create the bootable pendrive and started his process for installing the kali along with windows 8.1, I was using licenced windows 8.1 which came preinstalled on my dell laptop. After installing he restared my system but it was directly booting into windows os, he tried repeatedly but failed to dual boot the system at that time we became familier with the process of installation. after college hours we use to sit together and tried resolving the issue, But we could’nt. My semester was completed at that time. During vacations I tried dual booting it with almost 50 to 60 times but failed. So I started searching for solutions, visited forums and I found some useful information about legacy system and UEFI system. At that time kali was supported only legacy versions and windows 8.1 was using UEFI version. I found some config files for kali which helps to support UEFI installation. I downloaded that files and copied on bootable device and started installation. Praying to got was only solution with me at that time. After successfully completing installation I restarted my system and Bingo!!! I was watching black screen with some dragon background with OS names listed. It was a grub menu of kali linux. I was so happy at that time it was a wonderful achievement for me. My problem solving and browsing skills helped me to achieve this.

I started learning more about using terminal to operate system. Watched videos, attended courses, read blogs, forums etc. and I got familier with simple linux commands. Along with kali I tried to triple boot ubuntu. Because my college has ubuntu installed on the systems. Some of the Red Had Certified guys was using fedora OS, which caught my attentions and I booted that OS along with kali ubuntu and windows. After that I could’nt wait and booted parrot OS. Due to five OSes installed it was taking more time to get into the installed system so I removed the OS from pentaboot to dual booting fedora along with windows 8.1 . The resone I installed fedora because it was sugested by my seniors, which could help me in getting familier with Red Hat system to get certified.

Before the beginning of my third year I attended Red Hat Certified System Administrator training during my vacations. I got actual knowledge required to use linux distros as well as various functionalities, operations, partitions, directory system, user handling, permissions etc also added into my knowledge database permanently with a tag on my profile as Red hat Certified System Administrator. After that my feelings got attached with the black screen which I started loving which then helped me to forget about windows system and one day I removed the windows permanently from my laptop. After that I was using fedora for completing assignments, programming, creating presentatons, building semester projects etc. I continued to for the second certification that was Red Hat Certified Engineer. I was able to acquire server side knowledge along with linux. And it all ended up moving me permenently towards Linux systems. Daily I am using fedora to complete my work, projects, blogs etc. I can’t servive without watching the black screen a day.

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