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best way to learn Linux?

T

toph99

Diamond Member
i'm sick to death of windows, so i want to partition the hard drive on my new box and put linux and win98se on it. what would be the best version/kind of linux(i've heard of red hat, mandrake etc. but have no idea what is different with them 😱) should i start learning with? thanks 🙂
 
Take fogleroller's advice and get a book. I found Linux for Dummies clearanced at my college bookstore for $1.99 and picked it up, though I'd already been using Linux for almost 2 years (I just use the book as a reference).

I know it's probably not the best way, but my method of learning Linux was to install a base version of Debian (only 7 or 8 floppies big), and then download and "figure out" how to install everything that I needed (KDE, Xfree86, Netscape, etc.). After I got fairly comfortable with working with it I erased my newley created Linux partition (ouch) and installed Redhat. Everything was installed by itself and worked nicely, but I had a much better working knowledge of the setup from having setup the Debian setup by hand.
 
Dummies books rule, in my opinion. I own at least 10 of them. Also, if you install linux, you will find lots of documentation, as well as MAN pages, with some are the equivelant of a DOS /? but most are very helpful.
 
Do you want to learn linux, or just have it on your system?

If you want to learn it, go with slackware, debian, or even peanut distros. It might take a few months to get everything where you want it, but the bigger plunge you take, the more you will be forced to learn. I understand that the new mandrake will plug and play and toss a default KDE on your screen, but will you have learned anything? The real power of linux is in its configurability and customization. You can go the easy way, but that's kinda like getting a porche to drive to the store once a week.

As far as books go, O'Reiley's (sp?) Running Linux is by far the best I've seen. With that and man pages you should be fine.

good luck

 
you want to learn linux? definitely go with a base slackware setup and add everything from there, and plan to spend a coupla months exploring your directory tree file-by-file. it's amazing some of the stuff you can do.
 
Get a good book, "Running Linux", 3rd ed. by O'Reilly.
Get ye over to www.linuxnewbie.org and read.
Get Linux installed on a machine that you are not dual booting on. You can't be afraid to hose up your windows partitions while experimenting with Linux, so don't dual boot.
Once you get it installed jump right in, you will make mistakes, but fight the urge to re-install. One of the great things about Linux is that it gives you the tools to fix some majorly bad stuff without having to flush the drive and start over.



 
I fully agree with everything said above. "running linux" by O'Reilly is the best basic book on Linux by far. Don't be afraid to try a buch of different distro's of Linux first (hey they are free!) I like Mandrake, but might be switching to SUSE, and will probably put Redhat on a new server at work.
Have fun!

Seth
 
I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and recommend running linux by matt welsh as well. I bought this book long ago because of the excellent recommendations...but I still have yet to read it.
 
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