linux study material for the noob

[pugzilla]

I installed Ubuntu on an old PC about a month ago out of curiosity from all the buzz i heard about how great Linux is. This was my first experience using linux and I have enjoyed every minute. I would like to move on to other distro's once I have gotten a better understanding of ubuntu. Can anyone reccomend some good books for me to read and other distros that i should try next. I have already ordered the linux bible and was thinking about geting the debian/gnu blible next. any advice is greatly appreciated and my ultimate goal is to be able to make a positive contribution to the open source community in the future.thank you .. ERIC

[a12ctic]

Really i find the best learning tool using linux 24/7

[oz]

Take a look-see here for some free online books:

http://www.pctech101.com/pcebooks.php

http://www.linux.org/docs/online_books.html

http://www.freeprogrammingresources.com/linuxbooks.html

http://www.linux.org/docs/online_books.html

http://www.bellevuelinux.org/onlinebooks.html

[gtmtnbiker98]

Runnin' Linux if you can still find it online. It's a 600 page html "How To," and I must say, it has helped me out a lot.

[daacosta]

I liked "How Linux works" by Grant because it explained almost everything in an easy to read manner. Certainly an education... However, I tend to do the following when I intend to learn about a distro:

1. I visit their webpage and see what documentation they offer about their distro [I download it then... For instance: Net BSD's manuals are about 300 pages each!]
2. I read the reviews of the distros or ask a knowledgeable person to try the distro first [I am not sophisticated with Linux and I have seen that Techiemoe's reviews are a much more accurate representation of what will likely happen when using a distro for the very first time... e.g., Nexenta Placenta's review is exactly what happened to me...]
3. I try the distro! And then I see if I can do things with it... My tolerance is very small and if I have to edit more than one configuration file or to download more than 500 MB of updates I drop the distro and move on...

I have found that most of the linux information that I need is on the web for me to download and I do specific searches to get it: emacs manual and I get Stallman's tutorial, vim manual and I get several tutorials, openoffice tutorials manuals and there: I get some material for free...

[pugzilla]

thank you guys those sites have a ton of info thanx

[naturegirl]

about the distros
I recently tried Gentoo (www.gentoo.org) and liked it a lot, since you learn a lot while installing it and playing around with it.

I also tried Crux (www.crux.nu), it's rather tiny and unknown and more for experienced users, but while using it, you'll get to know your system a lot.

[muha]

a couple links:
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz rute
http://www.tldp.org/ the linux documentation project
http://www.pctech101.com/pcebooks.php free linux ebooks
http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/index.html Free On-line Linux Books and Tutorials
http://linuxbook.orbdesigns.com/btlb_toc.html Brian and Tom's Linux Book

[loft306]

merged 2 threads that were dupe's and had diffrent answares