Re: 8 Newbie Questions
> Yes, I'm clueless about linux basics. I'm three days into my installation
> of linux and have never seen it nor any unix operating system before now.
> I've been using pc's since they came out (70's onward). The funny thing is,
> I'm a pc tech support person working for a multi-billion fortune 200
> company and I assumed that linux would work as many other computer systems
> work, i.e. with drive assignments. (Cocky Translation: 'If it's on a pc I
> can figure it out'. I've been humbled...)
Don't freak out or give up. It's not so bad once you get used to it. I
recommend picking up a guide to UNIX for DOS users (there are many of them
out there; "UNIX in Plain English" is an example of one book which helps
the DOS-to-UNIX transition.) Check out www.linux-howto.com as well. And
buy O'Reilly's "Linux in a Nutshell"; you will find it to be very useful
in time. (There's nothing in it that isn't in the manpages, but it's nice
to have paper docs sometimes.)
> I know dos and windows and thousands of applications extremely well. I
> don't know linux other than what shows up when I type 'help' and what i've
> gleaned by perusing the linux newsgroups and linux web pages. Lots of stuff
> there that doesn't apply to navigating or altering kernels.
You're familiar with the "man" command, I hope. If not, type "man man" in
Linux. You will find "man" to be your best friend when you start out. And
"man -k keyword" can be used to search the online manual for any keywords.
> For now I can only associate what I know of other operating systems with
> linux. I've read a ton of sites, and none that I've come across so far are
> written well enough to go from install to expert. They waste a lot of
> words and tell very little about navigating about linux and very little
> about controlling linux kernels. They all assume that since I already
> installed linux I must know how to use linux. I think I just got lucky
> installing debian -- others say it's a challenging installation and it's
> running on my pc... sort of :)
Yes, Linux needs better documentation, and Debian is tougher to install
than Red Hat or the other common distros. Pick up a good UNIX-to-DOS book,
as mentioned, and it should get you started.
- Bill
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