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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.
Distribution: Fedora, Debian, OpenSuSE and Android
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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...
Originally posted by Tech1 I'd just like to learn how to program the kernal, and program around linux, but not make programs themselves..
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.
Originally posted by Tech1 I am still not sure what i want to do for computers, what are most games programed in, ect?
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:
Originally posted by Tech1 How hard is it to learn C? And what else can you do with it?
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.
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