[sclug] Crash Course

[Alex Butcher]

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004, Sandeep Varma wrote:

> To fill in a bit on how much I know, I decided to tell you all about
> my (lack of ) proficiency in Linux.
> 
> I have some command line experience, and can navigate in the file
> systems with basic commands like 'ls' and 'cd', but no more than that.

"Linux in a Nutshell" published by O'Reilly is a pretty good reference to
the command line syntax (and more).

If you're after something a bit more tutorial in nature, Try
<http://www.tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/index.html> or
<http://www.tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/index.html>.
<http://www.tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/index.html> always used to be the
canonical guide, along with <http://www.tldp.org/LDP/nag2/index.html> and
<http://www.tldp.org/LDP/gs/gs.html> (the latter is probably very dated
now).

> As you can probably guess from that, I also don't know a thing about
> compiling, let alone touching a kernel.

Probably best not to worry about that for the time being. Being able to
compile your own kernel is nowhere near as useful as it used to be, and is
actively discouraged in typical commercial usage.

> I'm very willing to learn however, and the massive time slot of the summer
> holidays should give me plenty of time to do so. Can anyone give me any
> hints/guides or point me in the direction of some on this subject?

Probably the best advice I can give is to try not to 'bottle out' and reboot
to Windows every time you need to do something you don't yet know how to do.
The best way to learn is by doing, and the best way to find things to do is
to force yourself to only use the environment you're trying to learn.

> Any replies will be very greatly appreciated. :-D

HTH,
Alex.
-- 
Alex Butcher      Brainbench MVP for Internet Security: www.brainbench.com
Bristol, UK                      Need reliable and secure network systems?
PGP/GnuPG ID:0x271fd950                         <http://www.assursys.com/>