Linux

[jbarnes8]

I've been toying around with linux on and off for the last couple of years. I finally decided to use nothing but linux. But I soon realized all the things i've learned about linux have been on the fly; just to fix or install something. Most of the time it's cutting and pasting commands and I never really know exactly why I'm doing it. I just know the how-to said it would work.

I was just wanting some advice about how to get a solid linux foundation. What are the most important things to learn? What would you consider "basic linux"?
What has helped you the most (to know)?

Sometimes it takes me 4 hours to figure out how to do something that takes 2 minutes. For example, I couldn't get my sound to work the other day (on new installation). The problem is I didn't run alsaconf. I never knew what alsa was. I never even heard of it. Appearantly I missed that step in the how-to, but nonetheless, it took me hours to figure out. I want to avoid wasting so much time because I have no knowledge of "standard" packages/programs/etc. Better yet, I would like to know how to do what alsaconf does by hand.


But that's just kind of an example. I'm looking for something broader than that.
I guess I'm just looking for some sort of list of things to read about or maybe even master. Some sort of focus. I understand everyone will have different answers and views on this type of thing. And I'm sure I'll get the "Well, what do you want to do with linux...." speech. But I'm just asking you to throw out some ideas and I'll compile a 'list' of things that I think will best suit me.


EDIT: I have done LFS by the book already. I might do it again and try on my own. ...or at least as much as I can. I pretty much stopped where the book stopped though. Perhaps I should go further next time (like install X)

[Parcival]

I had the steepest gain in knowledge when I installed Gentoo. At least back in the days when Gentoo had no fancy graphic installer and a lot had to be done manually, you could wonderfully see the anatomy of your Linux OS.

As far as I know, Gentoo can still be installed "the hard way" so I recommend to do that on a spare partition/harddisk/computer, if you have one. I ran gentoo as my main desktop OS for a while, but it proved to be too bleeding edge/buggy to do that as one's main OS so I quit again.

Various members in this forum like Slackware and claim that this distro also is pretty low level, so you probably get the same learning effects like in Gentoo. And there's still LFS (Linux from scratch) for the die-hard.

[jbarnes8]

Wow, quick reply....I don't think I got the edit in in time. I have tried LFS but not too much came of it. I might do it again some day and actually take time to think about what was going on. I just wanted to see if the LFS book would 'work' or was a big waste of time.

I was looking more for things to read about. But I appreciate the input. If I didn't know about LFS yet, I would have definitely wanted to try it. (But you didn't know I knew about LFS because you were typing while I was editing)

Maybe a more refined question would be is: What are the core aspects of linux?

[XiaoKJ]

What I would say is that you don't try LFS so early in the game. It assumes that you already know quite a lot and just want to know the details.

I would really recommend that you start off with a newbie friendly distro and get used to the environment one step at a time. By the time you have tried around 6 distros, try gentoo. Just reading the gentoo handbook will give you are good overview of the components that make up your system, in an abstract term compared to LFS. Things will start to make sense then.

[jbarnes8]

I'm not exactly a newbie, but I'm not sure I would consider my self to be a novice either.

But I soon realized all the things i've learned about linux have been on the fly; Most of the time it's cutting and pasting commands and I never really know exactly why I'm doing it. I just know the how-to said it would work.

I didn't really mean that to be taken too literally...that whole quote was meant to flow together...I didn't mean to say I don't know what commands do or can't figure them out...I meant to say sometimes I just take the easy way out and if I run across a command that I haven't seen before i don't always take the time to actually explore it. I just copy and paste it. I have quiete a few holes in my knowledge from doing this and things similar. And the best way I see to be sure I fill the holes is to go with certain subjects in mind to focus on learning. For example, I'm not too keen on modes and permissions. I know them well enough to get things done. But I don't know them well enough to say I have fully safe-guarded my system.This is something I can go back and focus on. Like how exactly permissions work with symlinks and sub directories.


An answer like "knowing how kernel modules interact with each other is pretty important". But I'm trying to welcome answers on a broader level that aren't so technical. Like "The linux philosophy is KISS, and that's the most useful thing to keep in mind when you're dissecting linux systems " I don't know...something like that. I'm asking, "to you, what seems to be the most important or useful to know"?

Ultimately I want to find things to sit back and read without any or much hands on stuff.


btw, I have tried quiete a few distros including gentoo.

[Davno]

Basically the answer might seem boring, but its read a lot. I would recommend RUTE for linux basics and a lot of www.google.com/linux . I have google/linux as my start page on a browser i use for linux related queries.

[XiaoKJ]

I concur. There is no easy way around reading a good load of manual pages. And even then you can keep getting stuck and need to ask here.

[jbarnes8]

Ummm..... that's what I'm trying to do....

Ultimately I want to find things to sit back and read without any or much hands on stuff.

nevermind

[je_fro]

I'm glad someone beat me to posting about rute...it's the best overall linux doc out there. The reason people say they "learned so much" about linux with gentoo is because their docs are so damn good.
Anyway, things to learn...
compile your own kernel,
understand what init scripts do, (look in /etc/init.d/)
and above all: KEEP A NOTEBOOK with all the things and commands you learn in it...after awhile you won't need to refer to them anymore, but they help while learning...

[jbarnes8]

Thank you j_fro...that's exactly the kind of answer I'm looking for. (what to learn rather than 'how' to learn)

I just took a look at rute tutorial & exposition...it looks rather helpful.

[Parcival]

Wow, quick reply....I don't think I got the edit in in time.

No.

I have tried LFS but not too much came of it.

Well, LFS was only one of three distros I suggested. Gentoo isn't as low-level as LFS, you'll probably find it a lot easier. Gentoo has a lot of scripts that do the work for you, but you still have to know what you're actually doing and why or you'll end up with a computer that doesn't boot.

I was looking more for things to read about.

Well, the reason I keep to suggest Gentoo is because this reading thing never worked for me. I had those lovely SuSE handbooks full of good information, but being a good scholar, reading a chapter, and then doing it on the computer, made me forget everything as soon as I had learned it.

I was successful when I read everything task-driven: I wanted to install Gentoo, learn how to do my private accounting in GnuCash, learn how to get this %ç&/(% TV card going, etc. When you install Gentoo, you will read a lot of its documentation on its website, and when you're though with that, you'll definitively have had a look at the beating core of your Linux.

[XiaoKJ]

If that is the case, then I would recommend starting with grub first. Its very useful.

[blackbelt_jones]

Sometimes, when you're learning, you just have to pay the price of taking four hours to do something that ought to take two minutes. You feel like the Village idiot of Linuxville, but next time it will take two minutes, and the time after that, and the time after that, and so on for the rest of your computing lifetime. The time you invest now will pay dividends.

I believe that using Linux now saves me hours of drudgery. I recently wrote a script that sorts through all my media files, and puts them in appropriate directories. I still don't know a lot about scripting; it's just a simple matter of repeating the mv command with variations. The script uses absolute pathways, so I can execute it from anywhere in my system, using sudo, and the files always go to the same place. I can remember the endless struggle to organize all my downloaded media files when I was using Windows Explorer to manage files. Even though I was using a dialup connection and a hard drive that's about a fiftieth of my current total storage space, organizing my files always seemed to take hours of time, and it was the dullest, stupidest, most annoying computer grunt work. And so, my files were a mess, all the time.

I run the script and it does 98 percent of the work in one automated motion. A few files fall through the cracks and it takes ten minutes to deal with them.

Now, I've been told that you can write scripts for Windows, and in the case of moving files around, I can see where that would apply, but the Windows command line just doesn't have the wealth of utilities that the Linux command line does, so why bother? I've always felt that migrating to Linux was too much a pain not to get the full effect by learning the command line. By the same token, I suspect that learning the command line is too much of a pain not to get the full effect by migrating to Linux.

Have I gone off on a complete tangent? My point is that if you are young enough (I was 44 when I started) and you intend to spend enough of your remaining years using a computer, Linux will pay back all the time you spent learning it. And pay you again. And pay you again. I consider myself paid back in full, I'm still being paid back, and I might have another 30 or forty years (if I watch my cholesterol) in which I can look forward to being paid and paid and paid.

[je_fro]

Sometimes, when you're learning, you just have to pay the price of taking four hours to do something that ought to take two minutes...next time it will take two minutes

Especially if you WRITE IT DOWN!

[teeitup]

My twist on on WRITE IT DOWN...

Maintain a <servername>_install.log

After installing and/or configuring I output the histiry file to the log file.

$> history >> <servername>_install.log

I keep one on every box. I have a master with the essentials that I use as a base for new installs.

I google a lot. (read)