I've been using Mandrake 9.1 for the past several months and I've been wondering how to gain a more intimate knowlege of linux. Where has everybody else gained their knowlege? Books? Different distros? LFS? Time?

Please give me your feedback at how you became a nixwiz so I can learn to be one too.


Thanx in advance...

I discovered the links in my sig and a few good bbs such as this one and the Gentoo one.

First I would suggest a good book, this varies among people. For me, I am a little on the dumb side, so I like a book to be simple stupid. The one that is great for a beginner that is familier with Windows is Linux for NT Administrator. I think that is the name, the book is at my parents (trying to get dad hooked on Linux). If you want the ISBN number let me know and I'll get it tomorrow. Also, most of the O'rielly books are good. Just go to a Barnes and Noble and start looking through there Linux/UNIX books and see which ones you like. Also I have got alot of good advice here, this is the best Linux forumn around! But it all boils down to just doing it.

I'm more like a 'nixidiot or 'nixmoron but what little I know I learned from playing with the system (usually end up screwing up something major) using Slackware or LFS will probably give you more of a "get your hands dirty" Linux feel Mandrake tends to do alot of the hard work for you (setting up sound cards, NIC's, etc..) through wizards but with LFS and a few other distros you will have to get into the command line and use it. As for books I like the O'reilly books and the One Page Linux Manual also do some searching on Google/Linux but the best way to learn is to just use it just make backups in case you screw it up. Like I often do.

Bubba169

Hmm... I learned little things from different places..
Forums, Linux sites.. and a book that I didn't even finish (why? because I'm really lazy to read)

I started out with two Linux books, one was a small Linux book oriented towards a beginner and the other book was more in depth. I only used the more in depth book when I wanted to look up info on a specific task that was of special interest to me. By coincidence, I also found myself taking a Unix class in college. To my surprise I realized that most Unix commands are the same as Linux commands. I had not realized that Linux was a type of Unix. I also recently took a college class that was mostly about networking computers with Red Hat Linux 7.3, Windows 2000 and Cisco routers. That was interesting for me!

Every once in a while I try something new on my computer while using Linux, I want to keep learning. There is still much I do not yet know such a how to compile a kernel and how to use IRC or whatever it is called. About a year ago I learned how to forums like this. I mainly learned what interested me the most first. There are some basic things I have not yet learned.

Every once in a while I attend the local monthly Linux club meeting although I can not say I actually learned very much there. It is interesting to see how many Linux users there are in our small city, they seem to be everywhere.

Google can be your best friend at times like these.

Good hardcopy books:

O'Reilly's Running Linux (great for learning how to setup, install and configure Linux) and Linux in a Nutshell (my most used, a bash reference)

The Rute guide is a good hard copy buy as well.

Thanx for all the help! I actually already have Running Linux and have read pretty much the whole book, minus the networking chapters. Thanks for all the links and the one page manual.

Later,

as for me, i bought corel linux long ago and got the manual as a little help on my way of learning linux. and since i am now in a CPA course (computer programming and analysis) in my college, we had a unix course (but most of the stuff taught was on konsole/xterm/telnet sessions) . there are times when we use the GUI but mostly not.

if u want a book covering the basic stuff of linux, get "a practical guide to linux" - i forgot who was it by, but i will check it tonight. it was a book recommended by linus torvalds himself