I’m sure this has hit the forums more than once but I was really unable to find anything that was in a current forum. That is without waking the dead. Okay now to the point I have found myself glued to the forums trying to give advice but I noticed now that I have hit the student level things are getting harder to answer. I want to learn linux and I want the rooms advice on how to go about it. I have recently bought a couple books off of Amazon, one a Linux + book that seems a little dated and geared toward fedora 6(Told ya it was dated)networking + and A+ (just to be more rounded and know exactly what I’m looking at), and one that is the size of New York City’s phone book of shell programming and commands. Is this how I should be going about things is there any kind of free or low cost classes that you can attend or would the best way just to participate in the forums read through the advise and learn that way. I know its something that doesn’t happen over night but I am determined to learn.
Hi,
It obviously depends entirely on what you want to learn exactly.
In my opinion, the best way to learn about GNU/Linux, as with anything,
is by using it. You will come across problems as you try to perform new
tasks and use more hardware: for instance I recently bought a new mobile
broadband dongle, but it wasn’t recognised as a modem; therefore I had
to use usb_modeswitch and as I didn’t want to type that in every time I
plugged it in I searched online and ended up learning about udev rules.
There are many good online resources for GNU/Linux.
A good introductory guide is available here:
http://en.flossmanuals.net/CommandLineIntro/Introduction
For a more thorough guide see:
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz
The openSUSE wiki and forums are a great source of information on openSUSE.
If you want to learn Shell scripting, the only way is by using it, using
it, and using it some more; this is true of any programming language.
–
Regards,
Barry Nichols
An alias in .bashrc might have been a quicker and easier solution. I’m sure it was worth the search, though.
chief sealth <chief_sealth@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> writes:
> Barry_Nichols;2131585 Wrote:
>> Hi,I had to use usb_modeswitch and as I didn’t want to type that in
>> every time I plugged it in I searched online and ended up learning about
>> udev rules.
>
> An alias in .bashrc might have been a quicker and easier solution. I’m
> sure it was worth the search, though.
An alias wouldn’t run automatically when I plug in the usb, it would
just allow me the choice of command names to run usb_modeswitch manually.
–
Regards,
Barry Nichols
On Sat, 06 Mar 2010 02:39:01 +0000, Barry Nichols wrote:
> In my opinion, the best way to learn about GNU/Linux, as with anything,
> is by using it.
+1 - first thing I did when I started using Linux was excise Windows from
my hard drive. That made me learn Linux (I had some Solaris background
previously, and that helped) because I couldn’t fall back on using
Windows.
Jim
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Never mind. I missed that part on the first read. :shame:
My experience was somewhat similar.
When I started in 1998 with Linux my hard drive in my laptop was so small it could not contain two OS. So I would switch OFF the laptop, physically remove my MS-Windows hard drive, and put in a second Linux hard drive and switch back ON. So needless to say, booting back to MS-Windows was a pain that I was reluctant to do. Hence once I was in Linux I tended to stay in Linux. Fortunately I had some (very limited) Unix and VMS background which made the transition to Linux easier. … and it turned out my laptop was very Linux friendly, AND someone else had setup practically the same model of Laptop with Linux, and posted a great guide to it on the Internet. …
Fortune smiled on me that time.
Adding to all the good advice above.
When you want to learn and thus to play and test and get all sorts of experience with Linux, but at the same time want to use your system for ‘serious’ work take a second system if you can afford.
The second system may be hardware, dual boot, or virtual.
It makes you feel free to hose your sandbox system and still being able to get/send that important e-mail, or go to your bank account.
And once you have taken precautions not to work on your serious system, do take some chances on your play system (after reading any instructions of course). Nothing like breaking something then fixing it yourself to burn the knowledge into your brain. It’ll be a lot of fun, you can be sure of that.
You already took the largest barrier in your title: you want to learn, spend time and energy on this.
My experience is about the same: at the moment my wife and kids hadn’t touched xp for more than 2 months I replaced XP by my music collection. It took another 2 months before the family found out xp had gone…
I have a UNIX background which made ‘linux’ a lot easier, then again, I did not know scratch about X. My linux knowledged comes from experience, @ken_yap indeed breaking and fixing, understanding what was broken and how it was fixed. Learning along the way. It has not all been fun, but most of the time yes, and sometimes much bigger than fun. Anyway, I found a lot of enjoyment, and still do.
These days I would consider the communities as the largest up to date knowledge bases.
ah…its a waste of time…just stick to Windo…
nah, i was just kidding…classes are great (i guess, never been to one)
if you have a community college or voTech near by you can make a
career out of learning…
all the other advice you have received is good stuff…on Barry Nichols
mention of Rute Users Guide i wanna say SEE it…sooon…
it s also on my list of sources for self study, see my previous
posting: http://tinyurl.com/ybklh48
–
palladium
Wow, Thanks for the replies:) Thats exactly what I was wanting to know. So it seems that I am on the right track to learning a great OS. Now it’s time to get my hands dirty and expand my knowledge, by hitting the books, hitting the forums, and hitting the konsolerotfl!
visit some refernce site like w3schools etc it may help you