Being a know-nuttin noob I would like some suggestions on tutorials to learn Linux.

I guess what Im looking for is some training on CLI I am being tasked to extract info from our servers and I have a small tool box of commands. I reall need to know more about what the commands do, and understand whats going on and what to look for. When I learned DOS back in the day I would type in commands to see what they did ..... I cant very well do that on production servers. I have Ubuntu installed on an old desktop, And I have started there, however iI still lack some sort of structure to help give me the confidence. Are there any really good books for a novice beginner to read to learn this stuff right? I have watched some Youtube vids and they helped a lot but i still need more...

For the very beginning:
http://www.linuxcommand.org/
After that:
http://linux.2038bug.com/rute-home.html

Moved: This thread is more suitable in <Linux - Newbie> and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Before you get too far along, you may need to tell us more about this/these system(s) that you are going to work on. Also your level of skill in any other OS. Maybe even the use of the server and value of data. What would become of you if this data was lost or the server failed?

Normally a company should provide training but why waste money on training.

I suggest a course of some kind. Some are fee based online, some are book based. All set a training goal and test it by some means. You need to pass some course to prove to yourself you have learned it.

It would be unwise to put a newbie in charge of a server. You may wish to be very careful. You'd be blamed if your bork it.

Best way to learn? Have fun; try Live CDs, Vbox is cool as well. . .

Linux is very close to Unix, so Unix textbooks are very useful especially if you are interested in the command line.
Personally, I learnt to use Unix around 1991 with a Digital Research CP/M 86 background. The book I used was
"The UNIX operating system" by Christian Kaare and a french textbook by Jean-Marie Rifflet (there might be
an english translation). Another good book (in French, but again there could be a translation) was one by Christian Pelissier.

Other useful books are:
The Unix Operating System by Steve Bourne (Addison-Wesley, 1983)
The UNIX programming environment by Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike (Prentice-Hall, 1984)

The site bitsavers.org has some Unix manuals from AT&T, IBM (AIX), HP (HP-UX) and SGI (Irix).

On more specific aspects of Linux/Unix, you could have a look at the books published by O'Reilly especially
the book on the Bourne Again Shell and the one on sed and awk (useful if you need to write scripts to extract
information from log files).

For Linux specific aspects, there are online books by the Linux Documentation Project.

Howdy, my stuff is in my signature.

Very true, but if you know what distro they're using you should be able to set up a virtual machine with the same OS on your own box. Once you do that, you can play around with any command you like. Just make periodic backups of the VM file, and copy it back if you screw something up.

You can sit down with as much tutorials and books as you like, but in my experience learning Linux is all about just using it and looking up how to do things when you get stuck.

Ok thanks for all of the encouraging info. As I found an old POS pc by the trash, took it home, made it work. I'm going to install Linux Mint on it tonight.

The key to learning anything is hand-ons experience. A swimmer can read hundreds of books on swimming but will not accomplish anything unless he/she goes in the water.

Visit www.distrowatch.com for some distros to try.

Yep... I've got to agree with WhiteR4VeN's comment above. I personally have dozens of Linux books and other documentation and have read or looked through them all at some point but rarely look at them anymore, and most of my knowledge about any OS has come from actual use, experimentation, and participating on help forums such as this one. Knowing how to properly search the web for information plays a huge part in one's progress and success as well.

Have fun with Linux, and good luck to you, Lakedog!

Welcome to LQ!
The best resource is tldp