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posted by janrinok on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the where-to-start dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes:

This is a question for the GNU/Linux users in the Soylent community.

Linux is being used in some areas of my company, and having knowledge of it would be beneficial to my employment. While some commands are familiar from previous dabbling with Linux (ps -ef, top, su), I never really obtained a good understanding of how to manage an installation of it on my PC. It would be really helpful to get a solid base understanding of how to manage a Linux system. My criteria for learning include understanding the directory structure and why things need to go in the places they are in. Other than purchasing a copy of Running Linux, or going through a Linux from Scratch install; what does the community think is the best way for a newbie to go from a cursory understanding of Linux to real in-depth knowledge these days (Classes, RTFM, forums)? It would be great to be have this knowledge should an opportunity present itself in the future.

Thank you for your input.

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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:21PM (#60468)

    Install RedHat 2.0 on your system. Connect to the Internet. Watch yourself speed learn as you try to patch every singe package.

    Godspeed.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Tork on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:24PM

      by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:24PM (#60511)
      "Install RedHat 2.0 on your system. Connect to the Internet. Watch yourself speed learn as you try to patch every singe package. Godspeed."

      The following is completely off-topic:

      Back in my early Slashdot days I was bombarded with "Open Source is teh AWEZOMES" and "That's the beauty of Linux, you can write your own drivers!!" and "Pftbt Windows is completely insecure, use Linux instead. It's bug free!" My company was switching some of its work over to Linux so my boss okayed a project for me to take an old machine, install Linux on it, and make it into a simple web-server. She handed me discs to a distro of Redhat (I don't remember the version but it was relatively new at the time) and I set to work. The first time I installed it one of five (?!?!) CDs had a bit error that completely borked the install. I kid you not, instead of saying "oh.. wanna put in a different copy of the disc and retry?" it said "shit, there's a problem! Well tough I'm gonna barrel on ahead!" Believe it or not it actually booted and ran.. with a blank root password. Actually it was kinda fun to mess around with, but I knew I had to start the install over.

      The next day, after starting completely over with perfectly burned discs because... lack of error checking makes for more efficient code apparently... I had a perfect install. It wasn't too difficult to get Apache going and I put up a sample page and let that run overnight. The next day I came in and found the machine had been switched off. I went to ask my boss about it and apparently somebody had taken control of it and it caused a nuisance on our network. The good news is my project was complete. The goal wasn't to be a server administrator, the goal was just to get familiar with navigating on the Linux command-line. So we just wiped the machine and I moved on back to my job. I posted about this on Slashdot a few days later. Now I don't know how many people were there around 2001, but there was a time on Slashdot where you did NOT say ANYTHING negative about Linux PERIOD. I pointed out* the five-CDs + the lack of error checking in the RedHat install, figuring most people reading it would appreciate the value of being able to weather bad media. Ha! No, I got a great little story about how great it is that we spent all that time downloading gigs of crap like Mozilla and every other Open Source app we MIGHT want down the road for a headless web-server. (Upon reflection it's possible my boss had the choice of downloading a 'light' install of RedHat. I don't know. But I can tell you that if I could, nobody on Slashdot mentioned it, and in defense of Linux that would have been a great time to deflect the blame.) Then I mentioned the rooting of the newly built webserver... Okay, I should point out here that the conversation was about how crappy running Microsoft products is, and I was posting to point out that the sun doesn't shine that much brighter on the other side of the fence, that you still have to be diligent. And you know what? Slashdot agreed with me! They said I should have been more diligent and that I should have been fired over it! It wasn't that that version of Red hat had security issues, it was all on me!

      Sorry I just wanted to rant about Slashdot and Linux zealotry in general. I don't like that I was sold on Linux being such a grand bit of work and when I had some criticism for it I was shot down. That really turned me off to trying to run Linux on the desktop at home. And here's where I'm done being off-topic and have something to contribute to this conversation. It's getting close to 15 years later, although I love to rant about it I'm no longer put off by the Slashdot/Linux Community. I still have no use for Linux on the desktop BUT I did recently get a Raspberry Pi. Basically it's a little tiny circuit board that you plug in ethernet, HDMI, KB/Mouse, and an SD card and boot into a flavor of Linux. From there you can learn how to write programs that send signals to stuff you can solder into a daugther board... like LEDs and such. It's easy to get it going but you have to root around in order to do programming for it. Even if you don't want to get into connecting stuff to it, it's it's own contained machine for ~$60 and if you get bored you can take it to work and plug it in to the alternate HDMI port on your monitor and power it via USB. It's surprisingly nifty!

      * I want to be clear that neither I nor my boss are faultless. I'd rather put this in a footnote than make this off-topic post longer. i
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:26PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:26PM (#60471)

    Thinkpads last for 5+ years. By the time they're that old they don't cost much but the hardware is so solid that you'll get good use out of it. Personally I use a 5 year old x-series I bought for about $100 (with docking station1) and have no problems with it.

    Install debian or whatever distribution you'll be using at work on a used thinkpad on it and mess around with it. When you break things, try to fix them, and reinstall if you can't fix it. Try to stick to the terminal as much as you can, don't use the GUI as a crutch.

    Read --help output and/or man pages frequently. It's always more time-consuming to fix problems that way (instead of googling the precise problem / error message), but you get a more solid base of knowledge in the end.

    Read this [wikipedia.org] for an intro to the directory structure.

    Just my $0.02

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:45PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:45PM (#60486)

      I like this idea. I have a T400 that I payed ~$90 for on eBay about 2 years ago. The thing is a tank and has pretty excellent Linux comparability. Get one, install a distro, and use it for everything.

    • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:39PM

      by Gaaark (41) on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:39PM (#60523) Journal

      mess around with it. When you break things, try to fix them, and reinstall if you can't fix it. Try to stick to the terminal as much as you can, don't use the GUI as a crutch.

      Definitely this^. Try to go it without the gui, just 'cd' around, with some cp, mv, etc. Go into config files to see what goes on there, and where it happens, etc. Broke it? Search to fix it with google, ask questions in forums.

      Just did an Arch install, and in rushing it, have borked something with the gui (slim says i cannot log into gnome shell, nor 'startx', etc. Gotta wait till i get home to fix it, sigh.

      Learn the Swedish way: bork, bork, bork! :)

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @06:15AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @06:15AM (#60740)

      googling

      You keep using that word but it doesn't mean what you think it means https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/google#Verb [wiktionary.org]

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by NCommander on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:28PM

    by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:28PM (#60472) Homepage Journal

    If you're interested in understanding the nuts and bolts of Linux, install Slackware. It's not user-friendly, but its exceedingly well documented, and if you follow the instructions, you'll find yourself with a good understanding of managing and editing config files, dealing with package management without something like APT to hold your hand, and a fairly good understanding of what goes on the low level.

    Its also a stable release which is invaluable when learning vs. the rolling releases of Gentoo or Arch. If you want something more UNIX, the BSDs (Free and Net) have excellent documentation, with the caveat that there are considerable differences between BSD and Linux in the userland (i.e., flags to ps or ls).

    If you just want to use Linux, without going low low level, just grab an Ubuntu live image, and run with it. If you can use Windows or Mac OS X, you can use Ubuntu without too much problem.

    --
    Still always moving
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:37PM

      by frojack (1554) on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:37PM (#60522) Journal

      I wouldn't recommend a newbie install Slack. Doing so pretty much assures they will never become an "oldbie".

      Do any competent distro. Use any old machine. Don't even think about "patching any programs", just install, set up, run for a while, add software, set up a web server following the readme's that exist everywhere.

      Then: (Most important part) Rinse, and Repeat. Nuke it, and start again on a different Distro. It will be easier the second time around, (even when all the management tools are different) and the third, and fourth. Do one form of 'buntu, then a Redhat, then an Opensuse, then maybe one of the Gentoo clones. Finally, maybe Slackware, or OpenBSD.

      The main point: Don't get too committed to any particular distro too soon.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 1) by turgid on Thursday June 26 2014, @09:47PM

        by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 26 2014, @09:47PM (#60586) Journal

        I wouldn't recommend a newbie install Slack. Doing so pretty much assures they will never become an "oldbie".

        I would.

        Slackware was the first Linux I ever installed, back in 1995, and I managed to get the X server running by reading the documentation. I bought a "Que Special Edition Using Linux" book that came with Slackware.

        I've been using Slackware at home ever since. I'm currently on Slackware64-14.1.

        Over the years, at work, I've used Debian, RedHat/CentOS, Ubuntu, WindRiver, Arago and Mint. Slackware is still the best. It's simple, clean, understandable and it works. It's dead easy to configure. You don't need any silly GUI tools since everything's still there in the right place in text files in /etc.

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:08PM

          by frojack (1554) on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:08PM (#60605) Journal

          In 1995, you had very little other choice, and nobody was much further ahead of Slack in the gui world in those days. People were also use do doing everything at the command line, (even Windows 3.1 users dropped to a dos box to do any serious work back then). Ncurses interface seemed high tech in those days.

          Newbies today are approaching things from a different angle. If they leave the graphical world for text only, they are just as likely to throw up their hands in despair and reboot windows and stomp off muttering about linux on the desktop.

          The problem with starting with slack or *BSD as I see it is it is equivalent to jumping off a boat ten miles from shore to learn to swim, on the vague promise that there will be girls and barbecues on the beach.
          Its doing all the work toward something you've never even seen yet. Too many just give up.

          Perhaps the best advice is a mentor, someone to show you the ropes, explain some things, and most of all teach you how to read and research the directions, readmes, man pages, and howtos.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
          • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:25PM

            by DECbot (832) on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:25PM (#60618) Journal

            ...jumping off a boat ten miles from shore to learn to swim, on the vague promise that there will be girls and barbecues on the beach.

             
            Could you direct me to this boat? I feel like I need to relearn how to swim.

            --
            cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
        • (Score: 1) by khedoros on Friday June 27 2014, @12:45AM

          by khedoros (2921) on Friday June 27 2014, @12:45AM (#60664)
          I've got to agree. Slackware was the 3rd distribution that I tried (after Redhat and Mandrake), and it was the first one I was happy with. Many distros, in an attempt to be user friendly, configure a lot of things *for* you. When you're learning how the system works, that's not necessarily what you want. Slackware tends towards requiring manual configuration of software. I've mostly moved on from that (wanting to manually configure everything), and I haven't used Slackware in years, but it's certainly a stable, no-frills kind of system where it's easy to configure things how you want without a lot of automation getting in the way. The learning curve is pretty tough, but if you put in the work, it's an excellent way to see how a kind of classic, baseline Linux distro works.
        • (Score: 1) by eliphas_levy on Saturday June 28 2014, @01:06AM

          by eliphas_levy (1523) on Saturday June 28 2014, @01:06AM (#61200) Homepage

          Cannot me-too this too much. Yes, slack. From a guy that is using w7 and mint today, but cannot be thankful enough to Patrick to make me know what Linux is in the background.
          Now I can fix ANY borked install or at least pinpoint the thing that got wrong in no time.
          Thank you Volkerding. You deserve being the first guess on google when looking up your last name.

          --
          This is a sigh.
    • (Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday June 26 2014, @11:15PM

      by Marand (1081) on Thursday June 26 2014, @11:15PM (#60635) Journal

      If you're interested in understanding the nuts and bolts of Linux, install Slackware. It's not user-friendly, but its exceedingly well documented, and if you follow the instructions, you'll find yourself with a good understanding of managing and editing config files, dealing with package management without something like APT to hold your hand, and a fairly good understanding of what goes on the low level.

      Sorry, but I have to disagree with that as a starting point for anybody. Getting someone engaged with a task works better if there's some sort of incentive or reward in place; this is why interpreted languages work well for teaching beginners, for example, because they can toss out a single line of code and see the results immediately without dealing with boilerplate and compilation.

      In the case of learning an OS, I believe the best route is similar: start the person with something easy and give them a chance to learn some basics, and get a feel for why they would want to understand more. Once that's happened, then you offer a more advanced path, because the person now has a reason to want to follow that path. Otherwise you're just throwing all the frustration at them without even dangling a decent carrot with it.

      It also helps to have some rudimentary knowledge of the system before trying to do something advanced. Let's use your own example of managing and editing config files, here. If something goes wrong with, say, X, you'll find yourself at a console login. What now? You need to understand 1. how to interact with the shell, 2. where to find things like logs and config files, 3. what text editors are available and how to use them.

      Learning an OS is like learning anything else: you need to learn how to use the basic tools before you can use them for more complicated tasks.

      What worked for me was a three-step process:
      1) Started with shell and GUI access to a Linux system at a job. Seemed interesting, asked about it.
      2) Admin hooked me up with a (relatively) easy-to-install distro. Got it going without a lot of work, spent some time with it. Liked Linux but wanted more experience and flexibility.
      3) Attempted to install the more advanced distro. Failed horribly, started over, failed again, kept at it until I got a working install. Learned a lot in the process, but I likely wouldn't have persevered if I didn't already have some understanding of the filesystem and shell from #1 and #2

      Now, in my case, this was in the '90s so the specific distros* I used don't particularly matter. These days, I'd say start with an Ubuntu or Mint install, since they're fairly hands-off and generally "just work" to begin. This should result in a mostly usable system, maybe with some piece of hardware here or there that doesn't work right out-of-the-box. Those bits of hardware will be the first project, with the newbie learning how to poke around the filesystem and figure out what's wrong and how to fix it. Searching online to find solutions, etc. Smaller problems with accessible rewards and a chance to become acclimated to the new thing before tackling the big stuff.

      After they get a feel for the system, learn the tools a bit, they can move to something more advanced. Even Debian, which has gotten rather easy to install, will still have room to learn new things if they get the net-install image and then do an advanced install. You can get a barebones system that just boots to console that way; going from that to a working, proper desktop is still a learning experience for a newbie. (Plus, if you're a masochist you can use dselect for a bit. All the package management frustration you could ever ask for while learning!)

      Then, if there's still a desire to learn even more, the person can go even further, maybe into the bowels of gentoo or that linux-from-scratch thing.

      ---

      * For the curious, the starter distro for me was RedHat, which installed easily but quickly turned into dependency hell, and then I moved to Debian, which was a fairly advanced installation at the time. You had to know what kernel modules you wanted, and package management was done entirely by dselect at the time. APT wasn't a thing and the kernel didn't autoload modules. I probably blew up the install a dozen times before I got a working system, but I got really good at reinstalling it by the end.

    • (Score: 1) by chewbacon on Friday June 27 2014, @12:41AM

      by chewbacon (1032) on Friday June 27 2014, @12:41AM (#60661)

      What about gentoo? Build the environment, kernel, and all packages yourself.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by metamonkey on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:32PM

    by metamonkey (3174) on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:32PM (#60473)

    Trial and error plus google. You need to install linux on a computer and start trying to make everything work. Don't use one of the "easy" distros like Ubuntu. Pick something like Debian or OpenSUSE. Once you've got it installed, start setting up services. Get BIND working and make a caching nameserver. Get Apache up and running and mysql. Get every peripheral on your machine working so you learn about drivers. Compile a custom kernel.

    During each task, you will run into problems. Google around for solutions. As you do this and solve problems one by one, you will "learn Linux." Good luck.

    --
    Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @09:39PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @09:39PM (#60581)

      Compile a custom kernel.

      top lel

  • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:34PM

    by DECbot (832) on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:34PM (#60477) Journal

    Put a popular sounding distro on your primary laptop and use it for email and web. No dual boots! If you make it too easy to go back, you likely will. There's no need to browse the web, chat, and check email on a Windows machine. Then set up a samba server as a network file server. If you're fancy, have it run a DHCP server and DNS server as well. Keep a desktop for games/windows only apps until you're ready to wipe that and attempt to run it all through wine or a virtual machine. The big this is to make the computer you touch the most run linux, as that is the way to get the quickest exposure.

    As for desktop environments, do yourself a favor and start with something XP'ish, like XFCE or Gnome2. Diving strait into Gnome3 or Unity could be repulsive (just like Windows 8). I have no comment about KDE as I haven't tried it since ~2006.

    --
    cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
    • (Score: 2) by meisterister on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:53PM

      by meisterister (949) on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:53PM (#60530) Journal

      Would anyone mind if I recommended Linux Mint (MATE, not Cinnamon) based on this? The UI is pretty familiar for Windows users, and it has the advantage of being based off of Ubuntu, which has quite a bit 3rd party support.

      --
      (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:17PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:17PM (#60611)

        I would endorse MATE. It is basic but pretty robust and you are right it is familiar.

        The trick is to make sure they know they are running MATE and that they know about the existence of other desktop environments so that when they go googling to learn more about stuff and find recommendations for mint that assume cinnamon they aren't confused.

      • (Score: 2) by Marand on Friday June 27 2014, @04:34AM

        by Marand (1081) on Friday June 27 2014, @04:34AM (#60719) Journal

        I'd actually suggest using KDE before MATE or Cinnamon. By default it should be quite familiar to someone coming from Windows, but it is also extremely customisable. This has two advantages, in my opinion: one, it reaffirms the idea that the user is in control, by encouraging adjusting the environment to the user instead of vice-versa, which I think leads naturally into more in-depth tweaking of the system; two, it helps the user build a comfortable environment and avoid surprises. If you don't like how something in KDE acts, you can almost always tweak it, though a few things need a trip to Google to find how.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:34PM (#60478)

    Have a project goal, such as running a cloud server or FreeNAS and build it. Get a RPi, it is cheap, destroy and rebuild the OS for fun.

    If you go with a home project, a passion and have a goal, you will learn really quickly. I have never bought a book, the man commands have it all, and so do user groups.

    Another passion is saving money you will find hard drives are cheap, bandwidth is internal to the home...

    welcome and enjoy!

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:35PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:35PM (#60479)

    Learn to use a search engine effectively.
    (intitle: inurl: filetype: Boolean NOT)

    If you run your GUI executable in a terminal, any error messages won't vanish when the app terminates.
    Plug that directly into the search engine and BINGO.

    Best text on the Net:
    The Linux Documentation Project
    http://www.tldp.org/ [tldp.org]
    The Arch Wiki
    https://wiki.archlinux.org/ [archlinux.org]

    Welcome to the brotherhood. Leave your chains at the door.

    -- gewg_

    • (Score: 2) by DrMag on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:13PM

      by DrMag (1860) on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:13PM (#60503)

      Since you mentioned the Arch Wiki, I'll throw out the suggestion to start off with Arch. It's a little more work to install than some "newbie-friendly" distros, but the instructions are easy to follow, and unless you have uncommon hardware, you'll get through the initial installation without trouble. I suggest it specifically because its installation procedure is clear step-by-step and uses the command line, file manipulation, and so on to set it up. Which means you get grease on your hands, and you have a document you can take notes on (electronically or physically, if you want). When you're done, go to the Arch forums and ask the questions that came up--"Why do I do this? What exactly does this file do?" The Arch forums are a great place to ask questions and rarely will you get anything but respectful help from those who are there.

      Whatever distribution you choose, asking questions will be the single-most useful way to learn.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @01:12AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @01:12AM (#60679)

      I'd agree with Arch also. I installed Arch as a newbie and - while there was some pain at first - there was a lot of learning really fast, and the wiki can answer just about any question you have.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:35PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:35PM (#60480)

    If all you need is familiarity with the userland why things are the way they are, just install it. Put it on your laptop and use it as your daily driver.
    Without getting in to a distro politics war, I'd suggest installing some variant of Ubuntu. You can easily Google the solution to any problem you have. Once you've gotten yourself comfortable there, try doing something more like a LFS or Arch install in a VM. It's not too difficult, and it'll teach a bit more of the stuff that lies just under the surface. Find out what distro your company is using, and then focus on running that as you daily driver to get used to the package management system.

    I've seen https://linuxacademy.com/ [linuxacademy.com] advertised, but I'm not sure how well it works. I think it's supposed to be pretty cheap and gives you access to a VPS to do all the practice work.

    • (Score: 2) by mrider on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:24PM

      by mrider (3252) on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:24PM (#60617)

      Not sure why this doesn't have some mod points (none to give ATM). This right here. Install a distro - any distro - and use it as your only O.S. Dabbling helps, but immersion is what really teaches.

      --

      Doctor: "Do you hear voices?"

      Me: "Only when my bluetooth is charged."

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khedoros on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:37PM

    by khedoros (2921) on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:37PM (#60481)
    Honestly, I'm not sure about the best way to learn Linux. I started with a "Linux for Dummies" book in about 2002, which got me to a bare-minimum basic level, then ran a Slackware install on my laptop for a couple of years. I tried to run it as a bleeding-edge distro, which meant a whole lot of downloading source, building libraries and programs by hand, and overall learning what "dependency hell" means.

    I think if you're going to learn completely on your own, the best thing to do is to use the system for what you want to do. When you run into problems, research the solutions one at a time. You mentioned the directory structure as something that you don't really know. That information [tecmint.com] isn't hard to find, and there are a number of pages that will explain the general purpose of each directory.

    If you'd like a more structured route, various sites [edx.org] provide different tutorials and classes [linuxfoundation.org] that should give you a grounding in using Linux. As a bonus, a lot of the same techniques will apply to other Unix-like OSes as well, and you just have to learn the package manager and (sometimes minor) differences in how to administrate the system.
  • (Score: 1) by crAckZ on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:46PM

    by crAckZ (3501) on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:46PM (#60487) Journal

    With a dual boot. If I broke it to bad I would boot Windows and Google it. I read all I could and hit linuxquestions.org a lot. I say get a friendly distribution so you can see the friendly side of it and you will still be able to use the terminal and commands. I am not a fan of the sink or swim mind set.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @12:11AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @12:11AM (#60652)

      If I broke it [too] bad I would boot Windows and Google

      It should be noted that as soon as you have a bootable CD|DVD|thumbdrive for a non-EULAware OS, the need to ever run the OS with notoriously poor security goes away.[1]

      If you have a problem with the Linux install on your HDD, booting to the plastic disc|dongle which contains the ISO that you used to install Linux, you can get a point&click Linux desktop and get online.

      There's also a fromiso boot option.
      Taking that 1 step further, there's frugal install. [google.com]

      People who have used EULAware for a long time can get into narrow thinking patterns because of proprietary license restrictions.
      Don't get trapped there. FOSS is a wide world of possibilities.

      .
      [1] This assumes that you haven't locked yourself into any single-platform apps.

      -- gewg_

      • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday June 27 2014, @05:16AM

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday June 27 2014, @05:16AM (#60726) Homepage

        > [1] This assumes that you haven't locked yourself into any single-platform apps.

        Dude, that's the only reason why people dual-boot Windows with anything else in the first place. Any modern game, for starters. Visual Studio. Cubase VST. Audacity and Ardour fucking suck. Microsoft Paint, a program so usefully simple that all the aspies who develop alternatives for *NIX just don't "get" usability and have made their version as much of a cryptically-understood counterintuitive pain in the ass as possible. You show me an alternative that is as simple as Paint without all that weird splined-curve vector-graphic bullshit and I'll eat it up. I just want to draw a fucking line, can you throw me a bone here?

        Not to mention that many of the benefits that work for Windows also work against it: Piracy, for example. Expensive software like Maple which is available for Windows and *Nix installs much more readily on a Windows box, and when people need their shit to just work without having to spend the money, they reach for Windows.

        That's not saying that *Nix hasn't made its strides...back when I first got into Linux I was manually editing config files and other apocrypha. Linux, now, Just Works(TM). But now, it has to attract talented developers and get the blessing of proprietary vendors willing to open up their technologies as a business model, as well as hire non-aspies who utilize common sense in the design and implementation*.

        *Not like Ubuntu, which like Slashdot in its quest for greed is rapidly alienating its core community

  • (Score: 2) by Open4D on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:48PM

    by Open4D (371) on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:48PM (#60489) Journal

    I recently came across the LINFO website, and was fairly impressed - despite its age.

    I'm not in a position to recommend a whole learning path, but I'm interested in whether anyone else thinks LINFO would be a useful part of a good learning path.

    For example, "understanding the directory structure and why things need to go in the places they are in" would be dealt with by http://www.linfo.org/file_index.html [linfo.org] and by the pages it links to.

  • (Score: 1) by wankdanker on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:00PM

    by wankdanker (3846) on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:00PM (#60495)

    When I first started with Linux, I was not willing to commit until I knew it would work with my hardware. So, I used Knoppix on my HP laptop. Since Knoppix is a live environment and I didn't know how to save my settings, every time I rebooted I had to re-do things like mounting the windows file system and manually configure my wireless card.

    This turned out to be a real blessing because it forced me to memorize and repeatedly use commands. If I forgot an argument for a command, I eventually learned that I could use `man` to figure it out. One by one I added new commands and tools to my arsenal.

    I would recommend this method to any noob who is dedicated to making it work.

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:00PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:00PM (#60496)

    1 - Find a brick wall.
    2 - Stand in front of the wall.
    3 - Slam your head against the wall for several hours.

    You are now prepared to learn Linux.

    • (Score: 2) by tynin on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:49PM

      by tynin (2013) on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:49PM (#60528) Journal

      This very much reminds me of the days of RPM dependency hell. Where you'd have a long chain of dependencies, with several of the dependencies having more dependencies, and some of the dependencies need specific version of libfoo 1.1, but another dependency would need libfoo 1.2, which couldn't be installed with libfoo 1.1. It was positively maddening.

      The creators of APT and YUM both serve to have free beer for life.

      • (Score: 2) by tynin on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:58PM

        by tynin (2013) on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:58PM (#60533) Journal

        Doh, I meant, "The creators of APT and YUM both deserve to have free beer for life". They have already served well enough.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @09:06PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @09:06PM (#60565)

        I once spent a week (well 4.5 days, Mon-Fri morning) going through this exercise trying to bring up a server + database + web server + stuff for a client. He specced some weird software combinations (I got the feeling it was his teenage son's idea of a great web server) and it just would not compile together. The last straw was a dialog box stating "Version mismatch - " with no info on what mismatched which.

        I recommended Windows Server + SQL Server + IIS and had it up and running by Fri afternoon.

        I am currently running several Linux boxes (Mint XFCE and Mate, Xubuntu) and there's no comparison to those days ~14 years ago. However, the Xubuntu updates failed this a.m. ... Hmmm...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @09:09PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @09:09PM (#60569)

      Considering the OS he is coming from I am sure this has been done already.

  • (Score: 1) by koreanbabykilla on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:02PM

    by koreanbabykilla (968) on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:02PM (#60497)

    http://tldp.org/ [tldp.org]
    Get slackware, gentoo or arch. they are all great and all suck in different ways, but running any of them will make you learn linux.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:13PM

    by Sir Garlon (1264) on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:13PM (#60505)

    No, I'm not trolling. Many years ago I needed to learn Unix fast when I got to graduate school (in undergrad I used VMS, just to give you an idea *how* long ago this was!). Unix for Dummies had the best introduction to Unix that I've seen, before or since. It explained the Unix Way of doing things: very basic concepts like what processes and pipes are, the Unix Philosophy of utilities (do one thing and do it well), file permissions, why the command line is your friend, and the very sound reasons why Unix relies so heavily on text-based configuration files.

    --
    [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:19PM (#60508)

    https://www.lpi.org/linux-certifications/programs/lpic-1 [lpi.org]

    Get videos, books what ever and start working towards the LPIC certification. You learn the basics and get a shiny piece of paper.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by tynin on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:26PM

    by tynin (2013) on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:26PM (#60513) Journal

    Whatever Linux OS they run at work on the servers should be the flavor you want to get familiar with. While it can be good to have wide exposure, you won't be doing yourself any favors in the short term running a Debian OS if your company uses Redhat or BSD OSs. You'll want to also learn about the shell they run as default. Most shops I've worked at use bash, which I'm most comfortable, but I've seen ksh, zsh, and tsch make the rounds. Each one will have quirks that if you aren't familiar with, will likely plague you if you don't realize it is the shell interpreting something in some way you might not expect.

    For the filesystem layout, read:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard [wikipedia.org]

    For a little bit of everything:
    http://www.tldp.org/index.html [tldp.org]

    For questions you have on how to accomplish X, I frequently check:
    http://www.commandlinefu.com/ [commandlinefu.com]

    However, some people are more visual learners, and to that end, I would suggest checking out the following site. It plays back shell/terminal sessions that were recorded to allow for you to see what was done, and potentially why. Sometimes seeing it done once makes a huge difference to understanding:
    http://playterm.org/ [playterm.org]

    As an aside, back when I was still wet behind the ears, learning what pipes were blew me away. It was such an AH HA! moment when I realized that the Linux philosophy was to have little programs that solved one problem very well, and to string them together to make something greater than the sum of its parts.

    Good luck!

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday June 26 2014, @08:57PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday June 26 2014, @08:57PM (#60559)

      We had Fedora on the workstations at my one job. Got me a heck of a jumpstart on fundamental command line stuff and stumbled my way into some basic bash fluency.

      Most of the team used vi, but other than that they were good people ;-)

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:30PM (#60515)

    It will fortify your resolve to learn. https://gnu.org/philosophy/ [gnu.org]

  • (Score: 2) by Ken_g6 on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:30PM

    by Ken_g6 (3706) on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:30PM (#60517)

    For a long time I wasn't willing to make Linux my primary OS. But it has so many useful commands I didn't want to completely eschew it either.

    I found that Cygwin [cygwin.com] could be the best of both worlds. You get all the power of Linux's most used commands and software, with the familiar interface of Windows. It could also be the worst of both worlds: You don't get a package manager other than Cygwin, and installing other software generally requires compiling it and its dependencies. Plus if you want to distribute compiled software you need to include one or more DLLs.

    To learn with it, I suggest installing it and replacing all your batch files with BASH scripts.

    • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday June 26 2014, @11:49PM

      by Snotnose (1623) on Thursday June 26 2014, @11:49PM (#60644)

      Seconded. For years I had dual boot machines, once I discovered Cygwin I had a new computer with a Linux partition I'd put RedHat onto Real Soon Now. Never did. My current lappie is a dual boot as I had a contract to write a Linux device driver, but now that that job is done I never boot Linux. On the other hand, I've always got a Cygwin terminal open and it's my second most used window, Chrome is first.

      I learned Unix back in the early 80s, my goto book was Kernigan and Pike's The Unix Programming Environment. Great book, but probably hopelessly outdated by now.

      --
      Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
  • (Score: 1) by morpheus on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:36PM

    by morpheus (1989) on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:36PM (#60521)

    You are already well on your way, after all you are calling it GNU/Linux!
    on a more serious note, trying to play with a small system like OpenWRT on a router will
    teach you a lot of interesting details about administering Linux. The lack of GUI `crutch' will go a long way to instill the right attitude (although it can be painful at first).

    Puppy is nice in that it runs off a USB stick and is reasonably small. Like someone mentioned above, there is no `best' way but this is one way I personally liked.

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:45PM

      by frojack (1554) on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:45PM (#60525) Journal

      You are already well on your way, after all you are calling it GNU/Linux!

      Seriously? That's your take on things?

      That seems to me to be the LEAST useful tidbit of advice in the whole thread. Like saying you couldn't enjoy or learn about fishing unless you knew the Latin genus and species names for all the fish.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by pbnjoe on Thursday June 26 2014, @09:47PM

        by pbnjoe (313) on Thursday June 26 2014, @09:47PM (#60585) Journal

        Immediately after what you quoted:

        on a more serious note

        He's making a joke :)

      • (Score: 1) by morpheus on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:43PM

        by morpheus (1989) on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:43PM (#60625)

        I was indeed, joking as somebody pointed out. On the other hand, it shows that this person at least put some effort into learning the culture (if not the culture wars) surrounding Linux. One can certainly learn to use and administer Linux without caring about its roots and philosophy but depth counts ... . I hope the second half of my advice has at least some merit :).

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday June 27 2014, @01:35AM

          by frojack (1554) on Friday June 27 2014, @01:35AM (#60684) Journal

          Sorry, my humor detector not running this morning. I blame SystemD...

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @12:48AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @12:48AM (#60667)

      On the one hand, Puppy is under 150MB as a download and it will work with really ancient hardware.

      One the other hand, on a box with Puppy, EVERYONE USES THE SAME ACCOUNT.[1]
      If you are installing on a system where you are the sole user and that system never leaves your line of sight, Puppy might be a good choice.
      If you are going to share the box with a spouse, child, or house guest, maybe not so ideal.
      Puppy is NOT an exemplar of how to do things for someone wanting to learn details.

      .
      [1] This is often referred to as "running as root"--but that "root" account does -not- come with automatic root privileges.

      -- gewg_

      • (Score: 1) by morpheus on Saturday June 28 2014, @03:11AM

        by morpheus (1989) on Saturday June 28 2014, @03:11AM (#61237)

        I completely agree about Puppy: it is not a system a serious Linux user would like to use. But ... this said, it is small, easy to play with, simple and mostly painless to install. As far as Linux administration goes, OpenWRT will teach someone a lot more. I guess RPi is similar but I only use it for controlling hardware and have not really looked into using it as a Linux server.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:47PM (#60527)

    If you did learn how to manage Linux on a PC, they'll just change everything. I used to know Linux inside and out, but Linux is like rearranging the furniture in a blind man's house these days. I just learn exactly what I need to know when I need to know it. I've used Red Hat/Fedora since the mid 90s, and use it for software development, but have largely given up on system administration because there is so much gratuitous change. Every time I have to install Fedora, they've rewritten the install process, changed the boot process, broken the graphics support even more, changed the partition scheme, changed the default file system, and so on. Yuck.

    • (Score: 2) by meisterister on Thursday June 26 2014, @08:12PM

      by meisterister (949) on Thursday June 26 2014, @08:12PM (#60539) Journal

      (Points to Windows and coughs loudly)

      --
      (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
  • (Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:52PM

    by umafuckitt (20) on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:52PM (#60529)

    You say a little about what you want to learn, but what do you actually want to do with it? Do you want to try it out as a replacement for Windows? If so, just install SuSE, Mint, or Ubuntu and just get going trying to *use* it. Google when stuck. That's it, really. If you don't find yourself ever needing to know what's in, say, /etc/ then why bother (unless you just want to bother)?

  • (Score: 1) by hogger on Thursday June 26 2014, @08:34PM

    by hogger (1090) on Thursday June 26 2014, @08:34PM (#60547)

    In my experience teaching kids and minions to use Linux, it's much easier to learn if you've got an actual project. Exercises are not projects. Come up with something you want to do with linux, and then keep chugging away until it's done. Webserver, mail server, if you're a programmer - create the environment that will run some program that you will write.

    I usually recommend using a Debian-based distro, usually Debian. No sense making things too much harder than is needed, but you also don't want things to be 100% point and click. I'd recommend an initial Debian install that is non-graphical. Don't install a window manager. Then, install it from the command line afterwards. You'll learn a lot during that whole process that you wouldn't learn if you just installed from a Live CD, waited a few minutes, and then viola - you're in a shiny new maybe-perfectly-working Linux GUI.

    Now that I think about it, I'd recommend installing it in a VM first. Download VirtualBox, install it in Windows, then proceed with getting text-only Debian up and going in a VM. Then SSH into it, proceed with getting a window manager installed and working. That way you'll have your windows web browser handy for googling on how to do things, and you can copy/paste from various script commands if needed.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @12:56AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @12:56AM (#60671)

      I'd recommend installing [Linux] in a VM first

      That's doing it backwards.
      Having your outward-facing wall made of swiss cheese and eggshells is the wrong approach.

      -- gewg_

    • (Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Friday June 27 2014, @04:27PM

      by egcagrac0 (2705) on Friday June 27 2014, @04:27PM (#60925)

      Then, install it from the command line afterwards. You'll learn a lot during that whole process that you wouldn't learn if you just installed from a Live CD, waited a few minutes, and then viola - you're in a shiny new maybe-perfectly-working Linux GUI.

      Unfortunately, with a simple installation like "apt-get install xfce4", there isn't a whole lot to learn one way vs the other. Apt does a lot of the magic and dependency sorting-out.

      Also not sure why you'd SSH into a VM running on your own desktop; there ought to be a virtual console tool - if not, it's time to look at VMWare Player (free as in beer). There should be no need to launch putty to connect to a machine that's running on the same processor.

      • (Score: 1) by hogger on Monday June 30 2014, @12:40AM

        by hogger (1090) on Monday June 30 2014, @12:40AM (#61759)

        Good point about sshing into VM. I do it all the time, but it's mainly because I want to keep the VM as a small server-in-a-window, and I usually have several terminals open on various screens of my native OS.

        You're probably right about the ease of installing xfce4 too. It's pretty much that easy.

        A lot of learning Linux is learning to use the CLI tools - vi, head, tail, grep, sed, cat, etc... It's hard to get really good at those things without a reason to use them. I stand by my original premise - find an actual project/problem that can be solved in Linux, and stick with it until it's solved. Then find another one that's more complex, and so on.

        • (Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Monday June 30 2014, @04:16PM

          by egcagrac0 (2705) on Monday June 30 2014, @04:16PM (#62004)

          I haven't found a terminal software that I like in Windows, but I have to run that as the base OS for job. When I need to SSH into anywhere, I open a Linux VM and use that. You're certainly welcome to your own opinion on that.

          Otherwise, yes. Figure out how to solve the problem with one set of tools, then another, then another. Don't get stuck thinking of everything as a nail when you've got a perfectly good wrench for pounding the screws in.

  • (Score: 2) by gallondr00nk on Thursday June 26 2014, @08:35PM

    by gallondr00nk (392) on Thursday June 26 2014, @08:35PM (#60548)

    Up until a couple of years ago, I was pretty apathetic about *nix. I had a Arch SSH box, but that was about it. Linux running friends would occasionally take an old laptop of mine and stick one of the friendlier distros on it, but as much as I wanted to use it I could never get away from thinking that I could make Windows XP rigs that were faster. Since I hang onto and use decrepid hardware until it's absolutely broken, performance is vital.

    Then I was gifted a X40 ThinkPad, running Arch. It ran faster than anything I could put together with XP, using a CF card as the hard drive and a very minimal openbox config. After that I was hooked, and started learning Arch, and now FreeBSD. I finally understood why people were so enthusiastic, and could see the benefit.

    It might not be easy, but skip Ubuntu and clunky window managers unless you really have the horsepower for them. The thing that grabbed me was realising it could do everything *better*, and until I saw a machine where that was demonstrable I simply couldn't sustain the interest.

  • (Score: 2) by lgsoynews on Thursday June 26 2014, @08:50PM

    by lgsoynews (1235) on Thursday June 26 2014, @08:50PM (#60557)

    Start small. From the GUI and move to the command-line. Don't try the hardest stuff right away, it is very discouraging. DON'T do a dual-boot for your first-times, wait until you are more experienced. It's easy to kill your windows partition, espceially with the UEFI issues.

    - Install a Virtual Machine like VMWare or VirtualBox. Then install a distro. For a beginning choose something easy to install: Ubuntu-based (avoid the normal Ubuntu it is annoying in virtual machines), ex: Lubuntu, XUbuntu, or a Mint flavor (see http://distrowatch.com/ [distrowatch.com] for an easy way to download all that stuff). The VM tool allows you to install from a CD or DVD ISO, so it's easy.

    Use save-points: with a VM, even if you break everything, you can go back, or re-install.

    When you install, don't try to use encryption, or to partition. Let those for when you have a better understanding of the beast. Just go next, next, next, use the defaults.

    - Once installed, get a good feeling of the UI. Your objective is to learn the command-line, but starting from the UI makes it much less painful... Look a bit around the menus, get an idea of the customizations, change the settings, etc. This should be easy.

    - Learn how to use the package manager GUI. Learn about its concepts (there exist several flavors according to your distro). This is one of the biggest -visible- differences with Windows.

    - Look a bit at the programs (packages) that you can install (programming, drawing, office, accessories, etc). Don't feel overwhelmed :-) Use the simplified program installer if it's available: it's a simplified tool that offers a curated list of the most common tools.

    - Now, you can start looking what happens in a CONSOLE (there is always one installed with your distro), that is the shell (ls, rm , mv, grep, all that). You can start learning the basics, search for "linux administration" & "UNIX basics". Unfortunately I don't have a specific book or site to recommend, because to me it's old stuff. But I've made a quick search, you should find the basics quite easily.

    - Learn about the "pipe |" and the redirections (> and <), these are vital.

    - Use the system to program, play, browse the web, etc, USE IT. Soon, you'll come to see that many things can be done much more easily with the command line. From there you can grow.

    - Once you have learned the basics of the shell, learn about partitioning, the various filesystems, how the /etc is used, how programs are started. Look at the processes running (ps -auxf) on your machine and search them, try to understand what's going on.

    - Try to do things like writing scripts in python, compiling a program from the sources (THAT one will be educative). You'll soon learn that you must install new packages, and their dependencies. The more things you try, the more questions/problems you'll encounter, so just use it.

    - Find a REAL USE for your work, to give you an incentive to use it. For instance, in one of my last contract we were allowed to use a Linux box alongside the Windows one. Myself, I use the command-line a lot, so I accessed my projects from it and did many useful things that can't be easily done on Windows (even with Cygwin or the new Windows Shell) without wtiting a specific program. Stuff like find specific files by extensions on some date then grep this AND that. Basically several lines of complex commands with pipes. Meanwhile the colleagues that did not use Linux where unable to do such stuff and spent a lot of time searching in a huge codebase; some people refuse to use the command-line even with the "DOS cmd" under Windows, their loss.

    - PERSIST. It's a long way. I think it's possible to get a reasonable grasp in a few months, but it will of course be far from expertise. I've been using Linux since 1995, and I still don't know/understand many things, it's a never-ending voyage, and of course Linux keep changing, just don't get discouraged!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:53PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:53PM (#60629)

    instead of simply "use", but really _learn_, and you are willing to read, search, and understand, then find yourself an old PC/laptop somewhere and install Slackware.

    You'll truly _learn_ (provided you are willing to read and understand).

    If you go most any other direction, i.e., if you install Ubuntu, all you will learn is "Ubuntu". If you truly want to learn Linux and the Unix way and why, go with Slackware.

    But, be warned, you will have a lot of reading, and a lot of google searching, ahead on your path to truly _learning_.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Jaruzel on Friday June 27 2014, @09:51AM

    by Jaruzel (812) on Friday June 27 2014, @09:51AM (#60786) Homepage Journal

    I notice no-ones picked up on the OPs reference to Linux from Scratch. Being a completest kind of guy, I said to my self a while back 'well, if I'm going to learn Linux, I'm gonna go balls out and do it properly', and promptly started working through the LfS tutorial... Several hours later I was still FAR from being able to boot my own personal distro, and I realised that I just didn't have the spare 100s of hours LfS requires to complete. :(

    A shame really, as I WAS learning stuff, it just takes SO damn long if you do it the LfS way...

    -Jar

    --
    This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
    • (Score: 1) by karmawhore on Friday June 27 2014, @01:33PM

      by karmawhore (1635) on Friday June 27 2014, @01:33PM (#60841)

      *Disclaimer: this post is referring to LFS the way it existed about 15 yrs ago.* I did LFS starting from a base install of Mandrake 6.1, and what that ~2 wks ordeal gave me was pretty much exactly what the submitter is looking for. It's a good way to gain a fuller understanding of the startup process; runlevels and what they do and how flexible they can be; the basic filesystem hierarchy; MUCH command line work; and basic dependencies.

      However -- it was absolute and total hell. Fun hell, but let's be serious. It requires a good bit of knowledge to even begin the LFS process. I remember being relieved when I could finally boot straight into it (rather than chroot) and start using lynx and wget to grab the software I needed. When lynx and wget are easier than what you were doing before, well, you know. Don't even get me started on X11 and all its dependencies and weird config options. I remember a couple months after I got that working, there was a new version released with new features that I badly wanted, but I couldn't bring myself to go through the process again.

      It's a sign of how far things have come that I can't even think of the last time I typed ./configure && make && make install.

      --
      =kw= lurkin' to please
      • (Score: 2) by fliptop on Friday June 27 2014, @05:24PM

        by fliptop (1666) on Friday June 27 2014, @05:24PM (#60943) Journal

        It's a sign of how far things have come that I can't even think of the last time I typed ./configure && make && make install.

        I *just* finished setting up a CentOS 5 box and needed a better version of ffmpeg for some IP camera code I'm working on, and I found this page [injustfiveminutes.com] w/ step-by-step instructions. So yeah, I'm laughing at your comment because I just finished typing ./configure, make, make install over and over. But I will admit it had been quite some time since I did that.

        --
        Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
        • (Score: 1) by karmawhore on Friday June 27 2014, @06:04PM

          by karmawhore (1635) on Friday June 27 2014, @06:04PM (#60961)

          I really got a kick out of reading that :) I think this line is telling:

          # yum install gcc gcc-c++ automake autoconf libtool nasm git subversion

          If it doesn't ship with any of that, they definitely aren't expecting you to compile from source.

          --
          =kw= lurkin' to please
          • (Score: 2) by fliptop on Friday June 27 2014, @08:09PM

            by fliptop (1666) on Friday June 27 2014, @08:09PM (#61052) Journal

            they definitely aren't expecting you to compile from source

            I originally set the box up as a server so yes, tools to compile from source are not included in that configuration. There's a couple of mistakes on the step-by-step; one was documented in the comments section. The others I'll write about in my journal entries.

            --
            Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @07:54PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @07:54PM (#61038)

        I did LFS starting from a base install of Mandrake

        Tiny Core Linux is among the smallest distro starting points currently available.
        Its ramrod is Robert Shingledecker, who was the brains behind the tech for Damn Small Linux.
        It's a 10MB download. For that, you get a Linux core and APT.
        It truly becomes what YOU make of it.

        -- gewg_

  • (Score: 1) by Jtmach on Friday June 27 2014, @02:07PM

    by Jtmach (1481) on Friday June 27 2014, @02:07PM (#60856)

    It depends on what your goals are.
    However, all these people saying just install a distro and fiddle are most likely coming from a time when Linux didn't work nearly as well as a modern distro, and thus had to fix things all the time learning as they went.

    In most modern distro's things tend to work pretty much out of the box. Therefore there's less things to fix, and less learning.

    I've been running Linux (Ubuntu, now Mint) as my main workstation for 3-4 years now. I have a server in the basement that runs Debian, with an Ubuntu Server / Open Stack virtual machine, a FreeNAS virtual machine, and an XMBCBuntu virtual machine running on it. I would still consider myself the very epitome of a script kiddie where Linux is concerned. It's almost too easy now days.