Get your linux machine ready for setting up the development environment.
The only Linux distribution I have experience in setting up for our environment is Ubuntu (16.04 "Xenial Xerus" & 18.04 "Bionic Beaver"). The setup will probably work in other modern and up-to-date distributions, however instructions for Ubuntu will be supplied.
It is assumed you are using relatively modern hardware in your Ubuntu machine--running webpack and gulp/jekyll in parallel may cause performance issues on less-capable hardware.
All you should need to do before getting started is make sure your Ubuntu installation (v16.04+) is up-to-date.