As recently as 1998, Linux was considered by most people to be an operating system for geeks and hackers. Linux - An Introduction
How to Say Linux
Now it is considered part of the mainstream of computer industry software. Linux distributions, business applications for Linux, and computer games for Linux are all sold in mainstream stores like CompUSA. There is even a book titled "Linux for Dummies".These days the community of Linux Users breaks down into essentially the same subgroups that one finds for MSWindows, AppleMac, and BSD:
Linux includes an additional community, one that it shares with other open-source systems such as BSD and Hurd. That is the community of open-source developers; the people who actually write the improvements to the OS, as well as the utilities, the device drivers, the free applications, and the documentation.
- Desktop Applications users
- Power Users
- Systems Administrators and Software Developers
Tonight's meeting is for those who fall into the first three groups. But any of you might eventually become a member of the last group, if you write an open-source module or a piece of documenation.
- What is Linux ?
- Five facts for Beginners
- Kernel, modules, utilities, drivers, applications.
OReilly: Charting the Linux Anatomy OReilly's PDF poster- An operating system, a philosophy, a community.
- Antecedents: Unix, free-software/opensource, bsd/minix/hurd.
- Getting your feet wet
- "Unix for Dummies" or "Linux for Dummies" published by IDG Books
- Either one is good for learning the basic concepts and vocabulary
- Brian Brown's On-line Tutorials
- The "Introduction to Unix" can be found at http://lifelong.freeservers.com
- There are other useful tutorials here, as well.
What you need to know depends on which group you fall into.
- All Linux users
- - single OS vs dual-boot vs VMware
- - install yourself or buy pre-installed
- - choosing a distribution (see the LWM site).
- - available hardware platforms:
- 8086 (pc), Mac, Dec-alpha, Sun, VMS, S390, ....
- - getting commercial technical support
- - finding free or inexpensive resources:
- - web-sites
- Tutorials, documentation and how-tos, industry news, VARs, etc
- - newsgroups and mailing lists
- - LDP (the Linux Documentation Project)
- http://www.tldp.org
- - LUGs (Linux User Groups)
- Lug Directories
- - books and magazines
- - on-line: Some books are free at the LDP, at www.andamooka.org, and in the free-libraries section of sites such as informIT.com
- Many zines are online
- - in stores and catalogs: Linux Journal, Linux Magazine, Maximum Linux, Open magazine, OReilly, IDG, Dummies, many others
- books are often cheaper when ordered via the internet
- (B&N, Amazon.com, and Fatbrain.com give discounts on-line)
- - getting formal training
- choosing the appropriate course
- college classes (New School, Baruch, Columbia, etc) or industrial training schools (IBM, Red Hat, Learning Tree, etc)
- Desktop users
- - basic installation and configuration
- - finding technical support
- LDP listings (eg Linuxcare)
- - choosing and configuring a GUI (ie desktop environment, window manager, and themes)
- www.xwinman.org - A good place to learn the basics and find further resources
- - applications: finding, installing, configuring
- advice from The Duke of URL
- a commentary on overpacked distributions (in ZDNet-UK)
- Power users
- - using the command line
- basic linux commands
- shell scripting
- using text editors (vi, emacs, etc)
- - finding and modifying configuration files
- - adding or upgrading hardware
- know the directories, find and install drivers, check for compatibility)
- - upgrading your distribution (whether, when, how)
- SysAdmins and Developers
- - hardware knowledge
- - system services (eg ftp, email, web-serving, telnet)
- - network configuration, monitoring, backup, security
- - server add-ons: packages to enhance the system's facilities
- eg. Apache, Samba, mysql, sendmail, etc
- - Linux networks with other platforms:
- 8086 (pc), Mac, Dec-alpha, Sun, VMS, S390
- - Linux-compatible development tools (eg, CVS, php)
- - programming languages (java, perl, python, C++, etc)
Linux Careers
- Integrating Linux with other technical skills
Linux needs to be only one in your arsenal of marketable skills- - hardware knowledge
- - networking and internet knowledge
- - development tools (programming, databases, IDEs, etc)
- - specialized package knowledge
- - business skills
- - social and communication skills
- Certification
- Finding and Keeping a Linux job
Links for Linux Beginners Some key resources to start with
last updated May 9, 2000 - r.d.shanen