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Teaching Linux/Unix Basics to Microsoft Junkies?
flupps asks: "I've been asked to hold a two-day crash course in a class of students that currently are studying to become MCSD certified. I'm looking for ideas how to set this up. I was thinking about starting with some general file system descriptions, where to find what files, the man pages, the tab-button, etc.
After that move on to some of the daemons and just explain what they do." He's got at least one idea to start with (below), but what must-have skills or demonstrations would you add?
I also plan to set a database program in VB (one of the certificates in the MCSD suite) against a MySQL or Postresql db and show that there are free alternatives that works as well as SQL server.
What would you think could be a good addition to teach them?
This is in no way meant to be a very advanced course, but I want to show some of the excellence of *nix and why you sometimes can save time and stability and maybe make them interested and read up more by themselves afterwards.
Any suggestions very welcome.
is teaching cat | grep . I don't think I use any command combo more than this other than ls -al. Piping and redirection is really important stuff for Microphiles to learn right away. It's a great way to show off the power of a CLI.
Make sure you teach them how to compile and install software. When I first learned *nix I learned how to navigate the file system, run things, edit files, move things around, etc. But it took me like a week to figure out how to install and set up new software. I remember having the hardest time with it because every single piece of software was different. There was no standard setup.exe or *.rpm all the time. I had to make, make install. And that didn't always work either. That, imho is one of the major differences and difficulties there is in moving from windows to *nix. In windows once you've installed one piece of software you've installed them all.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
instead of doing like MCSE and giving them fish, teach them how to fish.
/etc - it's where most of the config files are. /usr/bin - it's where most user programs live /usr/sbin - it's where most superuser programs live
/all - in unix we have ifconfig' some basic translations of basic stuff.
"This is
This is
This is
If you're interested in using a command and don't know how, use 'man command' and get them familiar with how to use commands. "
You've got two days - so some basic 'how to get info' and then examples of getting that info, would be good.
Possibly a run down of 'in Microsoft, you have IIS, in Unix there's apache, ftp, etc'. 'In MSFT, you have ipconfig
How about running through the 'Administrative tools/Common' menu in 2000 and showing them where all those toys live in *nix - or where they might be able to find them.
But make sure you teach them how to fish for themselves - I suppose MSFT has the help pages, but man pages are our best equivalent. Or homepages for the package in question where applicable.
Good luck!
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
I also plan to set a database program in VB (one of the certificates in the MCSD suite) against a MySQL or Postresql db and show that there are free alternatives that works as well as SQL server.
I would qualify that - you'll probably have at least one person in the group who's up on MySQL and/or PostgreSQL deficiencies (yes, they have them). Don't try to convince them that MySQL can be a drop-in replacement for SQL Server 2000. Both MySQL and PostgreSQL *can* be used in many situations, and should be considered along with other options re: price/performance, but don't go overboard and talk down to MS people saying MySQL is as good as (or better) than SQL Server. It does a disservice to everyone involved.
Covering RPMs and/or apt-get technology might be useful at the end of 2 day overview.
What would help more than anything else is showing people where/how to get help - online resources (RPMfind, for example) and whatnot. There's only so much you can cram in to two days - don't overdo it. Cover the basics in detail, and give resources to visit afterwards for people who want to learn more and/or experiment.
creation science book
I'm also assuming they don't need to know how to set up and install a system, just be a user. They should know how to configure their own environments, set environment variables, etc. System stuff should be limited to the software they might be using and managing -- where are the logs and conf files, how to install, and so forth.
Free alternatives to costly software is a great idea. What about a brief discussion of Apache, JavaServer/JSP, Xerces, Xalan, etc? No need to get into the nitty gritty, but let them know there are free, multiplatorm alternatives to everything. My alternative to Visual Studio is Visual SlickEdit.
One of the things that helped me out was a page I found that showed me the unix equivalent of dos commands. It looked sorta like this.
DOS Unix
cd cd
md mkdir
rd rmdir or rm- f -f
type cat
more more
attrib chmod
edit vi, pico, emacs
Do this for the filesystem too. initab and rc.d are like autoexec.bat and config.sys. It will be tons easier for them to learn if they already have a foundation to build on.
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Forget about MySQL. It's a nice DB but can't really compare to Oracle or SQL Server.
My final tip: Don't try to convert them or bash MS solutions, that would only alienate them. Just show how to get the work done in unix, and maybe they'll realize it's easier and develop further interest.
Not to try and make it a Linux tradeshow. If I go to a Linux class and all they do is try to show off the nifty things Linux does without teaching me anything I want to know, I'm going to wlka out and get a refund. The point of teaching a class is just that, to teach. It's not for advocacy or verbal masturbation. What's more you are likely to alienate the very people you hope to educate. When you act like a condecending jerk and crow on about how superior your OS is, it just makes people shut down. More, if you get someone who's knowledgable about both systems, they are going to call you to carpet on the fact that Windows can and does do most of what you are selling as Linux only features like SSH for remote administraton. For example: not only can you install an SSH server in Windows if you like but Windows XP comes with a built in remote administration feature.
IF you are ever in a situation where you are teaching a class on Linux don't be cocky, condescending or anything like that and don't try to turn it into some kind of wizbang tradeshow. Teach people the basic things they need to know, how to navigate the CLI, how to work RPMs, how to manage users, how to look at what's running and so on. Give them real knowledge they can use. IF you do that, you make Linux less sacry and forieng and maybe they start to use it. IF you act as you've suggested all you are going to do is reenforce the stereo type of *nix people as stuck up assholes that hate Windows for no good reason.
Teach, don't preach. It's a class, not a chruch.
"Aahhhhhh!!! Passwords in plaintext."
No, not with the Windows telnet server it isn't. By default it's set to use only NTLM authentication, which is encrypted. You can set it to accept plaintext as well but that's not the default.
You need to back up and do something more fundamental before you start showing them filesystems and daemons. You need to compare the two competing philosophies that drive Windows and Unix cultures.
After this balancing act, then you can begin to lead them down your path of showing them practical items. At each point you can refer back to these fundamentals. For example, when it /etc, you can explain why Unix admins think text file configuration is inherently more stable and powerful than registry keys, because without such an explanation the Windows admins will typically see it as quaint and backward. Again, when you get to /dev, you can show the inherent debugging power of being able to do things like "tail /dev/midi00" to debug a connector on the computer, even if that data is not useful immediately. You can show how grep, awk, and perl can be chained together to do advanced data processing (on text) that would not be possible on Windows without a specific feature to make it happen. The key is to refer back to a specific philosophy for each exercise, so they can see the big picture.
None of them will watch a hands-on lecture and run out screaming "I've got to convert to this immediately! He broke out this thing called grep and it was.... it was.... AMAZING!" :-) Rather, you want to give them a clear understading of our culture, and just like how a high school senior goes to a college campus and says, "Yeah, I can see myself here" you might kindle an interest in some of them to find out more about how we *nix people think.... and that would be the first step to bringing them over.
Use the right tool for the right platform.
Sure, DOS has had scripting and pipes from day one (well, unless you tried MSDOS 1.0). Were they as useful as their Linux counterparts? No freakin' way.
Why does TYPE not take stdin? Why is "copy con" equivalent to "copy con:"? (And, why is "copy con.txt" ambiguous?)
How can a batch file determine if a directory exists? Hint:
if exists c:\foo\con
yields different results in different DOS versions
DOS for the longest time failed the basic tests. And for the longest time, I was working with the MKS toolkit, replacing the ones that didn't quite do what I wanted them to do with copies ported from comp.sources. But it never became UNIX.
NT is still rife with inconsistencies in the CMD shell, and I don't know (nor care to know) if or when they get partially fixed.
The point is: if you want to use Windows, use Windows tools. Learn how to use VB Script to its effect. Learn MSVC if you must. Prentending that it's another UNIX if you squint right will hurt you. Windows is not designed to be UNIX.
Every time I use Windows on the premise that an OS is an OS and a command shell is a command shell I get hurt. I should have learned that lesson from VMS years before.
Does anyone knows if the Posix subsystem still exists in Windows XP? That was the worst checkmark compatibility I ever saw. You could run Posix code on NT, to allow NT to be purchased by the federal government. And unless you wanted to do actual work with it, the compatibility was fine.
It is completely beyond me why people are porting Apache to Windows. NT comes with a perfectly functional web server, why bother replacing it? Don't get me wrong, I hate IIS with a vengeance, but the loopholes in the underlying operating system (like the $::DATA bug) will have to be special cased in Apache too. And the $DEITY like privilege issues that plague the IIS indexing server will plague Apache just as well.
Possibly even worse, because code ported from UNIX will have to be modified to suit NT's security model, a redesign from scratch really is the only appropriate way to deal with such huge gaps in design philosophy.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
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