Proof of Work (PoW) consensus algorithm.

What are the consensus algorithms in blockchains?

What is SEO? Learn how to improve your SEO and bring traffic to your business.

Best Linux distros for programming in 2022.

What is blockchain technology?

Code

Web development is divided into 2 categories i.e. "Frontend Development"&nbsp;&amp; "Backend Development". The front end deals with the presentation of the web app to the user. It primarily deals with technologies like HTML, CSS and javascript and deals with building user interfaces.

The backend on the other hand is the side of the application which is not visible to the end user. The backend runs on the servers and its primary purpose is to handle the data coming from the frontend or to be sent to the frontend.

It involves operations like storing the data in the database, sending data to the front end, sanitizing form data, registering users, etc.

We must also understand that various backend frameworks have their strengths in building different types of architecture over other frameworks. E.g. if you need to handle a lot of requests concurrently use Node.js, use python for fast development etc.

It is therefore necessary to understand the strength of all these frameworks and choose the right one for your project.

Do we always need a backend for our web application?

In short, the answer will be NO. Not all web apps need a backend. If we are making a website that doesn't have any dynamic data, doesn't need to accept any data from the user or stores anything on the server, we will be good to go with a 'static website'.

Static websites store pre-generated HTML pages on the server. Whenever a user visits a link, the corresponding static HTML page is sent as it is to the user by the server. It doesn't involve any processing by the backend.

However, most web apps nowadays are not static. Modern web apps do have some amount of dynamic content on them. E.g. YouTube, FaceBook and Twitter are all dynamic web applications. And most probably you will need a backend for your web app too.

Why do we need a backend development framework?

Modern programming languages like python, Go and Javascript has all the capabilities to build up a server, write handler functions and generate templates etc... Then why do we need to use a backend development framework??

The primary use of a framework is to automate the nitty-gritty tasks necessary for software development. A backend framework helps us by abstracting the logic behind doing basic tasks such as running up a server, sending network requests, and parsing the incoming data so that we don't have to worry about all this stuff.

Therefore a backend development framework helps us by

Top 10 best frameworks for your web application.

Listed below are the top 10 best backend development frameworks and the type of applications best suited to build with the corresponding frameworks.

Spring boot, released in 2014 is one of the most popular backend frameworks among backend devs. This Java based framework excels in building fast and scalable web applications. It powers the backend needs of companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Accenture, Udemy, Intuit, PayTm etc.

 Spring boot is an extension of the spring framework. Spring boot reduces the boilerplate code required to initiate the application when using the Spring framework and makes development faster.

Use Spring Boot (or any Java based framework) if the speed of execution is the primary concern for the application. Also, note that java based apps consume a lot of memory (bec of JVM) so configure your server's RAM accordingly.

Less Control - spring boot introduces a lot of unused dependencies that increase the size of deployment files.

Not suitable for large scale projects - Spring boot is not suitable for large scale monolithic applications. However, it is still a good choice to build microservices which together can build a large application.

Not for beginners - Spring boot can be overwhelming for novice developers. If you are not familiar with the spring ecosystem it can get challenging.

High RAM usage&nbsp;- All Java based applications run on the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and hence consume a lot of RAM.

ASP .NET Core is a free open-source framework created by Microsoft that is used extensively in backend web development. It is based on the C# language. The primary feature of ASP .NET is that it is faster and uses less memory than java due to its natively compiled code.

Cross platform support - ASP .NET core is a cross platform backend development platform. It means that applications built with it can run on windows, Mac as well as Linux operating systems. It uses the same C# code across all platforms.

Extremly performant&nbsp;- One of the major advantages of this framework is its performance. The code due to native compilation provides native speeds and also its memory footprint is very less as compared to java.

Enhanced security - ASP .NET Core comes with a lot of security features that are readily available for developers to use. It offers mechanisms for authentication, authorization, data protection and attack prevention. It also offers integrations with other major authentication providers.

Minimal Coding&nbsp;- ASP .NET Core requires less coding to build up an application. It helps developers to move fast and develop projects quicker than other frameworks.

Express is an open source, node.js framework for building backend servers. It deserves special mention as this framework uses JavaScript for backend development. JavaScript is already regarded as the king of frontend development, with node.js it became possible to execute js code on the server as well.&nbsp; However, creating backends with vanilla nodejs can get a lot tricky and that's where express comes into the picture.

Express is a fast, extremely scalable, and very rapid development framework. It helps developers rapidly convert an idea into a product. It involves many middlewares that can make a developer's life easier and helps to move faster.

Express is regarded as the standard backend library for nodejs. It is also a part of some popular full-stack development stacks such as the MEAN stack and MERN stack. These stacks follow the idea of&nbsp;js-everwhere and use javascript to build entire applications from scratch. It is also helpful as the frontend developers are also able to work on the backend without having to spend time learning other backend tech stacks.

Easy Learning curve&nbsp;- JavaScript is already popular in the frontend development world and has a lot of user base. These developers can easily switch to working on the backend without much effort.

High performance&nbsp;- Node.js though single threaded, offers real-time performance due to its asynchronous non-blocking I/O architecture. It also uses the V8 javascript engine to convert js code into machine code which is the fastest javascript engine.

Smaller team size&nbsp;- due to express being js based, we do not have to maintain a big team for the app development fewer devs can work on both frontend and backend as well. It is very helpful for startups and also improves communication.

Supports various architectures&nbsp;- Nodejs is very modular in nature. It doesn't come with any dependencies apart from the official node packages. It helps to ensure that we only use the code we need and the production bundle is very small in size. This feature of node js makes it one of the best choices for microservice and serverless architectures. We can spin up many lightweight nodejs microservices and build a large application.

No shipped security features&nbsp;- Express.js can be called a DIY framework due to its middleware architecture and minimalistic dependencies. It doesn't offer any ready-to-use robust security features. It rather leaves it upon the developer to implement the security features as they need them. It can also be considered as an advantage for the devs who love control.

Single threaded&nbsp;- Although nodejs offers features such as asynchronous non-blocking I/O for real-time speeds, it is still not considered a good choice for processor-intensive tasks. These tasks increase wait time for other processes as all the tasks are handled by only one thread.

When to use Node.js for backend development?

You should use node js when you need real-time performance and the application relies more on database I/O operations and doesn't require processor-intensive tasks.

Django is a free and open source leading python based framework. Django follows the MVC pattern and therefore it is a full-stack framework, however, it can also be used to build backend applications.

Django is a simple but feature rich framework that specializes in reducing the time taken in initiating the project to its completion. It offers many features such as an automated admin panel that is important for the content management of the application.

The most popular web apps built with Django are - Disqus, Spotify, Instagram, The Washington post etc.

Feature rich&nbsp;- Django offers many features that make a dev's life easier when building a web application, such as an automated admin panel, sitemap generation, user authentication and credential management etc.

Security - Django offers security against common threats right out of the box, such as XSS attacks, clickjacking, CSRF attacks, SQL injection etc.

Learning curve - Django shines in the category of easy-to-use development frameworks. It is very beginner friendly and has a low learning curve.

Monolithic architecture&nbsp;- Django doesn't offer much versatility in building varied architectures. Django projects are monolithic by default.

Performance&nbsp;- Django can lead to slow websites. The point to be noted is that it has less to do with the Python programming language, but more with unoptimized database queries, too many crud operations and the number of resources used.

Laravel is a free and open-source framework used to make symfony-based web applications that follow MVC architecture. Laravel is based on the PHP programming language.

Laravel is very popular among many developers with many experts regarding it as the best choice for backend web development.

Some of the popular brands using Laravel are :- 9GAG, Pfizer and TourRadar.

Authentication&nbsp;- Authentication is simple with Laravel. It abstracts important logic like hashing of passwords etc. and offers easy access to resources.

Caching&nbsp;- Laravel offers inbuilt support for cache backends like Redis, Memcached, DynamoDB etc. Laravel also lets users write custom cache configurations. By default, Laravel uses the 'file' cache driver that stores the cache in the file system. For larger projects, we can use in-memory caches like Redis and Memcached.

Logs&nbsp;- Laravel has powerful logging features that help to automate server logs. It uses a Monolog library that provides support for a variety of log handlers.

Slow Development&nbsp;- Development is slower when using Laravel as compared to other backend frameworks.

Ruby on rails (aka Rails) is a popular free and open-source backend development framework based on the Ruby language. Rails like Laravel is an MVC architecture-based framework.&nbsp;Rails is extremely popular because of its simplicity and performance.

Tonnes of libraries&nbsp;- Ruby on rails provides a huge collection of packages called gems that can be used by developers to add features to the applications without having to code everything from scratch.

Easy Testing&nbsp;- Ruby on rails create automated tests for the models and controllers we write while building our applications. These skeleton test codes save a ton of time for the developers. We can even simulate browser requests for testing apps without a browser.

Scalibility&nbsp;- Rails is a highly scalable framework. It is an apt framework for building apps that have to handle a high volume of users.

CakePHP is also a PHP based open source web development framework. It is greatly inspired by Ruby on Rails. It follows the MVC architecture.

Built in ORM&nbsp;- CakePHP features a built in ORM that makes it easy to communicate with relational databases. The tables are represented as classes on which we can perform programatic operations, call methods etc. and the changes are reflected on the database.

Scalability&nbsp;- CakePHP is highly scalable and very performant framework in terms of handling requests.

Documentation&nbsp;- The documentation of CakePHP is not very comprehensive as compared to other frameworks.

Gin is a open source backend development framework written in golang. Gin is relatively newer member in this list of best frameworks. What makes gin special is the speed and simplicity it inherits from golang.

Gin tends to be more performant than java spring boot and ASP .Net in many benchmarks. Another speciality of golang based frameworks is their very low memory footprint.

Ease of use&nbsp;- Gin is a simple and easy-to-use framework. It is easier for new developers to learn and start working with go/gin than other frameworks.

Speed&nbsp;- Golang is a very high performant language. Gin claims to be 40 times faster than other frameworks.

Small community&nbsp;- Gin being a relatively new framework has a much smaller community than other major frameworks like Spring Boot or node.js.

Here is a list of the top 10 backend web development frameworks you can use to build your own web applications.

Top 10 best backend development frameworks to build modern web applications.

Proof-of-Work (PoW) is the oldest <a href="https://lumbytes.com/story/visheshdvn/what-are-consensus-algorithms">consensus algorithm</a> developed by the pseudonymous identity "Satoshi Nakamoto" who is also regarded as the inventor of the Bitcoin blockchain. Proof-of-work is used by some popular blockchain networks such as bitcoin and ethereum.

It is an algorithm in which one node "the prover", proves to other nodes "The verifiers" that a certainly expected computation is done. The provers then verify the result and if it is accepted by the majority of verifiers, it is considered valid and accepted.

In blockchains, the Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm is used to decide the next block to be added to the blockchain during the mining process. The most common application of the PoW algorithm is the bitcoin blockchain.

In the Bitcoin blockchain, the transactions are grouped in a block to be mined. The block also stores some other information apart from the transactional data such as timestamp, block hash, previous block hash, nonce, network id, Merkle root etc. We won't go into the details of these properties as they're out of the scope of this article.

The nonce value is the solution that every node competes to find first. The nonce value should be such that when it is hashed along with the other block data generates a block hash that contains a specific number of zeroes at the beginning of the hash. The number of zeroes is determined by the current network difficulty at the moment. The miners go through many rounds of trial and error phases until the correct nonce is found.

The solution (here the nonce value) is called the proof-of-work. The miner who finds the nonce first shares it with other peers who then verify if the nonce is valid.

If it is valid the peers then incorporate that nonce value on their local copy of the blockchain and then share it with other peer nodes. This process repeats in a cycle until all the nodes on the blockchain implement that nonce value and add the new block on their local copies. The founder node of the nonce value is rewarded in bitcoins. This is how a new block is added to the blockchain.

Advantages and disadvantages of Proof of Work consensus algorithm.

Proof of Work is a consensus algorithm that helps blockchain networks to assent to a certain state of the network and remains robust.

As we all know that <a href="https://lumbytes.com/post/blockchain-simplified">blockchain</a> is a distributed, decentralized and immutable shared ledger of transactions, with nodes spanning across the globe.&nbsp;All the nodes also contain an entire copy of the blockchain on which they perform their operations. These nodes may also suggest different solutions for the new block to be added.

We also know that blockchains also maintain a common state(a common chain of blocks) for all the nodes.

In this scenario, a question that arises is - With the network of millions of globally distributed nodes, each one performing its operations at different time intervals, how does the blockchain network ensure a common state for all these nodes?

This problem is handled by the Consensus Algorithm used by the blockchain.

A consensus algorithm is a fault-tolerant procedure used in blockchains, through which all the nodes achieve an agreement for the common present state of the blockchain network.

Consensus algorithms maintain integrity and security in the network. They also help to establish trust among peers in a trustless environment.

They also make sure that any new block being added to the chain during the minting process is the same block being adopted by all the nodes in the network and thus maintaining a single source of truth agreed upon by all the nodes.

Now that we know what consensus algorithms are and what is their role.. let us find out what will happen if no consensus algorithm is used in a blockchain.

What will happen if no consensus algorithm is used?

A deep dive into 2 most popular consensus algorithms

There are many standard consensus algorithms used by different blockchains. Blockchain projects sometimes also come up with their own invented algorithm. These algorithms have different working mechanisms and principles but ultimately a common goal.

Proof-of-Work (PoW) is the oldest consensus algorithm developed by the pseudonymous identity "Satoshi Nakamoto" who is also regarded as the inventor of the Bitcoin blockchain. Proof-of-work is used by some popular blockchain networks such as bitcoin and ethereum.

In PoW algorithm all the nodes compete against each other to find a solution for a complex mathematical problem, the node that solves the problem first eventually adds the block to the blockchain and earn the reward.&nbsp;

It is the most energy-consuming algorithm because all the power consumed by the rest of the nodes to find the solution is actually wasted.

Proof-of-Stake (PoS) is a low energy consuming algorithm. It is much more efficient that proof-of-work algorithm. Here, a validator is randomly chosen on the basis of amount of virtual currencies hoarded by the node. Therefore, the nodes that owns more currency has higher probability of receiving the validator responsibility and thus the reward.

This algorithm leads toward the centralization of power and promotes the holding of resources rather than spending.

The Ethereum 2.0 has adopted the PoS algorithm, discarding the PoW algorithm which is used in the previous version of the Ethereum blockchain, to reduce the wastage of electricity and natural resources.

Blockchain is a distributed, shared and immutable ledger of transactions that is duplicated across every node spread across the globe.

A consensus algorithm is a procedure through which the nodes of the blockchain come to a common agreement regarding the present state of the network.

Decentralized Finance or DeFi is a system of building financial applications on a decentralized peer-to-peer&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.lumbytes.com/post/blockchain-simplified">blockchain</a>&nbsp;network like ethereum. These apps don't rely on centralized institutions such as exchanges, brokerages, banks, or any kind of financial institution. All the rules and regulations are governed by smart contracts instead.

Traditional methods of performing transactions rely on intermediaries like Visa, Paypal, Banks, etc. These intermediaries charge taxes for their services. Moreover, they also require many documents such as government ID, address proofs, income certificates, etc. before you can start using their services.

One of the biggest advantages of DeFi is that it allows people to buy, sell, lend or borrow funds by directly interacting with each other through a software-based interface rather than any company or human thereby cutting out the middleman.

DeFi uses cryptocurrencies instead of fiat money. The financial institutions in traditional finance are replaced by smart contracts in DeFi.

Suppose you are buying a coffee at Starbucks. With traditional methods, you can pay the vendor with your Visa credit card. This gives visa control of your payments. Visa logs your payment data in their servers and also charges a fee to facilitate your payment

With DeFi protocols middlemen like Visa can be cut out of the picture. A smart contract can be deployed that receives payments from the buyers and sends a&nbsp;coffee token&nbsp;to the buyer after receiving the payment. It sends the money to the vendor’s ethereum wallet. The buyer can purchase the coffee with that token by sending the token directly to the vendor's wallet.

Apart from buying/selling DeFi protocols can be developed for various other types of transactions such as crowdfunding, investing, fundraising, securities, etc.

Ethereum is the de facto blockchain for building DeFi applications. If not all, most of the DeFi projects are built on Ethereum. The reason for ethereum's popularity in the DeFi space is its ability to execute smart contracts.

Some of the most popular DeFi projects e.g. MakerDAO, Compound, Uniswap, InstaDapp, etc. are built on ethereum.

Though emerging as a giant industry, DeFi is still in the development phase. New protocols are still being built to streamline the whole financing mechanism. However, the volume of daily trading and the money locked in smart contracts is growing steadily. DeFi is expected to revolutionise the ways of current financial systems in the future and lay the foundation of modern finance.

What are smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain? An Introduction.

What are smart contracts?

Decentralized Finance or Defi is a system of building financial applications on a decentralized peer-to-peer blockchain network like Ethereum.

What is Decentralized Finance - DeFi?

Digital Marketing

If you own a website or plan to create one, you would definitely want to attract lots of user engagement. Spending money on advertisements is one way, but what if I tell you that you can also gain a lot of organic traffic directly from the search engine for free? Interesting isn't it? Let's learn more about it... 🚀

In this article, we will learn everything about SEO and talk about steps to improve your website's SEO.

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is a process to make a website or web content rank higher on search engines' search results like Google or Bing.

The reputation of a search engine depends on delivering the highest quality content to its users. Whenever you search for a keyword, say "Apple" you get the website of Apple Inc. on the top instead of pictures of apple fruit. This is because most people are interested in the brand apple instead of apple pies while online. So google predicts the best result for the query and shows you about the apple company.

Similarly, say e.g. you created an e-commerce store of goggles. So whenever any user searches the keyword "buy goggles", you need to convince the search engine that you are the most credible option for their users to rank higher in their search results. For this, you need to create higher quality content than your competitors.

Ranking higher on search results is a matter of utmost importance for businesses. It can significantly affect your public reach and customer base and affect your income.

(after all.. google's 2nd page is deeper than the dark web 😆)

There are 2 kinds of content that rank higher on search engines: paid and SEO friendly. Paid content or websites pay the search engine to rank higher on the search results. SEO friendly websites get this advantage for free. 🎉

Building an audience for your website is a matter of patience. It takes time and effort until you start getting good numbers in user engagement. New websites may take several months or years to rank higher or appear on google's first page.

However, there are techniques using which you can quickly gain a lot of organic traffic. These techniques are referred to as&nbsp;black hat SEO. This strategy includes using techniques like keyword stuffing, link scraping to rank higher quickly. This strategy may work for a short time but these websites get penalized after getting caught by search engines. Such websites can even get blacklisted by the search engines meaning that they'll never rank in future.

On the other hand, websites using white hat SEO practices retain their rank and audience in the longer run.

In 1996 Bill Gates quoted "Content is King". This phrase has been true ever since.

Creating great quality content is the first dimension of improving your SEO. Whenever a user searches for something on the internet, they want to find a resource that is concise, targeted to them &amp; solves their problem.

E.g. when you google "Windows 11", it won't give you any random article on windows 11. Instead, it will find links that provide the best results for this query.

Therefore, good quality content accounts for a lot of credibility and thus helps you rank higher.

Google search algorithm relies on keywords. These are the words that a user searches for when googling for something. Keywords describe what your content is about.

Keywords are one of the most important factors that affect SEO. In fact, SEO is pretty much impossible without keywords. That is why finding the keywords that people search is an important step. This is known as Keyword Research.

Keyword research is a crucial step to rank higher on the search results. It not only helps you to find the most frequently searched words/phrases but also helps you understand what the users expect when they search for those keywords. This subsequently helps you to create more relevant content that gives you better reach.

Some important points for choosing the right keywords for your site are -

LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords are the terms that are related to the main keyword you are targeting. These are the words that tell google that when you are searching for the word&nbsp;hot, do you mean a volcano or just coffee.

These keywords help Google to find the content which is more targeted to the user.

Many times people may search for the same thing but use different search phrases. E.g. A person in Delhi searches for the phrase "Best bakery near me" while the other search for "What's the best bakery in New Delhi". Though they mean the same thing the search results can have some differences.

LSI keywords help the search engines to understand both queries better and provide the same results to them. Therefore LSI keywords act as a support vector for your content's SEO.

Search intent refers to the result that users expect when they search for a keyword.

For selecting more effective keywords we must not only focus on what the user inputs while searching but try to understand what they are searching for.

For example, consider that you own a real estate website where people can list their property to either buy, sell or rent. To make people use your website you need to make it rank higher on the search results.

Consider that your site has a good ranking and also have a lot of property data for all three services. These three services also reflect very different user intents which you need to take care of.

Search engines use LSI keywords to understand the search intent and show users the best results.

Getting the code right is an important aspect of improving your SEO. Without the correct meta tags and headings, search engines will have difficulty understanding what your site is about and for what keyword it should rank. Besides meta tags, your HTML should also be semantically correct.

HTML semantics refers to syntax that makes the HTML more comprehensible by better defining the different sections and layout of web pages. It makes web pages more informative and adaptable, allowing browsers and search engines to better interpret content. For example, instead of using&nbsp;div id="header", you can use a&nbsp;header&nbsp;tag.

Let us look at some important factors for careful inspection when defining the HTML for your website

Title tag content appears when the website appears in search results. It is also shown on top of the browser when you open the website.

The title tag describes what the entire page is about. You should include your main keywords in the title tag.

The text below the prominent blue heading on google search results is called the meta description. It is a brief description of the contents of the whole page. You should include important keywords here. It should be under 160 characters to display it properly on both desktop and mobile.

The&nbsp;img&nbsp;tag has an alt property that contains an alternative text for the image. It is displayed when the image can't load to display. Alt text is used to textually define the image. You should not leave your alt text empty or write any random text in it. Alt text should define your image in under 100 characters. You can also place your important keywords here.

Page speed is a crucial SEO factor. It accounts for the user experience: which search engines take very seriously. Google's search algorithm also considers your page load speed for mobile devices.

Therefore your website should be fast for both desktop and mobile devices.

More people in the world use their mobile phones instead of their laptops/PCs to access the internet. Because of this fact, Google uses a mobile-first approach to rank the websites. It means the websites that have better responsiveness will be ranked higher.

You may also want to check out the AMP framework. It was created by Google to help developers create mobile-optimized content. Amp pages load almost instantly from mobile devices. Using AMP will boost your SEO and rank you even higher.

Website Security is a crucial factor for SEO. If your website appears not secure for the people or spammy in any kind, Google will rank you lower.

The first good you can do to your website is using an SSL certificate and use the HTTPS network. HTTPS use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to encrypt the communication between the client and server and provide security against Man-In-The-Middle attacks. While it doesn't help much for boosting your SEO but it is the first step towards making your website secure.

Links are the building blocks of a website. All the pages of the site are interconnected through links. This fact makes links an important SEO factor. All the links should use the anchor tag with descriptive text.

Inbound links are the links that come from different websites or different domain names. They are also known as&nbsp;backlinks&nbsp;because they refer back to you.

High-quality backlinks make your site appear more authoritative so search engines. The backlinks are said to be high quality if they come from an authoritative and trustworthy website.

It means it is better to have fewer backlinks from well-known websites rather than having many backlinks from low-quality websites.

These are the links that link to other sites from your site.

Outbound links indicate that you are doing research and expanding your content.

You should only create outbound links to authoritative sites in your niche.

You use these links to link to other pages within your website.

Internal links help your readers to find other pages within your website. You can use internal links to link to content that is related to your new content. In this way, your pages support each other.

This web of internal links between your content also helps the search engine to understand the reason for existence. These links help search engines to better crawl, index and rank your content.

Social media is an off-page SEO factor. It may don't have a direct impact on your SEO, but you can use it to boost your ranking.

Google's has said that&nbsp;social shares are not a direct ranking factor. Social media links are not considered the same as links from other authoritative websites.

Still, the most popular social media have a lot of social shares. The biggest advantage of social media is that it allows you to market your content directly to the public in the most efficient way.

It creates a backlink type system from where more users can discover your website.

You need to create a strong social media presence for your business. You also need to ease the process of sharing your content online for the public. Lastly, you need to share the content that is promoted by the social media algorithm for better public reach.

The presence of your business information online is an important SEO ranking factor. Search engines rank the websites which they believe are more credible and authoritative.

This is primarily a local SEO ranking factor. It helps you to rank higher in the place of your business.

While citing your business online you should look after the areas like:

The last factor is something that you can't control but you should know about.

Domain age tells how old your website is. Research has shown that older website tends to rank higher. More than 60% of the websites with top 10 Google search rankings are three years or older.

So if you have launched a new website, you need to keep working on improving your SEO. This will give you ranking advantages in the long run but nothing will happen overnight.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a process to make a website or any web content rank higher on search engines.

Linux is considered the best operating system for coders, developers and even hackers. The reasons for Linux's popularity among the dev community are: it is free, extensively customizable, easy to install and use, has great support for almost all the programming languages, has fast execution speeds on low-end hardware, robust security and also job better job opportunities for people who are skilled in Linux too.

Today Linux not only power your personal desktops but also servers, IoT devices, mobile operating systems, cloud servers and many home digital appliances etc. With such vast industry adoption, the demand for Linux skilled engineers only gets higher. However, one of the major concerns when starting to learn Linux is to pick the right distro for yourself.

To ease up this decision for you here is a list of carefully selected Linux distros that you can learn and build interesting projects with -

Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux distros one can find. It is easy to install and use and suitable for all kinds of users: beginners to experienced developers.

Ubuntu is a beginner's first choice. It comes with a simple GUI software downloader and installer (snap store) you can use to easily install any software. For software not available in the snap store or apt repository, you can download a ".deb" file of that software from external resources and install them just by double-clicking it.

Ubuntu is supported by almost all the major utility software developers. E.g. docker, intel and Nvidia drivers, blockchain projects etc.

Ubuntu has a giant community of hobbyists and developers. So if you find yourself stuck at any problem, there is a high chance you'll easily find the solution online. Overall ubuntu is a good distro to start with and hold on to for a long time too.

Fedora is a community-driven project from RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). It's Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds's preferred distro. Fedora is popular among the dev community because of its up-to-date feature set and the developer portal.

Fedora only ships with open-source elements. You can also share your problems in the fedora forum and the solution will arrive quickly.

OpenSUSE may not be as popular as Ubuntu or fedora but is surely a great operating system for developers. This distro is available in 2 versions - OpenSUSE Leap and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

OpenSUSE Leap is an LTS release that remains up to date and guarantees stability, while Tumbleweed is a rolling release for people who want to try the latest software.

One of the strengths of OpenSUSE is the YaST package manager which helps to automate many tasks, and the bonus is its software delivery method. you can go to its software portal website and install any software with one click.

Arch Linux is made for alpha Linux geeks who want full control over their desktop. It doesn't come with a GUI desktop environment or any software. The installer is also a CLI (terminal).

It gives the users the power to build their desktop from the bottom up. We can choose any desktop environment, display managers, utility software etc. to install.

Due to not packing any software in the installer, it has no bloatware at all. Another benefit of arch Linux is that it is a Cutting-edge Linux distro and ships the latest software as fast as possible.

The greatest advantage of ARCH Linux is AUR (Arch User Repository) which is a large community of software developers and hosts a large number of packages.

Manjaro is the most popular Arch-based Linux distribution. It comes with all the benefits of Arch Linux but it is pre-configured with a GUI desktop environment and some essential software preinstalled.

Manjaro also has a utility for manually switching Linux kernels and installing drivers easily.

Kali Linux, created by Offensive Security is a hacking and forensics focussed Linux distro. It is widely used by cybersecurity researchers and hackers worldwide.

Kali Linux comes preinstalled with over 600 penetration testing tools. But these tools are not for absolute Linux beginners.

It can be a great programming distro too if you are focussing on cybersecurity or ethical hacking.

Here are the best Linux distros you should use for your development work.

FEATURED

Proof of Work (PoW) consensus algorithm.

What are the consensus algorithms in blockchains?

What is SEO? Learn how to improve your SEO and bring traffic to your business.

Best Linux distros for programming in 2022.

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