Open-Source Linux For Beginner

cheshire said:
You won't learn anything from Ubuntu, or CentOS. Read up on the way linux really works ... not the Windows copycat version of Linux.

http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

Best book/manual written on linux to date. You can also buy it in dead tree form if you want.
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Worst advice ever. Not only did I learn most of what's in that book despite the fact that I use what you call "Windows copycat version of Linux" where "you won't learn anything", moreover I can assure you that nobody on the face of the planet, except maybe the author of the book himself, wants to learn ANYTHING from a book whose first chapter has a subsection "1.5 I Get Frustrated with UNIX Documentation That I Don't Understand". I hadn't even finished reading the table of contents, and already I feel patronized.

IMHO, this book was written by a *nix-ier-than-thou elitist chump, which you can see just by looking at chapter 6 -- It's all about Vim, with only passing mention of emacs, based on the assumption that you're gonna want to do everything just like the author; that is, with your head up your ass. Chapter 3, on hardware, belies his recurring attempts to over-explain EVERYTHING down to the barest low-level and inundate the reader with specifics that were probably copied straight out of Unix MAN pages, and on that note, his stupid domain name is a joke about a time overflow bug that nobody's ever heard of, and will not hear of for at least 25 more years.

I'm not saying that there's not a lot of good information in that link -- In fact, it seems like he covers at least 80% of my basic day-to-day programs and workflow. I just wouldn't want to "learn" it from that guy.


Disclaimer: Woke up with a stick up my ass today, to be blunt.
 


uplinked said:
Worst advice ever. Not only did I learn most of what's in that book despite the fact that I use what you call "Windows copycat version of Linux" where "you won't learn anything", moreover I can assure you that nobody on the face of the planet, except maybe the author of the book himself, wants to learn ANYTHING from a book whose first chapter has a subsection "1.5 I Get Frustrated with UNIX Documentation That I Don't Understand". I hadn't even finished reading the table of contents, and already I feel patronized.

IMHO, this book was written by a *nix-ier-than-thou elitist chump, which you can see just by looking at chapter 6 -- It's all about Vim, with only passing mention of emacs, based on the assumption that you're gonna want to do everything just like the author; that is, with your head up your ass. Chapter 3, on hardware, belies his recurring attempts to over-explain EVERYTHING down to the barest low-level and inundate the reader with specifics that were probably copied straight out of Unix MAN pages, and on that note, his stupid domain name is a joke about a time overflow bug that nobody's ever heard of, and will not hear of for at least 25 more years.

I'm not saying that there's not a lot of good information in that link -- In fact, it seems like he covers at least 80% of my basic day-to-day programs and workflow. I just wouldn't want to "learn" it from that guy.


Disclaimer: Woke up with a stick up my ass today, to be blunt.
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Heh someone pissed your Wheaties. What I guess I was trying to say is that loading up Ubuntu or CentOS and clicking around in Gnome won't teach you anything useful IMO. I didn't really learn anything useful about Linux until I started playing with Slackware, Gentoo, etc ... which basically forced me into using a shell instead of a GUI.
 
Welcome to Linux & FOSS!
Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid is the most user friendly OS available now! (And mint too, but ubuntu community is vast so you will be able to solve the (if)problems very easily)!
CentOS is not good for desktop usage but it is good for servers - It is a typically designed for Servers and is the free edition of RedHat!
I am a Computer Engineer having a great experience with Linux systems last four years! I use windows only to run some SEO software! as they don't run on Linux!
 
faceblogger said:
Welcome to Linux & FOSS!
Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid is the most user friendly OS available now! (And mint too, but ubuntu community is vast so you will be able to solve the (if)problems very easily)!
CentOS is not good for desktop usage but it is good for servers - It is a typically designed for Servers and is the free edition of RedHat!
I am a Computer Engineer having a great experience with Linux systems last four years! I use windows only to run some SEO software! as they don't run on Linux!
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... its almost like cryptic spam
 
I wanted to poke into the thread to thank you guys. I'm learning at a reasonable pace. I never thought I'd find myself being a two-finger typist ever in my life -- but that's where I'm at so far, lol!
 
uplinked said:
There's sticking your toes in the water, and then there's diving into the deep end. There's no right or wrong way, just know the difference.

While I agree with the other options everyone else posted, Ubuntu will be your best bet for dipping your toes. It will not scare or bite you, it will let you start using it just like you're used to using a Mac or Windows, and slowly ease yourself into power user status.

Personally, I dove into the deepend when I was 14, wiping Windows to bootstrap Gentoo from stage 1 install. This literally means I downloaded and compiled every component, starting with the kernel, all the way up to the web browser. It took five attempts and two weeks to get it right -- two weeks I was entirely without a desktop or internet access, and had to keep running to the library to download, say, keyboard drivers onto my flash drive. I love diving into the deep end, I wouldn't have done it any other way. Puppy, Damn Small, all the tiny distros, etc, would be more like diving into the deepend.

Both ways will get you in the water, it's just a matter of the pace you want to take.
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Thats the way to do it.

One of my short term goals in the next month is to get FreeBSD running on one of my computers. Was working on putting it on a dell inspiron e1705 yesterday but got stuck on trying to get Xorg and KDE4 going. Issue with drivers I guess.

You dont learn as much when things go smoothly. You need things to get a little complicated so your forced to look deeper and understand whats going on instead of how something is supposed to work.
 
I run Fedora on nearly everything I own. I'm writing this on my Fedora 13 laptop. Wifi, sound and video all work straight out the box.
 
I also work with Linux. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is the best choice for that. This is a long term version. So you have support for a long time upto 5 years. If you are a new person to linux, Use Virtual Box to start it.
 
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blog8491 said:
I also work with Linux. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is the best choice for that. This is a long term version. So you have support for a long time upto 5 years. If you are a new person to linux, Use Virtual Box to start it.
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I actually have the netbook edition installed on an old HD of mine. I'm totally loving it and I'm almost ready to totally move my main hard drive to linux and rid myself of Windows forever.

The only issue I've been having is getting the fricken wireless card working (it's a Dell with an old 1450 broadcom adapter). Aside from that, the 'wired' internet is much slower, which I'm sure is something I need to tweak.

I know Ubuntu is just a dumbed down version for a lot of the "Linux Geeks" on here, but I find the interface and functionality quite impressive so far -- so many more easy-to-access administrative options.

Uplinked and others who said Ubuntu doesn't bite were giving good advice: As I've been looking to resolve various issues, I've stumbled on fixes for other distros that involve entering code into a command line interface -- which I'm not comfortable with just yet.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far. Anyone who is new to the game has to take notice -- fuck Windows, their price tag...and bugs!!!
 
IMHopeful said:
rid myself of Windows forever.
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This. I've been Windows-Free for almost 2 years now. It feels amazing, especially as someone who worked at MS and used to drink their kool-aid really hard. These days, the only time I touch Microsoft's shitty software is when I run a VM with Win7 in it, pretty much exclusively for Photoshop (but since I've started learning Gimp I haven't even booted this).

Re: your wifi problems -- wifi's been a trouble spot for Linux for a long time, but I feel like they "got it right" in Ubuntu 9.10, and 10.04's even better. In my opinion, even though I "lose geek points" for using the "noob distro", Ubuntu's got it's shit so together that no other distro holds a candle. 9.04 addressed most of the issues I've seen people bitch about w/r/t using linux as your desktop, 9.10 expanded driver+wireless support to a "pleasent to work with" level, and 10.04 is so polished and beautiful that even my mac-head roommate is jealous of my setup.
 
Ubuntu or Mint, as has been said already. Anything else is for server admins or tryhards wanting to feign superiority over people that use "user-friendly" distros, because accessibility is inversely proportionate to coolness for these people -- ignore them.
 
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