SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
(Score: 1) by crAckZ on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:46PM
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
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
> [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: 1) by UncleSlacky on Friday June 27 2014, @11:21AM
I'm reliably informed that Pinta is quite a good MS-Paint-alike (in fact, a Paint.NET-alike).
http://pinta-project.com/ [pinta-project.com]