Beginner needing some written material to read
 

Can anyone suggest any written material I can get to find my newbie way into linux - I'm the kinda person that would prefer to read and re-read hands on material as opposed to reading off the web IE installing and begining Linux......I go back to MS DOS and entering data using a perforated tape etc.....then to windows 1 thru ad infinitum etc but I have no knowledge of the differences in code or how to write code or anything close to it ???

Do you mean free material? If not, the Linux For Dummies is as good a place to start as any.

Here are three good ones offered online at no charge.

http://linux.about.com/. It's a web site, not a book and it's oriented to Ubuntu, but it's full of good info.

http://tille.garrels.be/training/tldp/. Machtelt Garrels Intro to Linux. It's available in *.pdf format here. I keep a copy on my bookshelf.

http://www.slackbook.org/. Slackware oriented, but excellent on the basics, such as file structure, permissions, and the like.

you want some administrative knowledge then read "Linux in a Nutshell" or 'Linux kernel in a nutshell' (http://www.kroah.com/lkn/)

or just the basic knowledge then, some magazines based on linux, books like 'for dummies' series, as mentioned above, forums - like this one, also Linux Complete reference and/or a book just for the distribution [ also known as distro ] of the one, that you're using [i.e. opensuse, ubuntu, redhat, fedora... etc

and finally, you've to start using it.

A piece of advice, that I got late:
Linux, itself is as big and sound and deep as a sea. so try to be specific in terms of your field of interest.

http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php

Download .. Read ... Practice.....:jawa:

Here are some good bash (scripting lang) refs/tutorials; bookmark and read
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-G...tml/index.html
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

www.linuxtopia.org - a lot of docs for a lot of distros