Re: tri-boot debian, debian-without-dm, and windows with newer debian using partitions from older debian?
On Thu, 05 Sep 2013 00:42:31 +0530
Anubhav Yadav <anubhav@icoer.in> wrote:
> On Wed, 2013-09-04 at 21:05 +0200, Slavko wrote:
>
> > When you (original poster) want to learn Linux, I suggest to use
> > some virtualisation (VirtualBox can be good choice), because all
> > three OS can be used at one time - no reboot is needed.
>
> Yes, right now I am doing the same, using virtualbox, and enjoying at
> the moment, but then I tend to easily move away from terminal if I get
> stuck at something, and use the gnome environment.
>
> As I said, I want to force my self into learning linux!
>
Simple way: work as an unprivileged user. This will give you the
viewpoint of a user who cannot just 'get out of jail', and you will
find that the simplest way of doing admin work is to open a terminal as
root, or sudo to a text editor and/or file manager such as mc. It is
quite difficult doing admin work from an unprivileged GUI login. After
a while, you will find which jobs can be most easily done with the
command line, and which are actually easier with the GUI. Don't choose
the more difficult way of doing things just because it is 'right'. On
the other hand, learning computer science requires discipline, don't
try to engineer a situation where discipline is not necessary. Learn to
ignore the GUI, even though it is there and it is tempting you.
I say this because I always use a workstation unprivileged, and do all
admin in a terminal. I like mc, but there is nothing stopping you using
vim, vi, or whatever, along with cd, cp etc. Don't forget to learn at
least the basics of mutt for email, and lynx/links/elinks for
text-based web browsing. I do also run a server without X, and use mc
over ssh for all admin work, and sometimes mutt is the simplest way of
moving data around. Learn wget and/or curl for text-based downloading.
Don't confuse command line use with knowledge of Linux. It's necessary,
but not sufficient. The various window managers, desktop environments
and so on are a significant part of a real-world Linux workstation
installation, but what you need to know about is how to configure these
environments, and fix them when they break, not just how to use them.
Try the lightweight desktops, LXDE and Xfce, as well as a few bare
window managers.
A display manager from an environment, such as gdm or kdm, will allow a
choice of startup environments from whatever is installed. This will
give you a feel for which parts of Linux are dependent on the desktop
environment, and which underlying parts remain the same in all
environments. Microsoft has always tried to give the impression that
what you see on your monitor *is* Windows, which isn't true, and it is
even less true of Linux.
You might also look at Linux From Scratch, which doesn't teach you
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/
everything there is to know about Linux, but does give you a good idea
of what is actually necessary to boot Linux and how to build software
independently of a package manager. It's all easy and soft these days, I
did a couple of installations several years ago, before the automatic
systems, when you really had to compile everything manually, some of it
twice. I did actually borrow one of the LFS daemon scripts to create an
iptables pseudo-daemon long before it was available off the shelf
elsewhere. Learn iptables...
If you're dead set on multiple Linux versions with some shared
directories, and I always leave a spare partition for a small
single-partition emergency installation, then make sure you know about
uids and gids, and how to ensure you have the same identity on both/all
installations.
And when you think you know a bit about Linux, make an installation of
Debian unstable (sid) and use it as much as possible. It's not as
terrible as some people say, but you really need to be willing to learn
if you use it as a main OS. In the last month, the LXDE environment
broke quite seriously, and remained that way for a few weeks. You will
want to know how to work around something like that.
When you've got the hang of unstable, you can start writing scripts in
bash, perl or python...
--
Joe
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