Hi, new member of the linux community, or at least working towards it. I am in love with Linux, the idea of Linux, and Im working steadily towards ridding myself of windows. My dual boot works fine, and for never even touching unix in my young 17 years or computing, (yup commadore 64 days) Im doing pretty well. Ive been drawn to it ever since I saw screen shots of mandrake 9.1, and since I read some license agreements that I "subject" myself to everytime I want to use software on M$ WinXP.

So for the bad part, Im a newbee, and please dont flame me for asking this, I went from freezing during bootup, to starting at a command prompt, to no sound with an audigy 2/asus mobo sound, (neither worked) with never even touching this stuff, to fixing it all by reading on my own. (yeah it too two weeks, but Im new, and Im determined) I do my homework, so please dont flame me.

Im confused on something, but I dont know what. It seems Im not understanding something to linux, missing a big, important chunk. So, further reading lead me to believe its the file system. Thats most likely true, so where could I possibly find a guide to teach me this, from almost like hitting power button up? It may be somethinge else, it may be because I dont uderstand the commands, even though mandrake is point click. Maybe you could suugest something totally different to help me get started? Ive coded more basic, java, java script by hand than most have even looked at, so Im no idiot, although I feel like one in this situation. I hate asking for help as much people hat noobs, so, be gentle, please?


Ohhhh shizwa... I see its the wrong forum, dammit.. I just woke up with enough ballz to post this, and well you see...

Welcome to the forum. LQ is a very civilized place and NO ONE is for being a newbie. In fact, if you look over the recent posts, you can see that they range from Programming questions (which I personally don't touch :-)) to the more basic questions.

If you need a starter guide have you tried The RUTE Handbook (http://www.icon.co.za/~psheer/book/index.html.gz). Alternatively, you could buy a book specific to your distro - eg Red Hat distros have a number of dedicated books.

To reiterate, you will not be flamed for asking a question, the worst that can happen is that you'll be told to search Google or this site or to read the install notes.

Good luck

Here are my suggestions.

# Essential reads/downloads:
Rute User's Tutorial and Exposition
Linux Newbie Administrator Guide

# Linux filesystem structure
Directory Navigation Help File
Filesystems, Directories, and Devices Help File
Proper Filesystem Layout


# Basic Linux security
Linux Questions Security references
Security Help Files
Linux Administrator's Security Guide
Security Focus
Linux Security
Firewalls and Security

Another suggestion is to get a less point n' click distro. I suggest Slackware, but Gentoo or Debian or many others are good as well. You seem to want to learn, and your not going to be getting the full learning experience w/ a "desktop" distro (RH,MDK,Suse,etc).

You have enough experience to install and administer a "real" distro without any problems, so don't fear.

I want to say thanks. For being nice and warming me up, then for the guides, and especially for the distro switch. I dont know why it didnt hit me before, but that seems the best route. I could read all day like most of us, doesnt matter unless we use or actually retain it, right? But regardless, it lets me hit specific problems and research them from there.

But now, without wasting too much space, alot of sites could learn from the people @ linuxquestions.org - Ive found my new home, and though I cant offer anything yet, give me time, and I give back, believe me. But I am really impressed, and honestly, I havent taken the time to look at the mods or who runs this place, but pat on the back from me to you, a big one...

Just a suggestion - I felt the same as you, so I became a contributing member.