Linux tutorials - Advice?

[Mr. Harley]

Could any of you offer links to any good sites, or the titles/authors of any good books, for learning Linux? If the books are used as texts at your college, could you give me a phone number/link to a (college) book store where you are at where I might get a used copy at a reduced price. I really prefer free web resources, both because I'm thrifty, and they are often more convenient than books.

[Blake]

Hmmm. I know there are a few online books on linux.

Mostly though it's a matter of installing a user-friendly distro (I like Ubuntu) and taking it from there, typically it's easy to google information for any specific problem, and the install guides for distros typically contain a wealth of information.

To be honest I havn't found any general tutorials terribly useful.

[Urban Ranger]

Most major distros have their own forums populated by helpful people. Just follow the usual rules. Their websites usually have specific instructions for installations and FAQs (Except Fedora, but you can find that on the Web elsewhere). Most if not all shell commands have man (manual) entries that you can look at by using the "man" command, e.g. man cp. Also there is the Linux Documentation Project.

Also, don't forget, Google is your friend (usually).

[Thue]

Gentoo is a linux distribution which you install more or less manually, program by program. This of course takes a lot of time, but they have very well written user-friendly step-by-step tutorials for everything, and by the time you have finished you will have learned a great deal about linux.

[Urban Ranger]

Gentoo is pretty much Linux From Scratch lite. I don't think it is for newbies and the feint of heart. I agree that the Gentoo Handbook is excellent, but a user still needs to be somewhat experienced to begin with.

[Q Classic]

The Gentoo forums are also amazingly spectacular.

Avoid the Debian forums if you're a newbie, though--they tend to be filled with RTFMbots.

[Q Classic]

http://www.ftlinuxcourse.com/

I haven't had a chance to vet this out, but... it appeared on technocrat.net.

[Urban Ranger]

Newbies shouldn't touch debian - the plain vanilla version anyway. Ubuntu is great, though.

[Asher]

The fact that we need a thread on a tutorial for an operating system is precisely why it's not going to overtake Windows anytime soon...

[Mr. Harley]

Asher - provide the Linux info (and I know you use it for college) or go stuff a Windows Longhorn DVD where it will be uncomfortable for your boyfriend.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Asher
The fact that we need a thread on a tutorial for an operating system is precisely why it's not going to overtake Windows anytime soon...

Yup. It is a problem that people percieve that they need a tutorial to install & use Linux.

Ah well.

"Windows for Dummies" books.

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by Asher
The fact that we need a thread on a tutorial for an operating system is precisely why it's not going to overtake Windows anytime soon...

You'd need a tutorial for windows as well if everyone grew up with linux. Personally, I don't really know what shawnmmc wants. Just load it up and you have all your programs there. You don't even need to know about paths when installing programs in e.g. ubuntu. Select from the packet manager it downloads and install. It's actually quite easy.

btw, shawn, the best way to learn is to experiment. Fire it up, search around and when you come to a point where you don't see a way ahead, go and ask.

[Q Classic]

For a beginner system, I'd recommend Ubuntu, Beatrix, or Knoppix.

For a mid-level to high-level, I'd recommend Ubuntu, Slackware, or Gentoo.

For a tweaker's system, I'd recommend Slackware or Gentoo.

I'd avoid RedHat, Fedora, Mandriva, or any other RedHat-derived system unless you have to learn it for work--why? RPMs, as a package system, suck (though they were based on a decent idea--it's the implementation, silly), and most upgrades are fraught with lots of pain. Especially if you do a kernel upgrade.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
I'd avoid RedHat, Fedora, Mandriva, or any other RedHat-derived system unless you have to learn it for work--why? RPMs, as a package system, suck (though they were based on a decent idea--it's the implementation, silly), and most upgrades are fraught with lots of pain. Especially if you do a kernel upgrade.

Actually, rpm is more or less superceded by yum, and yum now has a pretty face (yumex). Sure, yum is based on rpm, but it handles the dependencies quite nicely, and also makes kernel upgrade painless.

[Mr. Harley]

Thanks folks.

Been getting a bunch of parts on sale over the last year, I'm now waiting on a cooling fan before starting the install.