In this chapter, you've read about the GNU/Linux operating systems and the Linux kernel, what a kernel really is, and how big an impact Linux distributions have on daily life. You've also learned what a shell is, and that the most common Linux shell, Bash, can be both used to interact with a Linux system, and is also utilized to write shell scripts.

In the next chapter, we'll set up a local environment which we will use throughout the rest of the book, in both the examples and exercises.