The usual Q: A windows user looking to learn the black art of linux.

[BloodyL]

Hi there peeps,
Back in the day I used to love programming and taught myself as much as I could about structured language through Borland Turbo Pascal, then began dabbling in assembler code when Pascal v5 introduced inline assembly, Denthor's Asphyxia VGA tutorials came in very handy!

Now, after living in the world of windows for so long I have begun to feel that the life is being strangled out of Windows, I'm gutted that I don't actually have to get stuck into a command console in order to get things done.

I've Winstalled the latest Ubuntu onto my desktop and laptop for experimentation, and would like to delve deeper into things.

Could you guys point me in the right direction for both free & paid for, self-teaching and guided teaching of Linux?

My goal is to learn a new OS, learn about computer security and generally get back into programming.

I know I'll have to start from first principles in order to adjust to the linux methodology, so that's all cool.

Many thanks peeps.

 

[Huw]

"Learning distros". For learning the OS down to the nuts and bolts, you can't go wrong with Linux From Scratch which is both a book and a distro. It's excellent. And then of course there are distros like Gentoo which force you to learn the system as it's all source-based and built from the low levels right up to the desktop by yourself. Gentoo also benefits from truly superb documentation.

Arch also springs to mind, as it's a very "pure" distro that encourages you to configure the system yourself.

I can't really help you with the teaching aspect though.

 

[Outcast]

NetBeans ?

 

[BloodyL]

Brilliant, I shall check those resources out more indepth tonight, distro sites are obviously blocked from this large retailers internal network but netbeans worked ok.
Looks like a pretty hefty toolkit for programming, cool.
At this time my focus is on learning linux, and then when I've got myself comfortable with things will I move on to programming.

Cheers for the input, appreciated.

 

[Xelene]

And then of course there are distros like Gentoo which force you to learn the system as it's all source-based and built from the low levels right up to the desktop by yourself. Gentoo also benefits from truly superb documentation.

I never bought this argument, Gentoo doesn't force you to do anything other than type a load of things in from the handbook which really should be automated, and watch millions of lines of gcc output scroll past faster than you can read it.

I'd actually suggest forgetting about Linux to start with, and go off and install Cygwin. You get a big chunk of the *nix functionality for free there without nuking Windows, and as you get more familiar with the command line you can switch properly.

 

[BloodyL]

Cygwin is installed and LFS is bookmarked, now I've just got to knuckle down and get learning, cheers.

 

[Huw]

I never bought this argument, Gentoo doesn't force you to do anything other than type a load of things in from the handbook which really should be automated, and watch millions of lines of gcc output scroll past faster than you can read it.

Well yeah, you could do it like that but what would be the point? You've no business using Gentoo if that's all you're going to do. The fact remains that if you properly read the handbook and make sure you comprehend exactly what's going on at each step instead of just skipping to each command, you are going to learn a hell of a lot more about Linux than if you just throw Ubuntu on something.

 

[Xelene]

Well yeah, you could do it like that but what would be the point? You've no business using Gentoo if that's all you're going to do. The fact remains that if you properly read the handbook and make sure you comprehend exactly what's going on at each step instead of just skipping to each command, you are going to learn a hell of a lot more about Linux than if you just throw Ubuntu on something.

Yeah but the handbook doesn't really explain why you are doing what you are doing, it's all just mke2fs this, tar xvf that which I really don't think teaches you anything - it's just a load of unnecessary steps to get a working Linux.

Don't get me wrong, I like Gentoo, it's better documented than most other distributions, doesn't install a load of useless crap, is laid out in a sane way and has an excellent package manager and a helpful community around it. But the installation teaches you nothing.