Newbsterlicious

[Efferri]

Hi all!
I'm extremely new to linux, however I have been a computer/network technician so I have the brain and the interest to learn. I have downloaded Backtrack v2, and Kubuntu 8.04.

Does anyone have any advice or references (i.e. good experience learning with...) to learn linux? I mean, I at LEAST found this awesome forum, but I don't have the slightest CLUE as to where to start. Please feel free to PM me! Also, I'm pretty advanced with Networks and Microsoft. Maybe we can trade secrets!


Thanks for your help!
~Efferri

[techieMoe]

Greetings and welcome to the forum. I'd recommend you start with our introductory thread here:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/lin...ead-first.html

It has answers to some of the common questions we get asked by new users and should give you a good introduction.

[Efferri]

That was a good read, I appreciate it. Anyone know of any quality books/online material for Linux, KDE, or BASH?

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

Check LinuxCommand.org for learning the command line:

LinuxCommand.org: Learn the Linux command line. Write shell scripts.

You can find some free ebooks about Linux here:

68 Linux Related Free E-books

[Efferri]

Sweet! Thanks for the links! I'm learning it slowly. My next attempt will be a USB dual boot of Backtrack and Kubuntu Hardy. Wish me luck!

[i92guboj]

http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

The absolute must-have in which regards bash scripting. Regardless of it's title, it's suited for beginners as well. Welcome.

[Efferri]

Bash Scripting? I'm guessing scripting is more common in the Linux realm?

[i92guboj]

Quoting yourself, it's really hard for me to understand the meaning of your last post, unless you posted here thinking that you were posting elsewhere.

Hi all!
I'm extremely new to linux, however I have been a computer/network technician so I have the brain and the interest to learn. I have downloaded Backtrack v2, and Kubuntu 8.04.

That was a good read, I appreciate it. Anyone know of any quality books/online material for Linux, KDE, or BASH?

Bash Scripting? I'm guessing scripting is more common in the Linux realm?

You knew you were in Linux in the first quote. And you explicitly say "BASH" on the second one, which is why I don't understand your third quote. Bash is the default shell for most linux distros. Scripting is just a natural extension to that capabilities of any given shell. A way to automate things that can as well be done step by step on the command line. Scripts can be used to batch process lots of files as well. An invaluable tool for any linux user.

[Efferri]

What I meant to ask was "Is scripting common in Linux?" because in the MS world it isn't too common.

In other words is knowing how to write script essential for operating under Linux?

[i92guboj]

What I meant to ask was "Is scripting common in Linux?" because in the MS world it isn't too common.

In other words is knowing how to write script essential for operating under Linux?

Now I understand the question. Sorry.

Well. Strictly speaking it's not completely essential for operating all the linux distros. Some of then have graphical tools for almost everything. But if you really want to know what's going on, it certainly helps a lot.

Besides that, it's something that can really save you lots of of pain and hours when doing administrative tasks. Repetitive tasks are easily achieved with a bit of bash magic on a few seconds, or at least can be done unattended. Note that, knowing about bash, will open you many doors. Usually you need that even to program a cron task that is not trivial, backups, it's used a lot in init scripts on some distros,... It depends on what exactly do you want to learn. For administrative stuff it's a very good thing to know. To operate as a user, it helps a lot as well, though you can almost always find graphical alternatives (that will do the same work in 10x the time it'd take in bash :P ).

Luck on this new way