Hello,

I am brand new to Linux and I am trying to teach myself the basics. It is a little overwhelming.

Can anyone recommend where to start? I want to know from the very basic concepts.

Any recommendations on a task to try? I have gotten as far as creating additional user so that I wouldn't log in as Root.

Now what?

Well, depends what you want to do and how you'll be using the system. Most distro's today come with a shiny GUI to use applications, so you just simply start using them.

If you want to learn more about the command line, then start by reading some of the basic commands, then teach yourself how to write shell scripts and so on.

I would like to learn from the command line rather than the GUI. I work for a hosting company and I am trying to go the technical route. We primarily work with customers that are running RHEL 5.1.

Thank you for your post.

Welcome!!

http://tldp.org
get the Bash Guide for Beginners

Install Linux

Start trying things

Well if you're working for a hosting company you'll probably likely need to learn some of the basics of Apache, MySQL, PHP and Linux all together.

Start with learning some of the basic linux commands to browse around the filesystem like:

ls - lists files and directories in present working directory
cd - change working directory
cat - display the contents of a file on stdout or the screen
tail - view the end of a file
chmod - change permissions of a file or directory
chown - change ownership of a file or directory
cp - copy a file or directory
df - display partitions/filesystems statistics
mount - show mounted filesystems
mkdir - make a directory
touch - change file timestamps or create empty file
rm - remove or delete a file
rmdir - remove an empty directory

And there are plenty of other commands. Take a look in the /bin directory for some OS related commands, use the man page to read on what they do by issuing man <command>.

I also recommend learning a command line editor, specifically vi which enables you modify and edit files.

Then once you get the hang of issuing commands and familarizing yourself with most of the basics, start learning how Apache works for webserver administration by viewing the configuration files and so on with the others mentioned.

Cool,

Thank you for your help! I know these are really entry level questions, but what is the command to add a file?

I am using a really cheap cloud server that has CentOS running on it and I am just playing around in it.

Create file command?
How do you upload files from the command line?
Can I save a PDF in a file in Linux?

Please forgive the ignorance!

You can use the touch command or open an editor like vi and save the file after making edits.

To upload from a different machine, you can use scp or rsync to upload/copy over to another machine.

You can save an existing PDF file, not create from the command line (I'm sure there are tools out there but I'm unaware of any off the top of my head if you're wanting to create one from command line), but you'll likely need to use the GUI to view the file, using one of the several PDF viewers.

Well depends a LOT on what you want to do. If you would like to learn how to do some basic programming then I would suggest the books by "O'reilly" (just google that), if you would just like to use it then there you go!!

Here's a good tutorial; a tad old maybe, but the cli doesn't change (much)
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

Centos specific (NB: Centos = free RHEL, so manuals are the same)
http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_boo...ion/index.html

Welcome to LQ