Help me discover linux.

[ring_wraith]

I downloaded and installed Fedora Core 11 with the intent of "learning" Linux.

To be quite honest, I was perfectly happy with my install of XP, but I want to learn Linux anyway. By learn, I mean be able to use the terminal, which is actually the primary reason I got interested in Linux in the first place. The GUI doesn't do much for me that windows already does, but its in the terminal that I feel there's a lot of ground to cover.

Right now, I'm studying to become a software engineer, and have always had an interest in what's happening behind the scenes, per se. So naturally, you can imagine just how much the terminal intrigues me.

But the thing is, I have no clue where, or how to start. I just thought that setting up the OS and using it would further my cause, but it doesn't seem to be helping much, because I only use the terminal when I can't do something through the GUI, which, thanks to the amazingly rapid development, is a rare scenario. And when I have to, most of the guides I find online assume that you already know what you're doing in the terminal, which I don't!

I don't want to be the copy-paste types, just typing in command after command having in no idea whats happening exactly. I want to know whats going on, what what I'm typing means, and how to manipulate it to my ends. So.. how do I do that??

Thank you for putting up with the long post :P Any comments really appreciated.

[Zeroangel]

A few useful commands to start with:

commandname --help
Will provide help for that given command

man commandname (ie: man mount)
Will open the 'manual' file for that command

apropos typesomethinghere
Search for a command which performs this action

(for example 'apropos rename' will show me 11 programs which perform some kind of rename operation)

If you want to understand what commands do, then just continue to learn as you are. Whenever you encounter something which requires you to learn the terminal, then take note of which command is used. You can then run the command with --help, or check its manpage in order to determine what the command does and how to use it.

There is also bash commands - Linux MAN Pages -- which explains some of the more basic bash commands.

In addition, I would recommend you install a program such as 'yakuake' -- and set the show/hide shortcut to CTRL+F12 -- this program will provide you with much faster access to the command terminal.

[bigtomrodney]

If you want to get the hang of scripting, the default shell in Linux is bash. There's a great guide that helped me a lot called The Advanced Bash Scripting Guide. It's actually available to download in several formats too, including pdf for offline reading. If you get through all of that you'll be ahead of the curve

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

You can also check out LinuxCommand.org for some quick and easy command line lessons:

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

[ring_wraith]

Thank you! Thats a whole lot of material to work with.

Also, I was just browsing through the forums, and someone actually recommended a book that introduces Linux. Any recommendations for me to buy?

[MTK]

I have actually tried Linux about 3 times before, but ended up not liking it. It was so confusing, "Why aren't program installers .exe", "How do I do anything in the command line", etc.

I later programmed C/C++ in Windows and Visual Stodio IDE, and it was so obscured, difficult, and al those menus to remember, so I gave it all up.

Then I found out about Sun VirtualBox, and thought that I can try Linux again, risk-free to my data.

I decided that if I can use Linux this time, I have to know how it works rather than assuming it will be just like Microsoft Windows.

I decided on fedora this time and started downloading the Fedora 11 ISO image via BitTorrent. It said it would take all day, even with a DSL connection.

I started reading lots of tutorials on Linux all day, especially concentrating on the command line.

When I switched to Linux, I fell in love with C programming all over again (and even some other languages that were OK in Windows are better here, too!), because it has such a great command line, good command line compilers/debuggers (Where I simply type what I want instead of remembering those stupid menus), and much better text editor options.

After a few days I was confident enough to erase Windows and completely reformat my drive for Fedora.

As I am using it I am still learning a lot every day, I am especially impressed at the modularity of it (Unix program philosophy: "Do one thing and do it well"), it is extremely customizable and gets you to have a very low-level understanding of your computer and Linux. I am thinking that if my programming skills will be good enough, I would like to start hacking parts of Linux, customizing them and digging deeper into how they work. Somewhere I heard this analogy, which I think fits very well to Linux: "If Windows is a toy car, then Linux is a toy car made of Lego".

Here are some good tutorials that helped me:

Linux is NOT Windows
Linux Online - Linux Courses
Linux Tutorial

And the GUI's extensive drag-n-drop support made it easier to put there links here!

And one more thing I love about the GUI: If you select text, it starts where you clicked and ends where you released, it doenn't jump to words/paragraphs and make assumptions like Windows.

EDIT: One more thing, I noticed that the quality of the programs and their user interfaces are much better than any Windows software, commercial or free. I think this is true for 2 reasons:

1) Linux programs are not made for someone who never saw a computer before. They are quite the opposite. (And funnily, this seems to make them cleaner and more user-freindly than Windows apps).

2) Linux programs are made by the people that use those programs

[ring_wraith]

Thank you once again. I really feel like I've got somewhere to get started off. Falling in love with linux more and more everyday. I actually enjoy facing problems :P Right now struggling with the nVidia drivers. I know I could have done them automatically using the package manager.. but where's the fun in that

[waterhead]

If you are going to develop anything in Linux, or install things from source, you need some things installed first. For driver compiling, it is best to install both the kernel source and the kernel headers.

kernel-devel (kernel source)
kernel-headers-<kernel version>
gcc (Linux C compiler package)

These may already be installed:
make
cmake
automake

To make packages easier to find and install, there is a GUI front-end for the YUM package installer. It is called the YUM Extension. and can be installed using the terminal. First gain root privileges with the su command. Enter the root password when prompted (it will remain hidden while you enter it), then hit the Enter key.

su
Password:

yum install yumex

To install the nVidia drivers that are downloaded from nVidia, you must first stop the Xserver and exit the desktop. (again, with root privileges)

init 3

You then need to go to a terminal and login. There are several, and they are accessed by using the Ctrl+Alt+Fx key combination. Then, login as root and cd to the folder where the driver is, then run the install script. Say Yes to whatever it asks.