Basic Linux Administration via GUI (Webmin)

Abstract

Sometimes the command-line environment can be a bit frustrating, and in those cases, you might really wish you had a prettier option that held your hand a bit more. Thankfully, one exists in the well-established Webmin project. Founded by Jamie Cameron and first released in October 1997, Webmin is an open source project that can be used for both commercial and noncommercial purposes, making it very useful to us. It also provides the same administrative interface on both Debian and CentOS, which means that using it on either machine is nearly the same experience. And finally, it can be extensively customized, as I'll talk about in this chapter. So let's dig into Webmin, first by talking about if you need it (and what you might need it for) and then by discussing the installation, securing, and customizing of the tool.