Linux Experten: In here please | Forums

[Pirschjaeger]

Hi guyz,

I decided to install Linux on another hardrive. I guess I need a new hobby. I really want to learn about it but have almost no experience with it. My OS is Fedora Core or RedHat 7,.....or both.

Ok, it's easy enough to play around with the programs and stuff but I need to find and install drivers, figure out how to shutdown, and just basic info to get me started.

I tried looking for sites on the net but they all contain something similar to English, but not close enough.

Is there some sort of "Linux for Dummies" website?

Don't even waste your time mentioning a good book. I live in China and it's tough to get English books here. I have to do it all by net.

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

[Pirschjaeger]

Hi guyz,

I decided to install Linux on another hardrive. I guess I need a new hobby. I really want to learn about it but have almost no experience with it. My OS is Fedora Core or RedHat 7,.....or both.

Ok, it's easy enough to play around with the programs and stuff but I need to find and install drivers, figure out how to shutdown, and just basic info to get me started.

I tried looking for sites on the net but they all contain something similar to English, but not close enough.

Is there some sort of "Linux for Dummies" website?

Don't even waste your time mentioning a good book. I live in China and it's tough to get English books here. I have to do it all by net.

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

[Pirschjaeger]

Someone stole my tinfoil hat! It's a bloody MS conspiracy I tell ya!



Everytime I try to read stuff about Linux I compare with my knowledge of Windows. This is what is confusing me.

I wish I had never used Windows in the beginning.

[rjb1fgc]

It's not the "Red Hat" flavor of Linux, but the commands from the terminal are all the same andso, other than the package management of available programs it's pretty much identical, Ubuntu Linux, that is. At www.ubuntu.com [ or another subversion from Ubuntu which is called MintLinux at www.mintlinux.com ( German, I think, but the English is readable - may have better driver support than Ubuntu )].
The worst part of using Linux in the U.S. is lack of support for hardware bought in retail stores, especially networking hardware and most especially wireless networking hardware. Better driver support for older chipsets than for the newest ones.
Another site that has useful info is the search database of Apress publishing at www.apress.com where you may also purchase electronic (PDF) copies of their publications- transactions thru "Paypal". -- "Beginning SUSE Linux" would match your "Red Hat" or "Fedora Core" distribution - there is also a "Beginning Ubuntu Linux" available - both are well written, concise, and even understandable for the "senior citizen" reader.

[Lunix]

Glad to hear your interested. Its quite the learning curve at first but since you picked up IL2 I take it thats not something that scares you.

Most drivers come pre-installed. For some its just a matter of setting them up, for others, like wireless, it can be painfull.

To shutdown just type "shutdown -h now"

The more time you spend learning the command line and config files the better off you will be. That way you can navigate most any flavour of Linux and most 'nixs. Personally I think the point and grunt interface of the modern GUI easy to learn but difficult to communicate with when you are used to a full language grammar and all.

There is wealth of information online. You can even copy and past error messages and filenames into google for help.

Have some patience, learn lots but above all have fun!

[BaldieJr]

I recommend you trash linux and buy a copy of freebsd with manual. I know, you can download it for free and all that jazz but let me tell you something the linux snobs don't want to admit: linux documentation is ****. You see, linux isn't an operating system. Its a kernel. A kernel with some stuff thrown in, and everyone who throws in the extra stuff has their own idea of what should be thrown in and how it should be configured.

You want the power of unix. You don't want a kernel with fragmented stuff. Go get FreeBSD with a manual and learn to use it. You'll be able to take your FreeBSD knowledge to any linux distro and make it work although you'll quickly wonder why on earth anyone would want to torture themselves with linux in the first place.

Save yourself a lot of headache and trash linux right now.

[NerdConnected]

Pirschjaeger,

It's quite an undertaking I'll tell ya. It took me 5 years or so to really understand Unix and know what's it all about.

rjb1fgc is a right. It's all about the shell ;-) Once you've gotten into trouble because Unbuntu/Fedora/whatever desktop doesn't do it for you, you'll have to know your way on the file system and you have to know how Unix works internally (kernel, modules, sockets, shell env. settings, shared libraries etc, etc.)

Still I recommend you to read a book ;-) Everytime you go the bathroom, read a chapter or two and after a year or so you'll have some idea what's it all about ;-) Fedora, Suse or Ubuntu are very good for office and surfing stuff, but once you need e.g. Wine or want to use new exotic hardware, you'll going to need a lot more than that.

Don't get me wrong. Linux is quite fascinating and everything you want or need can be done. You can tweak the hell out of it and adjust it completely to your needs, but I still recommend you will need to read a good Linux/Unix book first ;-)

Maybe something like this:
http://linuxcentral.com/catalog/inde..._code=B000-462

Mark

[Ugly_Kid]

Well one general place is www.linuxquestions.org
you might get help there, it has also beginners corner.

More important is to register on your distros forum though.

I am not sure that you've made the best choice with red hat (or fedora). Red hat (depending) uses older kernels and does not alway support all the fancy stuff. I had Centos shortly in the office (a red hat clone), I could not even get the bloody sound card working. Ubuntu worked straight out of the box. It would be my recommendation to a beginner (or anyone into linux).

I have had experience with SuSe, Mandrake/Mandriva, Centos, Gentoo and Ubuntu.
Whereas I positively hated SuSe, I loved Mandrake, which in the end turned out buggy. Centos is POS for home user but good for running commercial software without need to invest on Red Hat. Ubuntu is the easiest and has very large support. Gentoo is neat but once you screw up you screw up big time, since everything is compiled from source it took me about two days to have desktop up and running.

The funny part is - I am still using Gentoo and Ubuntu. Gentoo on a living room PC running mythtv and Ubuntu for my desktop. I have problems every now and then and I ask from Ubuntu forums. However, the activity is such and filled with all kind of cretins askin all kind of rubbish that your question often drops 3 pages before anyone knowing has time to answer - also irc is of no help since you can't squeeze a question in. I am an evil person so I often go to Gentoo forum and ask questions even when I want to solve an Ubuntu problem - there are almost only knowledgeable people there and when building up my media-PC I learnt a lot just right there. Mandrake had at the time also nice forum and stuff. In Linux you meet very often friendly and nice people but you need to google a lot.

[Lunix]

BaldieJr has some good points, but dont listen to those BSD snobs. FreeBSD has its place and that is the workplace IMHO, a professional mature UNIX distro. Personally I have a lot more fun playing and learning with Linux, just for access to toys.

Ugly_Kid. I have a Gentoo Myth box as well. I use Gentoo on my desktop, same install for over 4 years now.

[Aaron_GT]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">I recommend you trash linux and buy a copy of freebsd with manual. I know, you can download it for free and all that jazz but let me tell you something the linux snobs don't want to admit: linux documentation is ****. You see, linux isn't an operating system. Its a kernel. A kernel with some stuff thrown in, and everyone who throws in the extra stuff has their own idea of what should be thrown in and how it should be configured. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well you could say that about FreeBSD - a kernel and a lot of tools on top, many from GNU (compilers etc.). FreeBSD is probably better for some things, but it is easier to get support for hardware on GNU/Linux in general. BSD's fine it it is Darwin and built into OSX with its limited hardware options, though.

I'd agree with Ugly Kid - Ubuntu is a doddle to use - no worrying about root (although saying that if you are careless with who has access to sudo you can end up with the worst excesses of unrestricted admin access in Windows... so be careful), and synaptic makes software installs very easy.