My First Dance with Bash and Virtualization

 

This week was one of those weeks where I felt like I wasn’t just learning concepts, but actually living them. Every day opened a new door, and by the end of it, I could see how the little things were slowly piecing together into something bigger.

We started with virtualization and dual booting. On paper, they sounded like technical jargon, but the deeper I went, the clearer the picture became. I realized that virtualization is like renting a space within your own house. You’re still in your house, but you’ve set up another mini-room inside it where you can do something entirely different without disturbing your main space. Dual booting, on the other hand, is more like building two separate houses and choosing which one to live in at a time. Understanding the differences made me appreciate why virtualization is often the go-to for cybersecurity learners like me. It’s flexible, safe, and doesn’t mess with your main operating system.

Then came Kali Linux. At first, it felt intimidating, like stepping into a whole new city with its own language, rules, and culture. But the best way to learn a new city is to walk around and explore, right? That’s exactly what I did. I got my hands dirty with Bash and scripting, running commands like pwd, ls, and even writing my own small scripts. It wasn’t just about typing into a terminal, it was about seeing how those commands gave me control over the system. There’s something oddly satisfying about running your own script and seeing it work.

Another big part of the week was understanding permissions. Before now, I didn’t really grasp why “read, write, execute” mattered so much. But learning how permissions affect what you can or cannot do on a file opened my eyes. It’s not just about security; it’s about responsibility. Knowing who has the right to do what on a system is the foundation of cybersecurity.

To wrap it all up, we had a soft skills session on personality. That class was not only insightful but also fun. It reminded me that while technical skills will take you far, knowing yourself and understanding others will take you even further. It was a reminder that cybersecurity isn’t just about machines, it’s about people too.

Looking back, this week has been about building confidence, learning to trust the process, and realizing that every new concept is a step forward. I honestly enjoyed every bit of every class, and I’m excited to see how the coming weeks will build on this foundation.