I don't know if this is the right thread,

Im looking for a good Linux online course or e-learning system,

any ideas?

Just goto www.linux.org and check out all of the tutorials. I wouldn't pay to learn Linux because what they will end up teaching you will be pretty simple and after you learn it, you'll realize that most of the stuff they taught you, you already knew. My advice would be to read the tutorials and man pages. Good Luck.

thanks

The thing is that I have some co-workers who, like myself, have been exposed to Windows for far too much time.

I have the luck of having DOS and CPM background so hasn't been so difficult after all with tutorials. ( very lengthy)

But I need a basic thing (tutorial/e-class/lecture) philosophy stuff to get "Windows overexposed" people here started.

This is for my technical staff, I can't even think how it will be with the office staff, if it is ever possible.

By far the best (imo) linux tutorials are here: http://www.tldp.org/guides.html
Have a look at "Introduction to Linux", or if you're not natively English speaking, follow the non-english link to your language LDP.

Or you may prefer a printed book. Most are not as precise, but they're handy.
There are plenty, from "linux 4 dummies" or "teach yourself linux in 20h" to more serious ones, and they're available both at bookshops and computer shops.
Moreover, if you want to buy a distribution, there are some (SuSE, RH, mdk) that sell a guide together with the cd and support.

Actually using gnome or kde is not harder than using win. What may be hard is being root, still if I was in charge of a network with 100 monkeys on it, I'd prefer running linux than winxp: central administration is easier, damaging the system is harder (without being root, of course)...
So if you are, or have, a decent administrator that can setup your network, your secretaries will have no problem (but maybe "where is drive A:?").

While fairly basic, I think this site did an excellent job: http://linuxsurvival.com/ The tutorials are interactive, with a simulated console you type commands into. So you don't even need a linux box to play with! As with learning anything, actually doing it, rather than just reading about it, really helps solidify the info in your brain. A year of living in a Spanish speaking country taught me more than four years of Spanish classes here in the U.S.

Try here (click on download to view manual):
http://www.icon.co.za/~psheer/rute-home.html

It's also available in printed form, as well. This is a good intro, remembering of course, that things change pretty quickly in the Linux world. For your technical staff, this is a pretty decent primer on working with Linux. Just remember that it tends to get into the nuts and bolts of things, and that in reality you'll likely use webmin or your distro's gui helpers more often than diving into the command prompt.

I wouldn't worry too much about your users adapting to Linux. In my experience, it's the tech staff that has a harder time, for obvious reasons. They're comfortable with what they use now, the systems are different not only from an administration point of view, but at a conceptual level as well. There's also a tendency among tech people not to want to feel "stupid". And if your shop is primarily windows-based, you'll have people asking why you want to use Linux when MS is the "only thing anybody else uses."

Most user programs run in a similar way across numerous programs. You'll always have people fighting change because they're scared of learning something new, but the majority of users will just adapt. In contrast, you might want to plan on a few months of users asking a lot of questions about differences. Better yet, prepare a knowledge base and add questions to that (it won't hurt to have one for the tech staff as well), encouraging your users to check that before calling for help. User notes and documentation on the changes specific to your implementation are a good idea too.

If your staff fights you on the move (and some undoubtedly will), gently explain to them that Linux shares a lot of commands and structure with Unix. In a sense, once they learn Linux, they can now work on any system, of any size, in any company. Once you show that using Linux makes them more "marketable" most tech staff will be willing to go along with it.

Hope this helps a bit. The real challenge in migrating to Linux is overcoming misconceptions more than technical problems. Keep that in mind, and it'll go smoothly. Just do your best not to "surprise" anybody.

Thanks a lot for your explanation, in deed I have felt most of what you are saying.

I'm sorry to take advantage of this thread to ask this but
what distribution (or window handler) would you use for the office staff so that the change they feel is as minimal as possible?

KDE comes with a suit of integrated apps. This is imho a limit but it may help newcomers to feel confortable. Still OpenOffice is going to become a standard, and works better with Gnome, so you should have a look at both yourself.
As for the distro, I would reccomend SUSE or RH, unless you have somebody a bit experienced to setup a debian-based distro (they're stable and fast).
I suggest staying out of mandrake, it's designed mainly for standalon PCs, and tends to behave differently on every machine.

Red Hat all the way for office use. Easy to install packages and easy to manage. Mandrake is also a Windows-like OS.

Great sites! I especially like Crito's. Learn by doing what a great idea.

Basic Linux Training http://basiclinux.net is an excellent course that has a mailing list with it where you can have any questions answered.

Here's the direct link to the www.linux.org lessons :-

http://www.linux.org/lessons/

The documentation is really only for specific topics, as opposed to a general linux tutorial.

Teaching yourself requires a lot of self-discipline, laceupboots. People without it are usually better off in a more structured environment, where someone tells you what to do and when. Online tutorials may not work for everybody.

I agree, Crito. This tutorial has already taught me a lot. I've already made it thru Mod1 and Mod2 will finish the others today. For me it is the explaination and then the doing that works for me. For an office environment it would be a great idea, IMHO.

if you want to try and learn linux closly after all those tutorials i recomend core linux, (after i used it to reinstall every file it installed from source id say it works like a dream, untill you start doing stuff to mess it up )