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Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Setup

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS ("Noble Numbat") is the documented Linux platform for this course. It receives standard security updates until 2029.

  1. Download the ISO from https://ubuntu.com/download (Desktop or Server).
  2. Create a VM in VirtualBox (free) or Hyper-V (Windows 11 Pro/Enterprise): 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 25 GB disk.
  3. Networking: use NAT for internet access. Add a second Host-only adapter for labs that need host-to-VM traffic (Days 12–15, 20, 26).
  4. Install with default options and create a normal user (the course uses student).
  5. Take a snapshot named clean-install once setup is finished. Before every risky lab (firewall, permissions), take another.

Option B — WSL2

See WSL2 Installation.

First-boot configuration

# Update the package lists and installed packages
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y

# Tools used throughout the course
sudo apt install -y curl wget git tree vim nano htop man-db bash-completion \
    net-tools dnsutils iproute2 iputils-ping traceroute mtr-tiny tcpdump \
    lsof psmisc sysstat jq shellcheck

# Check the release
cat /etc/os-release

What these packages provide

dnsutils provides dig and nslookup (Day 13). iproute2 provides ip and ss (Days 11, 14). mtr-tiny, traceroute and iputils-ping are used for connectivity (Day 12), tcpdump for packet capture (Day 15), sysstat for iostat/sar (Day 28), jq for JSON (Day 24) and shellcheck for script linting (Module 5).

Install PowerShell 7 on Ubuntu (optional, from Day 5)

See PowerShell 7 Installation.

Create your practice folder

mkdir -p ~/lpm-lab

Verification

lsb_release -a          # Ubuntu 24.04.x LTS
bash --version | head -1
which dig ss ip tcpdump
ls -ld ~/lpm-lab