1.6 Looking Forward

So far, you’ve seen what constitutes a running Linux system. User processes make up the environment that you directly interact with; the kernel manages processes and hardware. Both the kernel and processes reside in memory.

This is great background information, but you can’t learn the details of a Linux system by reading about it alone; you need to get your hands dirty. The next chapter starts your journey by teaching you some user-space basics. Along the way, you’ll learn about a major part of the Linux system that this chapter doesn’t discuss: long-term storage (disks, files, and the like). After all, you need to store your programs and data somewhere.