Extremely Newbie: Learning Windows and Linux

[Anubis08]

I know this was not very descriptive, but I always read about people talking about the commands (linux and windows console) to use and the files to change (mainly registry in Windows is what I'm interested in) and quite frankly I have no clue as to where to start. I have googled the topics but not come up with what I am looking for. Any help on where to start would be greatly appreciated. I have played in regedit some but never really changed anything. I know: Newbie. Thanks.

 

[djdrastic]

For Windows I'd have to Recommend some MS Press A+ and MCSE WXP / W2000 books.Linux is altogether a different animal you'd just have to put your ass on ya seat and read manpages

 

[Sunner]

For Linux, like djdrastic said, manpages are your friend(s).
Also, http://www.google.com/linux, http://www.tldp.org is a good resource.
There are many others, you'll find most by just looking around.

 

[stars]

http://www.linuxcommand.org/ is a good place to start. Here's a brief example of Windows equivalents: http://www.faqs.org/docs/linux_intro/app2.html

Like Sunner suggested google.com/linux will give you endless resources.

 

[drag]

The Windows registry is pure hell.

For Windows I found this website, sysinternals

For Linux the linux documentation project has good guides on stuff.

There are lots of books on both OSes at any major super-bookstore. Some are good, some are crap.

The unique thing about Linux and Unix-like OSes in general there is a philosophy behind the design and structure that act like loose rules on how to design things.

One thing you'd notice is that everything is compartmentazed. Each part of the OS can be replaced by other programs and it still work and you don't have to worry much about unintended side effects (although they do exist).

If your familar with networking TCP/IP protocol stack and it's abstracted decendant the OSI model layers,
(application , presentation, session, transport, network, datalink, physical) are Unix-style concepts although it's much more organic then the rigid OSI model.

For example you have your Gnome or KDE desktop enviroment,
Applications run inside a Desktop enviroment. The Desktop enviroment is made up of a large numbers of X Window Clients, Those X Windows client's Windows behavor is controled by another Window Client called the Window Manager. The Window manager runs on the X Window Server. The X Window server takes care of the inputs from your keyboard and mouse and outputs it to the display. The keyboard/mouse/display are controlled by various drivers that interact with various parts of the system's kernel, and the system kernel sits between the OS at large and the computer hardware.

With some caveots the kernel, the X Window Server, the Window Manager, the desktop enviroment, and the various X Window Clients (the applications) and even the hardware can be replaced by any other object that performs simular function and every peice would work correctly with suprisingly little effort (except for bug chasing, of course, nothing is perfect).

For instance I am using Firefox running in a Gnome Desktop enviroment running on Metacity, running on X.org X Server, running in a Linux-kernel GNU OS, running on a PowerPC computer.

I have a x86 computer that runs pretty much the same setup, except that is using a XFree86 X Server. Same firefox, same gnome enviroment, same Metacity Window manager (not the same compiled binaries, but recompiled from portable C code for each computer platform, of course).

Some people don't like the kernel and will run FreeBSD OS instead and use a firefox in a Gnome enviroment on Metacity on X.org (or XFree86, or Accelx) X Server on x86 hardware. Or powerPC hardware.

Or maybe they don't like Metacity window manager. It can be replaced by compatable ones like Sawfish or Openbox. Or maybe they don't like Gnome and like KDE? Or maybe XFCE instead. But they can still run firefox on them, no problem.

All sorts of weird fun stuff.

 

[funggorgor]

by reading books
borrow books from library
or
grab books from Amazon.com