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Besides Linux Kernel Newbies, there's also The Linux Documentation Project, which has en emphasis on users and system administrators but might be useful for new developers.

There are also many good books for developers:
Robert Love - Linux Kernel Development: a very good introduction, doesn't require much previous experience or knowledge about the Kernel;
Bovet and Cesati - Understanding the Linux Kernel: more thorough and advanced than the previous one;
Corbet, Rubini and Kroah-Hartman - Linux Device Drivers (this one is available for free under a Creative Commons license).

Among coutless other resources you can easily find online for all sorts of different projects and subsystems, including mailing lists.

--

The reason there is no single centralised place, or hub, for developers is because Linux is not really developed as a single big project. Many features and subsystems have their own websites, frameworks, development tools, mailing lists etc. I am not even sure how you would define "basic kernel code". A good place to start is writing device drivers, looking at a lot of kernel code, and fiddling with it.

Besides Linux Kernel Newbies, there's also The Linux Documentation Project, which has en emphasis on users and system administrators but might be useful for new developers.

There are also many good books for developers:
Robert Love - Linux Kernel Development: a very good introduction, doesn't require much previous experience or knowledge about the Kernel;
Bovet and Cesati - Understanding the Linux Kernel: more thorough and advanced than the previous one;
Corbet, Rubini and Kroah-Hartman - Linux Device Drivers (this one is available for free under a Creative Commons license).

Among coutless other resources you can easily find online for all sorts of different projects and subsystems, including mailing lists.

--

The reason there is no single centralised place, or hub, for developers is because Linux is not really developed as a single big project. Many features and subsystems have their own websites, frameworks, development tools, mailing lists etc. I am not even sure how you would define "basic kernel code". A good place to start is writing device drivers, looking at a lot of kernel code, and fiddling with it.

The definitive guide of the time was The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog by Ed Krol & published by O'Reilly. I still have a copy of the 2nd ed. on my bookshelf.

Ed was one of the few folks that did the research himself without a pile of other authors' guides lying around as a reference. He had to as there weren't any. Plenty of other guides came after this one, but this was the one the clueful folks had.

Before the GPL there was the GNU Emacs General Public License: http://www.free-soft.org/gpl_history/emacs_gpl.html .
A bit of history of the first open source license: http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch09.html .

BTW, Here is a good book on the subject (Embedded Android): http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920021094.do

may have been some BSD code in there

There have beem "some", it is a fact. How much was it is arguable, but definitely much more than "may have been some".

FreeBSD didnt even exist yet!

FreeBSD did not exist, but free BSD did. You knew it, right? Here is an amusing article for you:

How Free Software Contributed to the Success of Steve Jobs and Apple

For security -> http://oreilly.com/pub/a/windows/2004/03/30/hosts.html & For speed -> http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/excerpt/winxphacks_chap1/index1.html?page=3

"The host file on my day-to-day laptop is now over 16,000 lines long. Accessing the Internet -- particularly browsing the Web -- is actually faster now.

"From what I have seen in my research, major efforts to share lists of unwanted hosts began gaining serious momentum earlier this decade. The most popular appear to have started as a means to block advertising and as a way to avoid being tracked by sites that use cookies to gather data on the user across Web properties. More recently, projects like Spybot Search and Destroy offer lists of known malicious servers to add a layer of defense against trojans and other forms of malware.

BOTH of the latter quotes = SYMANTEC (SecurityFocus = subsidiary of theirs) http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/491

Agreeing with myself (& I'm one of the "old guys" that Mr. Day read from, want proof? Ask) - On gains in better:

1.) "Layered-Security"/"Defense-in-Depth"

2.) Speed

3.) Reliability

4.) Anonymity

* QUESTION: What have YOU done better to help improve conditions, Mr. "naysayer" troll?

Zero, right?

(IF you wish to continually expose yourself as nothing more than a defeating lying failing ad hominem attack using technically WEAK troll? Continue this... I'll GLADLY oblige you!).

APK

P.S.=>

"Not ad hominem at all. I didn't say that your methods didn't work, so it can't be ad hominem." - by omnichad (1198475) on Monday August 12, 2013 @03:02PM (#44544679) Homepage

No? What about your wisecracks stating I need meds (etc.) from you in your 1st post reply here?? Please - you're obviously NOT very intelligent being unable to remember that which you yourself, stated...

... apk

People hopped on the e-book bandwagon because it was cool, hip, and trendy to whip out your Kindle in the coffee shop or on the train, but now that people have gotten to see all the downsides of having books but not really having books the shine has worn off and they're back to buying hardcopies.

I got an eReader recently. I haven't bought any books for it, but I still can read all I probably want. And it is more convenient. I just use the local library to get the ebooks. The returns are hustle-free too.

On the other hand, I would only buy non-DRM ebooks, so maybe some O'Reilley books.

http://shop.oreilly.com/

my friend, i would recommend you go read a book. you don't understand how android is put together.
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920021094.do

"Patch [blah blah blah]" is also a traumatically stupid thing to say, because they have already done this.

let me try to explain this to you. android is linux + linux patches + the android plafform. the linux patches are largely, but not entirely there to support running the android platform. so saying you want to run chrome (desktop) on android doesn't make sense. it means you are,

1) running it on top of a linux that has irrelevant and probably detrimental patches.

2) running the entire android platform for no reason since you aren't running android apps.

at the very least, running chrome (desktop) on android means wasting memory and resources. at worst it means opening up the system to attack vectors for no benefit. if you all you are going to do is boot into chrome then you want the minimal linux that will allow that and to strip away everything else. that's why you have chromeos.

When I buy a printed book, I own the book. I can read the book whenever and where ever I want.

.

When I buy an eBook, I do not own the book. In order to read the book, I have to hope that some DRM server somewhere will authorize the eBook reader to show me the book I want to read.

I have books on my book shelves that are over 50 years old, and I can still read them fine. Can the same be said about eBooks 50 years from now?

Depends where you buy your books, there are plenty of books on Smashwords and other independent eBook vendors that have no DRM. O'Reilly publishes their technical eBooks without DRM restrictions.

Or , you can purchase books with DRM and strip the DRM using widely available tools. It's annoying to have to go through the extra step on content that you "own", but it assures that you'll always be able to read it, and on any device you own. Of course, if you're going to do that, then it becomes almost as convenient to just download a free copy online -- I don't know why publishers insist on making their content less convenient than the pirated alternative.

That may have been true years ago, but not now.
Most new HW is supported in Linux now, it's harder to find anything NOT supporting Linux these days.

While it may be true that many applications are not ported to Linux, what "cutting edge" HW are you referring to? Nearly every printer mfgr. supplies linux drivers, digitizers; yes, cameras; yes, data acquisition; yes, cpu/motherboard; yes, wireless chips; yes, soundcards; yes, video cards; yes, etc. etc. And these are in ADDITION to all old HW some of which windows support has long been gone,

See: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2012/05/linux-hardware-support-myths-a.html

Here's a pretty good book: Javascript: The Good Parts. You're welcome. :)

That's why I use Calibre + plugin to strip out the DRM from Amazon e-books. Then I can lend them to whomever I like!

That's why I refuse to buy from Amazon, even their so-called 'DRM-Free' books, because they don't offer eBooks in a universal format.

Buy direct from Baen and O'Reilly or, as a last resort, find the DRM-Free books on Kobo, because at least they offer them as epub downloads. It's not easy to sift the DRM-Free gems from the DRM'd dross at Kobo, but it can be done with patience.

You could go to O'Reilly and celebrate by buying any of their 50% ebooks. It jumps to 60% if you're like me and load up your shopping cart like a madman whenever their stuff goes on sale...

unfortunately for your accusations, O'Reilly IS a technolibertarian, overtly supports outsourcing of critical government functions, is mostly concerned with getting government "out of the way" to allow corporate "innovation," and the responsibility part of government is of little interest to him, as Morozov's piece suggests. Read: O'Reilly's "government as platform": http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596804350/defining_government_2_0_lessons_learned_.html Harvard Law Professor Jennifer Shkabatur's "Transparency With(out) Accountability: Open Government in the United States": http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2028656

Hard to know where to start, especially as you give no information on your target audience...Do they know stats already?
Also, if your target audience is used to GUIs rather than CL, then...
http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/954-introducing-the-r-graphical-user-interface/

Alternative, you use Web front-end here, (disclaimer, I've not tried it)

http://www.squirelove.net/r-node/doku.php

Writing a tutorial from nothing is hard. You can do this to get some good ideas:

1. Download a free evaluation copy of 'Minitab'.
(I'm not connected with Minitab, but I've used it a lot, and it's great 'basic' stats analysis software)
2. Install, and then open help
3. Consult 'tutorials' section :) Obviously, don't just rip off their stuff; not cool

As a suggested flow, I've found that, as a start, you can introduce basic stats, then demonstrate how the software works.
Using the same data-set for the first few, (say ten), lessons is better. Minitab tutorials keep changing the data, which confuses students.
You'll only need 5 columns or so, and remember to include some discrete variables to enable stratification of your continuous variables.
Use a real-world example, such as household expenses for different families, whatever.

For tutorial flow, what works for me as a 'basic' intro to a stats package:

1. What is data? What are statistics?
2. Types of data, how they look as raw data, (in the database) and then once we start to analyse them with stats and graphs (to start, just 'common' stuff like continuous variables, normal & lognormal, and discrete, binomial & poisson).
3. Basic stats & graphical analysis for single variables. Normality tests. Include time series plots as well as histograms / dotplots / boxplots.
4. Multivariate analysis; x/y charts, matrix plots, interaction plots.
5. Hypo tests (for both cont & disc variables)
6. Regression, (simple, then multiple if you're feeling brave)
7. Control charts (for both cont & disc variables)

If you work out how to do this in 'R', by actually using it, your tutorial will pretty much write itself, (keep saving your screens - Irfanview is a great, free, tool I use for this. Install, open, hit 'C' for manual or automatic screen save options.)

DF isn't exactly the same type of simulation, but it's a far better example of what just a couple guys can do (in only about six years, so far, I believe). A lot of the industry could be served by paying attention to it.

DF has a steep learning curve, but O'Reilly published a pretty great book on playing it, last year:

Getting Started With Dwarf Fortress.

the O'reily nut shell book is the thinest book (even thinner than C++)

You're right, O'Reilly's C++ In a Nutshell is a mere 810 pages long, whereas their Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition is a scant 768 pages.

When I think C++ and Perl, I think lean.

the O'reily nut shell book is the thinest book (even thinner than C++)

You're right, O'Reilly's C++ In a Nutshell is a mere 810 pages long, whereas their Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition is a scant 768 pages.

When I think C++ and Perl, I think lean.

O'Reilly sells their books DRM free in multiple formats. You can re download your books whenever you want and they will even sync your books to your Dropbox account if you so desire. Of course, they sell technical books not story books.

For tech books, I have been buying a lot from O'Reilly recently; they have fully DRM-free ebooks and half off sales about every month or so. It takes a little more time to get them to my Kindle (you have to email them to a special Kindle address or sideload them directly) but it's worth it.

Stallman mentions a Xerox printer, not Unix.

And despite the best attempts of computer science and software engineering, much of it is guided more by craft principles than by rigorous scientific or engineering methods.

And the interesting thing about all this is that there's a sizable group of programmers who not only think of programming as a craft, but want it to become even more so, up to the point of resurrecting the old three-level system of professional advancement from apprentice to journeyman then master craftsman. The book that introduced me to the subject was the quite inspiring Apprenticeship Patterns, which I highly recommend for anyone interested. And as usual, Wikipedia offers plenty of references.

Frankly the O'Reilly books are a bit passé these days. Look at the state of their C++ or Python books, either totally out of date or a joke. Exhibit A: the 60-page book on Scipy and Numpy, arguably the most important recent topic on Python, the one that makes it a real, pedal-to-the-metal competitor to Matlab.

I wonder how O'Reilly feels about being labeled this way?

Well http://shop.oreilly.com/category/series/hacks.do
So, profitable, would be my guess.
Anywho, I prefer the term Zen or Organic programming to hacking, I'll just go ahead and mark you down on my list as a convert.

How on earth is a markup language considered "programming"?

To be fair, HTML5 tries to go further than that.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/07/html5-apps-javascript-development.html

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920014225.do

http://magigames.org/runestone_defense.html

(Don't click the last one if you have deadlines looming. And if anyone knows how to solve the level that looks like a tie fighter I'd be much obliged)

Whether it succeeds or not (and whether it was a good idea to start with) are open questions.

How on earth is a markup language considered "programming"?

To be fair, HTML5 tries to go further than that.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/07/html5-apps-javascript-development.html

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920014225.do

http://magigames.org/runestone_defense.html

(Don't click the last one if you have deadlines looming. And if anyone knows how to solve the level that looks like a tie fighter I'd be much obliged)

Whether it succeeds or not (and whether it was a good idea to start with) are open questions.

I agree with your characterization of what good publishers do, but I think it's more about the publisher than the license. Good publishers do: 1) vetting, so crap doesn't go out under their name; and 2) editing, both for style/substance and copyediting. Books that don't go through that process are more hit-or-miss, because literally anyone can publish them. Some of 'em are good, and some not.

But I don't really see a license-related difference between "all rights reserved" books and "creative commons" books. Most books published on Lulu are all-rights-reserved, and the average quality isn't particularly stellar. And in the other direction, CC-licensed books published by major publishers are typically on a quality par with their non-CC-licensed books, e.g. O'Reilly's Open Books series meets the regular O'Reilly standards.

But what professional-quality ebooks are lawfully distributed DRM-free?

There quite a few publishers with "DRM free only" e-books. For example:

http://www.manning.com/
http://oreilly.com/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/

Encourage them if you do not like DRMed books.

Disclaimer: I have no personal experience doing this. I noticed on O'Reilly there is a cheap series of books by Sandy Antunes. I think surviving orbit will be your biggest challenge? No clue on the quality of those books ...

Disclaimer: I have no personal experience doing this. I noticed on O'Reilly there is a cheap series of books by Sandy Antunes. I think surviving orbit will be your biggest challenge? No clue on the quality of those books ...

O'Reilly puts animals on the cover of books.
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596004927.do?intcmp=ba-code-books-int-search-perl-ct

Discount code CYBERDAY gets you 50% off at O'Reilly's shop until November 26, 2012 at 11:59pm PT!

I'm not saying it's definitely what you want, but:

http://shop.oreilly.com/category/get/data-science-kit.do

That page was advertised on the front page of the site. Maybe these books are too basic; as you said, you don't need a quick review of data structures in R. But, they do at least have something.

I agree, though: I can't get very excited about e-book deals when I'm not sure of a topic in which one would be compelling anymore.

Whenever possible we provide them to you in several DRM-free file formats — PDF, ePub, Kindle-compatible .mobi, and DAISY — that you can use on the devices of your choice.

Furthermore:

Lending: If you buy an O'Reilly ebook from oreilly.com, you may lend it to another person, provided that you do not retain any copies of the book after you lend it. This is the same as the situation when you lend a used print copy—when you lend the copy, you deliver it to the buyer and no longer have a copy in your library. If you have bought a hard copy/ebook bundle, you may of course retain the hard copy, if you lend the ebook.

Resale: If you buy an O'Reilly ebook, when you are done with it you may resell it, provided that you do not retain any copies of the book after you sell it. This is the same as the situation when you sell a used print copy—when you sell the copy, you deliver it to the buyer and no longer have a copy in your library. If you have bought a hard copy/ebook bundle, you may of course retain the hard copy, if you sell the ebook.

A well written history of BSD is available as part of "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution":

http://oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/kirkmck.html

Basically NetBSD was the transition from a "one company" (cathedral) project to some internet centered adventure not unlike Linux (bazaar), hence the "Net" prefix.
At the time the only other variant was FreeBSD which targeted i386 and was more "user friendly", from that it evolved to be a run-anywhere highly customisable OS used in computing experiments as well as toasters.

Besides, there are so many to choose from.

Right, because Anders Hejlsberg, the creator of C#, was never inspired by C, C++, Java or J++. Oh wait, he was.

* References:
http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/03/an-interview-with-anders-hejls.html
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/yyaad03b(v=vs.71).aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg

That is the reason why I buy O'Reilly books straight from O'Reilly. If you buy several books at a time from them, they are reasonably priced, ebooks are DRM-free in all the major formats, you have access to the ebooks for life with the option of syncing with Dropbox, and if you buy paper books from them, ebooks can be bought for $5.00 more.

That website is almost as stupid sounding as your post.

I don't waste good time typing things to people who sound stupid, but I'm going to do everyone a favour who reads your post and thinks it makes sense:

http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2012/05/linux-hardware-support-myths-a.html

Result one of many for the query: https://www.google.ca/search?q=linux+supports+more+out+of+the+box+hardware+than+windows

Interestingly, my own post above is result #2 for me.

Your comment about Torvalds makes no sense; he hasn't had a lick of anything to do with drivers in a very long time, but if you knew anything about day to day maintenance of the kernel, you'd know that already. And your DVD isn't worth a cent to your argument and makes my point for me -- you're accustomed to installing Windows drivers I said, so you don't care I said, and you admitted it. Thanks for that.

On Linux, put in a LiveCD and go. Period. Almost every damn time, on hardware over ten years old to brand new.

Thought puzzle: if you were right, the LTSP wouldn't exist.

Microsoft, along with a few others. They are collected in this article: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/09/debunking-the-1-myth.html

This source says otherwise: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/09/debunking-the-1-myth.html

I actually paid for CND back in the day to get a Motif license...

I bought a CD-ROM of Motif 2.0 from RedHat way back in 1996 - I think it was the only thing they sold that didn't come with source code. When I recently moved house I found the CD-ROM, along with another disc containing a compilation of XView stuff that Ian Darwin used to sell.

I am trying to get back in, I got a degree before object orientated was big so I have to unlearn. I also have trouble remembering, but repetition is getting it into my head.

After much experimentation I recommend a combination of two sources

The New Boston and Learning Java

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596510510.do
http://www.digilentinc.com/index.cfm
http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs
http://www.parallax.com/

This technique is discussed in "Metasploit - The penetration testers guide" ( http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781593272883.do )

Excellent book by the way. After reading it, you'll never look at computer security the same way again, and may very well just switch to an Abacus with a box of crayons on top.

If it hasn't been mentioned yet, you'll want a second, deep-cycle battery rigged up in parallel with your regular one, but that cuts the connection when the ignition is off such that you can use the deep-cycle for accessories until it's dead, while not killing the ignition battery.

I've seen the circuit in a few different books; you might want to hunt down a copy of O'Reilly's "Car PC Hacks" or 50 Awesome Auto Projects for the Evil Genius, as I'd imagine they would go into it.

Javascript will insert a semicolon after a return statement if you have a newline before your return argument.

See my reply where I clarified point 7.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2934357&cid=40423915

i.e.
{
return
2;
}

Javascript will interpret this this as
{
return undefined;
2;
}

This bug can bite you in other ways. See my previous link to
http://oreilly.com/javascript/excerpts/javascript-good-parts/awful-parts.html
quoting...

Semicolon Insertion

JavaScript has a mechanism that tries to correct faulty programs by automatically inserting semicolons. Do not depend on this. It can mask more serious errors.

It sometimes inserts semicolons in places where they are not welcome. Consider the consequences of semicolon insertion on the return statement. If a return statement returns a value, that value expression must begin on the same line as the return:

return
{
        status: true
};

This appears to return an object containing a status member. Unfortunately, semicolon insertion turns it into a statement that returns undefined. There is no warning that semicolon insertion caused the misinterpretation of the program. The problem can be avoided if the { is placed at the end of the previous line and not at the beginning of the next line:

return {
        status: true
};

Any language that thinks it knows the intent of the programmer better then the programmer is just a hidden landmine waiting to go off.

Only RMS and his rabid zealots give a fuck about that. Normal people have real work to get done.

And what do you do when a proprietary vendor changes something in their code that breaks your application? If it's closed, you're unable to fix it.

How many hours of "real work" do you lose while you try to resolve the issue or find a workaround?

You can call RMS and his followers as "zealots," but ideas have practical consequences. In RMS's case it was not being able to fully utilize a printer that prompted him to start the GNU project. That was a tangible instance of closed source "ideology" preventing people from getting their real work done efficiently.

> could you please tell me where the language is fundamentally broken ?

I do WebGL development and for the most part enjoy the quick turn around time. (Thank god for "ShaderToy" www.iquilezles.org/apps/shadertoy/ )

While Javascript is a breath of fresh air from hard-core C/C++ work, Javascript is a piss poor programming language ...

0. typeof() is broken w.r.t. to arrays
var a = [];
console.log( typeof( a ) ); // does NOT return array, but object?!

1. Variables by default can be used anywhere without being declared. Have a typo? You will most likely never catch it unless
a) using an IDE
b) using the hack
      "use strict";
by placing that literal string hack near the top of your .js file

2. Stupid semicolon statement insertion.

3. ALL numbers are doubles. There are no native signed or unsigned or ints, nor floats. Doubles SUCK for performance especially when all you want & need is integer math.

4. No proper line concatenation
i.e. var a = "....\
foo\
bar\
"; //

Technically one shouldn't be able to escape the new line character, but it works ... for now.
  http://bclary.com/2004/11/07/#a-7.8.4
"A 'LineTerminator' character cannot appear in a string literal, even if preceded by a backslash \. The correct way to cause a line t
terminator character to be part of the string value of a string literal is to use an escape sequence such as \n or \u000A."

Haven't they learnt ANYTHING from C, Python, etc. ??

5. You have to very careful when doing (string) concatenation else you may not get what you expect.

6. No native way to include .js files inside another .js file and have a callback unless you write it yourself. i.e.
                var head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
                var script = document.createElement('script');
                script.type = 'text/javascript';
                script.src = url;
                script.onload = callback;
                head.appendChild( script );

7. The return statement is broken w.r.t whitespace. You can't have return on an empty line.
i.e var foo = (function( callback ) {
      return // doesn't work!
                1;
      }

8. All the debuggers suck ass. Good luck get it to show anonymous functions properly!

I could go one, but for a more complete list, see
http://oreilly.com/javascript/excerpts/javascript-good-parts/awful-parts.html