Windows Admin Expanding Horizons...
 

This might have been asked and answered a 1000 times. If so, I apologize. I am about as fluent as you can get in the Windows environment and I am back in school working on my masters in computer science. I have decided to begin a sabatical from Windows to Fedora. I'm going to see if I can be 100% Fedora dependant for at least 6 months and then evaluate my next steps.

What I would like to know is what is THE resource for teaching yourself about Linux/Fedora? Something along the lines of Programming Windows in C by Charles Petzold. I don't need every detail explained I do need a solid presentation of the basics so I can move into the advanced on my own. NOTE: I am not looking for a Linux development resource (that's down the road) I am looking for a Linux Administration technical guide that you guys think is the "cat's meow".

All opinions are welcome including RTFM but if you RTFM me then throw me a link. There's only about a million hits on google so I thought I would start here and get some good advice first.

BTW, I'm here because at this point my Linux understanding is such that if you tell me to "recompile the kernel, I get a physical memory dump and then I GPF with a blue screen".

I just need a good place to get started with a solid table of contents.

Best Regards,

Rex Winn

P.S. - Yes, I know I'm verbose. I'm trying to get better. I know there's a cure...

Welcome,

I would say a good place to start is the The Linux Documentation Project, http://www.tldp.org. The docs are generally very good, but it varies depending on the author, how knowledgable you are in the subject, and how interested you are in the subject. Also, be aware that some of the material is out of date and that each distribution can have their own quirks of how to do things. Of course if you have a question on anything you read, you can always post a question here.

im in the same boat, except for the getting a masters part (im getting a bachelors, in EET not CS)
but any way, i just took my companys server from WinNT to RH9, with the help of the RedHat Linux Bible (FC1 included on 3 cds) .. its gotten me fluent enough to get it installed and broken with barely enough lingo to pass as a newb on here .itl get you going but a ton of stuff is left out as well, ie: experience, not everything in the book will work exactly right the first time, I kinda think its actually intentional though. With a little help from the crowd (primarily linuxquestions.org), everything is working fine, and I think im -starting- to pick up -some- particulars.

if someone else can recomend a better book, please do, i would appreciate that

id recomend no book., its realy pointless, a book on somthing that can change compltley over night, id say go to linux.org and read some of teh docs, there a good start as they go over the brod part of everyhitng, like what it is, and some little stuff here and there, once you start using linux youll get actualy specific questions, then you can go to google.com and they have pretty much every doc u can think of, or you can try here,

Some things have changed overnight but the underlying ideas behind capturing and implementing the changes have not. Consider the 2.6 kernel. It's a new kernel, you want you got to build it in and compile it. Same as other kernels, yeah some of the steps change but it's still the same process I am after the GROCK of those core concepts.

- Rex