[GLLUG] Linux Beginner Book Quest

[Sean]

Honestly the best way to learn is to delete windows entirely from all your
systems and install your favourite Linux (personally i prefer RedHat, but
im not trying to start a war as each differen flavour of unix has its own
merits.)) If you really want to take it slow buy a Mac and run OS X (not
only will you start to learn unix but you will also start to learn
hardware too. =) ). 

The question you asked is hard to answer with a one book answer. The 
reason is that the more you learn you more you will need/want to know. 
It depends on how well YOU understand what your operating system 
does when you tell it to do something IE What is your operating system 
actually doing when you create a shortcut from a file to another spot in 
your directory tree? 


The first thing to note and this goes for any OS, don't be afraid to screw
it up, and take notes as to what you did to configure it in case you screw
up later and reinstall.  Dont expect to be a unix god overnight it is
highly complex and assumes that you know what you are doing.

As Mike already said the FreeBSD Documentation(which does have non-freebsd
intro to unix docs as well as intro to FreeBSD specific stuff.) are
actually pretty good, the Linux how-to's are pretty good, the man pages 
are good, info docs are good, the net is good. Asking the list is 
perfectly fine, but the more specific you can ask the question the more 
specific of an answer you will recieve, because chances are there are 10 
ways to do what you want to do and the best one from your perspective is 
dependent entirely on the specifics of what you are doing.. One can only 
guess the specifics if they don't have the information. 

That being said i think someone wrote an intro book called Unix for DOS 
users for dummies or something similar that was avaiable at schulers or 
barnes and nobles. 

I hope that better answers your question..

Sean 

 
 On Fri, 29 Nov 2002, Mike Szumlinski wrote:

> Yeah...windows sucks...haha....flame flame...
> 
> But seriously, the best place to pick up basic *nix knowledge is by 
> hitting google and asking it what you want to do.  Linux.org also has a 
> pretty comprehensive HOWTO section.
> 
> I myself am a Mac/FreeBSD user, so I think the FreeBSD handbook is a 
> great tool for gettin' into the *nix community.  Also, this group is 
> pretty good at following up on questions if they know the answer.  God 
> knows I've asked plenty of stupid ones over the last 3 years (has it 
> been that long?).
> 
> -Mike
> 
> On Friday, November 29, 2002, at 03:31  PM, Nu Hertz wrote:
> 
> > Hello, I'm very new to Linux, and I'd like to find a resource (book)
> > that will get everything from the GUI to the command line and teach
> > me how to use it.  I'm very familiar with DOS, and I would like to
> > learn all the capabilities that LINUX offers beyond the extensively
> > limited abilities of DOS.  I'm very computer literate, as in I assemble
> > computers in my spare time and am an avid user of Windows, but not the
> > wizards, I like all the shortcuts and such.  I would like to take some
> > time to delve into the realm of open-source software, and open-source
> > scripting languages like PHP, so this was my next step.  I took some 
> > time
> > to do a search on Amazon.com to look for a good book to use, but the
> > descriptions are not nearly sufficient, so I thought I'd turn to some
> > people with some experience in the field for help.  Thanks in advance
> > for direction you can give me.
> >
> > Jeff Kingsbury
> > Nuhertz@yahoo.com
> >
> > P.S. - I realize on the linux usergroup I've set myself up for some 
> > massive
> > flamage for mentioning windows, and I apologize.
> >
> > =====
> > "Geek used to be a four-letter word; now it's a six-figure one."
> >
> > Nuhertz@Yahoo.com
> >
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