What's the best way to learn linux?
 

I want to get into linux and linux programming, what's the best way to do that?

What should i learn so i can get linux to the max it can be, learn the console, ect?


I own two books already:

"Linux for Windows Addicts" Michae Joseph Miller
"Sam's Learn Linux Mandrake in 24h" - Sam's Teach yourself

I would start by installing and playing about with a linux system. Read of much documentation as you can (check out http://www.tldp.org) then ask well thought-out questions on this site! The term 'Linux programming' is a bit vague. I take it you mean writing applications for Linux yeah? First you'll need to understand a few languages. C and C++ are most often used for applications, although there are loads of languges out there.

cheers

Jamie...

I'd just like to learn how to program the kernal, and program around linux, but not make programs themselves..

I'm trying all sorts of linux flavors, seeing what i like, my ISP must love me.. In the past few days downloaded over 6GB in linux files..

Slackware9, redhat8, redhat9, mandrake9, college linux, knoppix, debian3

If you want to know about kernel hacking its is C all the way!

cheers

Jamie...

How hard is it to learn C? And what else can you do with it?

Everything. My suggestion is just install it and start playing with it. Think about everything you like to do with a computer and go get the Linux aps to do them. Compile everything you can from source if you really want to get to the nitty gritty of Linux. A properly set up KDE installation on your favorite distro is a beautiful thing. Check out the O'Reilly books, and the Bible associated with your distro. Don't run as root and you can pretty much play around as much as you would like. Have fun while getting your work done, that's what the penguin is all about...

How do i run as a SU in the console? I forgot :(

as a what?

if you mean you want to switch to root, it's just "su -"

So what else can i do besides kernal config with C?

You mean, compile your own custom kernel, or actually code a device driver or some part of the kernel? The former doesn't require C at all, check out http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO.html. As for coding a kernel module or something, you need to have a really good grasp on C to do that- I used to really wanna do that too, I just kind of skimmed through "The C Primer," read the "Kernel Module Programming Guide," and inserted a really crappy "device driver" that crashed my computer :(. As for that last post of yours, you can use C/C++ for just about anything.

I am still not sure what i want to do for computers, what are most games programed in, ect?

C/C++...usually with the opengl lib for graphics.

http://www.soldierx.com/books/Teach%...Days/index.htm

http://fly.cc.fer.hr/~unreal/theredbook/

These guys aren't telling you much... If you want to learn programing you would be best to either have a friend or go-to guy, or take a college course (or two!) in programming. And even then it helps to have a fundamental understanding of binary and how programs are run by the CPU, memory, etc.

If you just want to fool around to see what proggraming is like, quick and easy without the classes, it would be best to start with (bash) shell scripting to learn the fundamentals of programs themselves. Check out this document:

http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/abs-guide.pdf

Whoa there Tech1.

A completely agree with Shinobi, if you are asking this kind of question then its clear that you need to learn how to program in general before you learn C, especially to the level thats needed for Kernel hacking. As already suggested simple shell scripts will teach you some of it, you may also want to look into some Perl, Python and Pascal.

good luck!

Jamie...

It's Python. :)