Getting Started In Linux

In previous posts, I've asked for the Slashdot community to help me identify good books and websites for developers and I thought the response was really useful. This time, I'd like to ask you all for your recommendations for great Linux beginner books and also what you think is the best way of showing off Linux on TV. Read on for more info ... I do this thing twice on month on TechTV's "The Screen Savers" where I try to show off something neat about Linux and Open Source software. At the end of each segment, I give out my email address for people to send questions. The question I get most is "What book should I get to help me learn Linux?" I have a couple of books that I do recommend, but I want to hear what you guys think so I can link to this conversation and have it be available for everyone to refer to.

Additionally, any tips on what you guys would think would make good open-source oriented TV and make people really want to try out Linux would be appreciated.

Comments

Good example for TV:

[Saint Aardvark]

Go to a site that makes you play whack-a-mole with pop-up windows in Explorer. Then go there in Mozilla.

Very visual, easily understood, and it'll appeal to everyone who's ever had that happen to them before.

Re:Good example for TV:

[Oliver Defacszio]

your bank's webpage is broken, you should tell them to fix it. Mozilla is more standars compliant than internet explorer. If they won't use correct HTML, then that's their fault.

Are you linux guys that naive? Seriously. What company of any size just suddenly jumps to attention to appease the nasal whines of someone using -- and let's be honest here -- an oddball product? Standards compliance means, say it with me, nothing in this world that is essentially run by popularity contest.

'Tell[ing] them to fix it' means bringing in some HTML or JS or PHP or Perl or ASP or whatever jerk, who doesn't work for free mind you, to make it go. And, why again? Oh yeah, for 0.03 percent of all potential clients. Ideally, sure, that's just what happens, but in the real world that e-mail never even gets read.

Your idealism is heartwarming, but in order to "tell" anyone anything, you'd better bring some actual business reasons that aren't comprised of a whiteboard presentation of HTML standards and a pocket-full of hope. You (and I) as Mozilla users are ostensibly alone and no one hears our screams.

Re:Good example for TV:

[los furtive]

I spent 3 years doing tech support with IBM for almost two dozen different companies, including no less than 4 banks. You would not believe how much the banks will compete to keep you as thier customer, and if it means making their browser Netscape/Mozilla compliant, most of them will do it. After all, for the pidly sum of $38,000, they can expect to keep at least 5,000 customers happy (and you know i'm guessing on the very very low end of the scale). 11.5% of the browser population is still a large part of a business' clientel. Another way to look at it, a user is just as likely to be gay as to use a non-MS browser. I'm just sayin'....

A Book just doesn't cut it

[Ignorant Aardvark]

Face it, a book just doesn't cut it. Nobody should be required to pick up a manual and read through hundreds of pages before they're able to use something. That's the main difference between products that fail and products that succeed. It all hinges on the usability and intuitiveness of what you're dealing with. What is needed is a really good "teaching Linux" distro. It installs automatically and flawlessly, and it first boots up into a tutorial that the user can go through while exploring the system and learning the ins and outs. Obviously you'd want to keep root access away from the newbie user until they get more adjusted. You can't expect someone to read a whole book and just "get it". You need to acclimatize people in gradually. This is one of the reasons Windows is successful and Linux isn't, for the most part: ease of use. Windows just works. To get a Linux install to my satisfaction took over 100 hours. Most people simply don't have that kind of patience.

Re:A Book just doesn't cut it

[SystematicPsycho]

Nobody should be required to pick up a manual and read through hundreds of pages before they're able to use something.

Err yes they should and that goes for anything technical. Reading and training are essential but practice is most important. We're not learning to ride a bike here. I think what your trying to say is that reading a book on programming isn't going to make you a good programmer because it won't. Often I see ppl ask dumb questions that could be solved by typing in a man command. I think the absolute first thing any newbie should read are these 2 documents ->

Asking smart questions
How to report bugs effectively

Re:A Book just doesn't cut it

[Radical Rad]

I have known many office workers who only became moderately productive using MS Office and Windows after studying books and going to classes. Contrary to your FUD, MS Windows doesn't 'just work' and it never has. There is an entire industry devoted to training users on Microsoft products and the fact that it exists is evidence that those products are not intuitive and only usable after many long hard hours of study and practice.

Furthermore, 'ease of use' is no longer a valid argument in the battle for the desktop. An office worker using X Windows has no more reason to open a command prompt than one using MS Windows. Star Office and Mozilla are accessible through icons, and the filesystem is easily accessible through Konquerer or Nautilus.

People who are resistant to switching to Linux are mostly that way because of their preconscious memories of the painful, slow learning process that they struggled through when they learned MS Windows. They fear 'learning a new operating system' when they don't even feel confident in the one they have been working on for a decade.

It is such a wonderful feeling when I show people that X Windows is just like MS Windows. Everything is done by clicking on buttons and files can be cut, copied, and pasted just like they are used to. Star Office 6 looks so similar to MS Office and Corel Office and Lotus SmartSuite that there just is no learning curve. They are immediately productive on their new, free system.

Well I have to go now and spread the joy of Linux elsewhere...

PS. What in the heck did you do for 100 hours? It took me about 10 minutes to tweak Redhat the way I like it.

Re:Learn the command line

[Waffle Iron]

Learn to use the command line and not a pretty gui, it will teach you alot about how Unix and Linux works, Plus it makes you look cool to your friends when ur flying though the command line:)

Yeah, I saw chrisd on the Screen Savers showing how to set up a UT game server on a Linux box. He got to the part where you start the server, which required typing in a command with some arcane options.

On TV, it looked just as impressive as Richard Nixon did debating JFK. The camera zoomed in and tried to focus on the tiny text, but to no avail. The Screen Savers host rolled his eyes and made a snide comment; viewers were referred to the show's website to find a copy of this magical command sequence.

The command line does not make for good TV.

Day to Day

[MBCook]

When I first started using Linux a few years ago, I did it just to see what it was about. At that time, I thought it was interesting, but didn't know that you could really DO anything on it other that use it as a server. Sure you could surf the internet, but...

It was only later that I found out you could wordprocess, play games, and do many other things. I would suggest showing how to do everyday stuff, as a comparison to Windows and/or OS X. I don't mean a "see Linux is better 'cause it doesn't crash and it does this and doesn't crash and..." kind of stuff. I mean showing that you can play MP3s and they work just as well as under windows. And that they sound just as good as under windows. Show a wordprocessor or two. Show some web browsers. Show it can play shockwave flash, java, and other things. Show Quake III and UT2k3. And make sure to point out that the performance is always like in windows, if not better. I don't mean braging, but more of "see we're just as good." Show how Linux can be used for many things. Play a DVD, burn a CD, etc.

Other than the above "practical" things, show some neat stuff. Show a few windowmanagers. Sure there is GNOME and KDE, but what about showing Enlighenment, WindowMaker (my fav), and other cool ones. Show Quake III in one window, UT2K3 in another (or maybe just two Quake III connected to eachother) and have something else up doing something; to show that Linux is good at juggleing things.

I know you've shown at least one of these things in the past (MP3s) but I don't get to watch much TV lately. And of course, these are just my ideas. I'm sure the other posters have come up with some cool ideas by now.

books

[sstory]

Probably the most important thing for a Linux beginner is a book on how to withstand infantile criticism by hordes of 17-yr-old nerds with a superiority complex. You'll see a lot of that if you try to learn linux. For not already possessing all the esoteric knowledge, you will be berated and demeaned in the foulest terms. Hopefully you'll encounter enough of the good free-software people to keep you involved. Furthermore I'd suggest reading In the Beginning Was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson. Good layman overview of the history/philosophy.

Re:jump right in

[EvanED]

While there are a breed of hackers who would consider "many hours" getting to a point where a system is set up, most people just want to use a computer and would consider that time fustrating rather than "gratifying." I know I got extremely fustrated trying to get XFree working under Mandrake, and the gratification of getting the nVidia drivers downloaded through Lynx and installed only slightly made up for it. Oh, the reason I had Mandrake? Mainly because I was having problems getting Red Hat to talk to my sound card. Despite many hours of work on that, I made no progress at all.

Re:jump right in

[IceCat]

Keep in mind there are two types of people (well, at LEAST two types of people) who want to use Linux, those that want to hack and tweek and those that just want to use it to get their work done.

I definitely agree though that for the hackers and tweekers your way works best in the long run. Often times when I am helping a friend with a Linux question the first thing I say is "Well open up a terminal window and then..."

Re:Learn the command line

[madfgurtbn]

Learn to use the command line and not a pretty gui, it will teach you alot about how Unix and Linux works

Please, no CLI! This is for newbies, and newbies don't want to know command line stuff. I have never seen Linux on TV where Chris or anyone else on tv who bothers to show even the simplest tasks accomplished without CLI.

Best thing to show on tv is that you can actually can get by without a command line. Show the config gui's. Show that you can accomplish real work without having to understand command line. CLI scares away newbies.

Newbies do not want to use CLI.
Newbies should not want to use the CLI
Newbies should not be expected by BOFH's to understand command line.

Newbies should experience free as in freedom. In the long run, that is the only real advantage we have.

Newbies need to understand where OSS comes from as a community, and how they can contribute to that community without writing code more than they need to "how Unix/Linux works".

Sorry, I will get off my soapbox now.

Carry on.

Start with Rute!

[digitect]

Start with Rute.

Linux on TV

[chunkwhite86]

The best way to illustrate the power of Linux on TV, is to demonstrate a Linux box doing something that is considered unusual and desireable. Something that will make people say "Wow... I can't do that with this other OS I'm using. I should try Linux." It shouldn't be too hard to come up with a bunch of gee-whiz cool tasks that Linux can do, and that other OS cannot.

Either that, or have Linux performing some intensive server oriented task, alongside a computer running one of those other, more common OS's. Show how Linux does more and does it faster.

Demonstrage *the power* of the command line!

[aquarian]

While newbies shouldn't be forced to use the command line, it might be nice for them to see why it's a great thing. Show them something really neat that they can do with the command line, which is awkward to do with a GUI. Make it something useful, which even if they're not doing now, they might want to later.

3 Req's

[Shelled]

1. To Start: Mandrake, Redhat or Suse. On the assumption that anyone interested in trying Linux has some computer experience (otherwise they wouldn't have heard of Linux), start with a 'does-everything' distro. Gnome and KDE are windowish enough to be manageable by anyone who knows that retractable tray thing isn't a cup holder and supermount will prevent the pain I went through trying to mount make my CDROM work in Redhat 5.2.
2. Neatest Thing: NFS. Show them how remote servers appear as as completely transparent subdirectories of Home and not as drive letters or mappings outside of the C: drive. Simple, but amazingly natural compared to the default Win method. (Yes, XP and 2K do mounts but not as default.)
3. Best Book: None. Google Groups all the way. Anything a newbie could ask has been answered ad nauseum and there's no chance of alienation from RTFM if you don't ask in the first place. Distro forums are also a valuable source of information.

Re:Favorite book

[tricknology]

This is a great book, however it is not for beginners. It is more of a reference for the intermediate to advanced user. A book for beginners should not assume that the user knows anything about Linux (or computers in general, for that matter).

Mod parent up

[Cutriss]

He's too right about the elitism attitude on the part of many in-deep Linux users. It's probably one of the biggest barriers-to-entry for well-seasoned Windows veterans.

Likewise, Linux users need to drop the whole "All Windows users are morons" attitude, because the odds are pretty damned good that at least 3/4's of those preaching the message are probably doing so from a Windows box. I'm on one right now. It's not long left in this world, however - I just need some disk space on the network to back up everything before I format the disks.

Hey. We all have to start somewhere. At least respect the fact that some of us are *interested* in Linux.

*Jump* at the chance to add another one to the fold.

Do what you can to help others out. This doesn't mean "go to LUGs and help out people". This means to actively keep an ear out for people who are interested in Linux. You might view it as signing a support contract for life, but the fact of the matter is that if someone's interested in Linux, you probably wouldn't have to support him for that long, and they're probably wanting a minimal amount of handholding anyway (Since they're being adventurous enough to switch OSes).

You want Linux to succeed? Show people why it's better. If Windows works for them, that's fine. Leave 'em the hell alone. If they come to you with a problem one day, though, then think of a way that Linux can solve it. It might be just the ticket.

Define Beginners ...

[spannah]

There are 2 very distinct classes of beginners, the technical power user that is beginning in Linux, and the absolute beginner that still has trouble with windows.

For the power beginner the O'Reilly books will do, as a number of people have mentioned before.

The absolute beginner won't be able to make it through all the geek speak in O'Reilly books. Although I hate to say this probably a "dummies" or "idiots" book would be better. I remember seing also a "visually" series with lots of pretty pictures. Which one of those I don't know, I'm a power user.

Confirms all Linux problems

[m00nun1t]

This thread is exactly what I was expecting... the vast majority are people saying "read the man pages", "just work it out yourself and install it", or "read 'Linux for 1337s'".

These people are newbies. They don't know what man is. They don't know what bash is. Many of them don't know what a CLI is, and if they do, have no idea of the power of the Linux CLI. They probably don't even know what a distro is. They've probably never even installed Windows, much less any sort of *nix. They need their hand held, people . This is the exact attitude preventing main stream adoption of Linux.