unfortunately, in my experience, there is no such thing as general IT knowledge (especially when it comes to publications of any sort).
The IT field seems to be made up of an infinite number if specialties, and the people that succeed are those that find their niche and master it.
Of course, one could always study as many specialties as possible, and get a general understanding of all the ideas and how they work together, but as far as I have seen so far there is no general publication when it comes to this type of information.
I have been doing the same sort of thing for the past several months at my place of employment.
Some of my classes have had experience with linux/unix, and some have not, but I have found that the best way is to start simple.
1) Start with some basic commands, available at linuxnewbie.org
- Include certain operators such as the pipe, and how to use it, as well as file-viewing/searching cmds, such as head, tail, cat, less, more, grep.
2) Go over simple filesystem design, such as where config files are kept, binaries can be found, etc...
3) Introduce them to the usefulness of man pages
4) Introduce them to some of the major applications (apache, sendmail, postgresql (or mysql)
5) Lastly, be sure to compare to DOS/Windows as often as possible, so that your tutelages have something to cross reference in their minds.
i work for a major webhosting company and when the first code-red wave hit our customer's unmanaged servers, we simply assisted them in locating information about patches, provided them with instructions, etc.
however, most of our customers basically ignored our repeated warnings to patch their servers properly and when nimda/blue worm hit our network in the past few days, we simply started shutting down servers. we had given them 2+ months and the patches required to fix these issues had been released by M$ for almost a year. if shutting our customers down is the only way we can raise awareness about these issues, then so be it. we have tried to help them and they just ignore us.
not only is freebsd sane and impossibley stable, but for the beginning *nix user, IMO it is much easier (from a console *nix view).
granted if a person does need/want a GUI to get used to the OS, then one either Mandrake/RedHat linuxes will be perfect. however, if a person wants to learn a *nix of some kind (again starting w/ console), then freebsd is the end all solution. it is flexible enough to be used a server, it even performs well as a workstation, having the latest stable xfree86 version to date (as well as a very nice collection of window managers) available in it's ports tree (a beautifal package management system).
on the subject of the install process, the freebsd handbook tells step by step how to run the installation floppies (or grab a bootable cd) downloaded from one of their many public ftp sites. the install media can be either a cd or downloading/installing via FTP. the boot disks have a well-built kernel that seems to support damn near any known NIC (i haven't ever seen a computer unable to download the install files via ftp) (anyone had different experiences than this?). the actual instalation (tho console based) is very nice looking, very straight forward self-explanatory, allowing you to choose install options, network, hardware setup, and either a standardized (several choices) install or customized (choosing the packages install modes.
for a package-management system, freebsd originated what is call'd the 'ports tree'. this huge collection of software keeps makefiles and distro info/lists in well-organized tree of software that has been ported/approved/fixed by the freebsd team to work flawlessly on the fBSD platform. this collection is so well populated that rartely do users need to d/l tarballs and isntall software that may be for linux or or other *nix's.
on a slightly more interesting note, i read somewhere that freebsd has at times been known to run linux source/binaries faster than linux itself can, in it's linux-compatibility mode. (although i can't remember where i saw/heard this, sorry).
btw, all these opinions are coming from a linux user of only about three years, having been through slackware, redhat, debian, mandrake, and suse (in that order). i was just never able to find any distro of that os that served my needs and likes as much as freebsd has done.
- uberbastard
Slashdot Mirror
unfortunately, in my experience, there is no such thing as general IT knowledge (especially when it comes to publications of any sort).
The IT field seems to be made up of an infinite number if specialties, and the people that succeed are those that find their niche and master it.
Of course, one could always study as many specialties as possible, and get a general understanding of all the ideas and how they work together, but as far as I have seen so far there is no general publication when it comes to this type of information.
Not even 'Technical Management for Dummies' =]
I have been doing the same sort of thing for the past several months at my place of employment.
Some of my classes have had experience with linux/unix, and some have not, but I have found that the best way is to start simple.
1) Start with some basic commands, available at linuxnewbie.org
- Include certain operators such as the pipe, and how to use it, as well as file-viewing/searching cmds, such as head, tail, cat, less, more, grep.
2) Go over simple filesystem design, such as where config files are kept, binaries can be found, etc...
3) Introduce them to the usefulness of man pages
4) Introduce them to some of the major applications (apache, sendmail, postgresql (or mysql)
5) Lastly, be sure to compare to DOS/Windows as often as possible, so that your tutelages have something to cross reference in their minds.
i work for a major webhosting company and when the first code-red wave hit our customer's unmanaged servers, we simply assisted them in locating information about patches, provided them with instructions, etc.
however, most of our customers basically ignored our repeated warnings to patch their servers properly and when nimda/blue worm hit our network in the past few days, we simply started shutting down servers. we had given them 2+ months and the patches required to fix these issues had been released by M$ for almost a year. if shutting our customers down is the only way we can raise awareness about these issues, then so be it. we have tried to help them and they just ignore us.
i give up.
not only is freebsd sane and impossibley stable, but for the beginning *nix user, IMO it is much easier (from a console *nix view).
granted if a person does need/want a GUI to get used to the OS, then one either Mandrake/RedHat linuxes will be perfect. however, if a person wants to learn a *nix of some kind (again starting w/ console), then freebsd is the end all solution. it is flexible enough to be used a server, it even performs well as a workstation, having the latest stable xfree86 version to date (as well as a very nice collection of window managers) available in it's ports tree (a beautifal package management system).
on the subject of the install process, the freebsd handbook tells step by step how to run the installation floppies (or grab a bootable cd) downloaded from one of their many public ftp sites. the install media can be either a cd or downloading/installing via FTP. the boot disks have a well-built kernel that seems to support damn near any known NIC (i haven't ever seen a computer unable to download the install files via ftp) (anyone had different experiences than this?). the actual instalation (tho console based) is very nice looking, very straight forward self-explanatory, allowing you to choose install options, network, hardware setup, and either a standardized (several choices) install or customized (choosing the packages install modes.
for a package-management system, freebsd originated what is call'd the 'ports tree'. this huge collection of software keeps makefiles and distro info/lists in well-organized tree of software that has been ported/approved/fixed by the freebsd team to work flawlessly on the fBSD platform. this collection is so well populated that rartely do users need to d/l tarballs and isntall software that may be for linux or or other *nix's.
on a slightly more interesting note, i read somewhere that freebsd has at times been known to run linux source/binaries faster than linux itself can, in it's linux-compatibility mode. (although i can't remember where i saw/heard this, sorry).
btw, all these opinions are coming from a linux user of only about three years, having been through slackware, redhat, debian, mandrake, and suse (in that order). i was just never able to find any distro of that os that served my needs and likes as much as freebsd has done. - uberbastard