Learning More About Linux?

teh moges asks: "From an administrator point of view, I know a lot about Microsoft Windows: where files are stored, where settings are, which registry keys to edit, how to change drivers, and so on. I made the initial switch to Linux a year ago. I now feel capable enough with using Linux, from an end user's point of view, so that when things go wrong, I can fix them. I now want to become even more familiar with Linux. Are there any great resources, such as websites, wikis or books for someone that wants to find out exactly how Linux works and how to fix and modify it?"

Comments

Only thing to understand...

[fimbulvetr]

Linux is files. The entire OS is based on files. Things to run on startup? Files. Opening hard drives? Files. Drivers? Files. (kernel mods)

No magical black box registry, windows drivers, etc. Once you understand this, other things will come easier.

Re:Only thing to understand...

[fimbulvetr]

I can treat everything in proc like a file. Like cpuinfo, or net/arp or THM/temperature. I can echo things into them to change processor speeds, networking options, etc.

Slightly more managable? You show me one time when proc corrupted simply by "being there" in a stable kernel and I'll give that assertion to you.

Re:What distro?

[corvair2k1]

Sure thing.

Get yourself a Haynes manual for your model vehicle.

Linux from Scratch

[jomas1]

Check out http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/livecd/ and http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/

Try creating a distro of your own and you should get a handle on the mysteries of the OS. If you don't have spare hardware check out virtualbox.org and try creating your lfs distro on a virtual x86 computer

Re:Linux from Scratch

[cyphercell]

The first time I went through LFS I purchased the book. I think it probably saved me a week or two. Also, I use LFS primarily as a sandbox, if I want to test something I use LFS, when I need to get some work done I currently use Debian. I feel it is absolutely imperative for a desktop system to be somewhat dependable. Go ahead and break your LFS system, reiterate over your LFS system several times experiment with package management, configurations, bootscripts, break it, fix it, and customize it. Currently I'm on my fifth iteration of LFS, it's really been the best thing I've found.

No one answer.

[normuser]

I dont have one magic answer.
Forums are good for getting and sharing information on specific problems as long as the "google it yourself" crowd havent invaded. (how else would you have found the forum?). http://www.linuxquestions.org/ is a good start.
There are varias wiki's specific to certian subjects.
And I dont mean to sound rude with this, but please read the man page first. Weather or not you understand it at the time.

On a side note the best way I have found to learn about something is to break it first. but maybe thats just me.

Do what I did

[stinerman]

I fancied myself a Windows "power user" and then GNU/Linux was foisted upon me because of a hardware crash. My backup system wasn't good enough to run XP, so I tried Red Hat 9. It certainly was a bitch, but I leaned GNU/Linux by doing the same thing I did when I was learning Windows: poke and prod at the system and see what changed. Doing is the best way of learning.

Don't really worry too much about a specific distro. I went from RH9 to Fedora Core to Ubuntu to Debian over the span of about 4 years. Once you learn enough, you can pick up any distro without too much hassle.

My best advice is to pick a distro and dual boot with XP/Vista. Every day try to use your GNU/Linux distro a bit more each day. Be sure to try to fiddle with settings. Just make sure you have a backup ready for any important data. For awhile there, I was reinstalling the OS weekly. Don't be afraid to experiment.

Re:Real men

[twistedcubic]

Bzzt! Real men use both. Sometimes pictures/illustrations/explanations are better in one than the other.

Start with Slackware. Seriously.

[SadGeekHermit]

Your best bet is to start with Slackware 11, it's a manual distribution which will force you to actually get involved with it and learn how things work under the hood.

For example, you have to write your own iptables firewall script. But by doing this, you'll be able to understand the output of "iptables --list" on any distro out there and see what it's doing behind the scenes (for instance, amusingly, what holes does it leave open if any?).

You can download the distro here, for free:
http://www.slackware.com/
(my favorite mirror is: http://slackware.cs.utah.edu/pub/slackware/slackwa re-11.0-iso/)

There's a good book on it available here: http://www.slackbook.org/

Think of it this way (using a car analogy like the other guy, but more seriously):

If you learn to drive in a car with a five speed stick and a clutch, you'll be able to drive almost any wheeled vehicle on Earth with very little futzing around. It's almost like having a superpower.

But if you start out driving an automatic, you'll ONLY be able to drive automatic until somebody teaches you manual. And you won't have any reason to learn it, so you'll miss out on a potentially important skill.

It's better to start out with something challenging and switch to the easy stuff later.

Go Slackware, be a nerd like us! You'll thank me later.

Books

[Knuckles]

BOOKS:
Essential System Administration By Æleen Frisch
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/esa3/index.html

Unix Power Tools By Shelley Powers, Jerry Peek, Tim O'Reilly, Mike
Loukides
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/upt3/index.html

Running Linux By Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, Matt Welsh
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/runlinux5/index.htm l

The UNIX Systems Administration Handbook by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder,
Scott Seebass, Trent R. Hein, et al.
http://www.amazon.com/UNIX-System-Administration-H andbook-3rd/dp/0130206016/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b/104 -2587738-8696715?ie=UTF8&qid=1176522696&sr=1-1

The Practice of System and Network Administration by Thomas A.
Limoncelli, Christine Hogan
http://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Admi nistration/dp/0201702711/ref=pd_sim_b_4/104-258773 8-8696715?ie=UTF8&qid=1176522696&sr=1-1

Martin F. Krafft: The Debian System: Concepts and Techniques
http://debiansystem.info/

Benjamin Mako Hill, Jono Bacon, Corey Burger, Jonathan Jesse, Ivan
Krstic: The Official Ubuntu Book
http://www.amazon.com/Official-Ubuntu-Book-Benjami n-Mako/dp/0132435942

Re:Roll your own distro?

[harryman100]

I'm not shitting you when I say it took me three days to bring a box which hadn't been updated for four months up to date. In my experience, updating a gentoo box infrequently is a bad idea. You should either update every week/month or not at all. The way I look at it, you either want a system with the latest everything, or you want a system which works. If you want the first, you should expect to spend a bit of time working on it. If you want the second - why on earth are you updating every four months.

If I wanted a system to be stable, but not that far behind current stuff. I'd probably be updating once a year - you have to do a bit of work to fix some of the updates, but at least you only have to do it once a year.

On the other hand, if I wanted a system that's always up to date, I'd be updating every other week. This is what I currently do on my two gentoo boxes, and I've very rarely had problems. (The last problem I had was when it upgraded mysql from 4 to 5, some of the defaults changed - I spent ages trying to work out why I couldn't connect from other machines.)

One thing to note, if you're having problems when updateing world add the --deep flag to emerge, it will update all libraries that need it as well. Then follow the emerge with a revdep-rebuild, to check for things that have been broken by updated libraries (and fix them)

Amen

[matt me]

If it ain't broke, break it. Fix it. Understand it.

Here's some things to try:
Compile mplayer. Build a firefox package for your distro. Download, patch and compile a kernel. Add a cronjob to delete some files at random. Forget about it. Try and restore them. (ext2 does not delete file pointers in inodes). Create an LVM group. Siphon disk space between disks and partition. Try a file system written by someone suspected of murder. Post on a linux-devel list and join Linus in slagging off Gnome. Try KDE and XFCE and decide no-one needs a desktop environment. Try some ultra minimal *box window manager. Live in the terminal for a week. Log in to your computer using SSH from afar and wonder why when you play music you can't hear it. Rsync something. Write your own superior syncing script. Write some perl scripts. Python. Add a RAID. Try an old 2.4 kernel..