Where to now?

[grannydmb]

Can someone give me a little guidance as to where to go now? I've become familiar with the file structure as well as the basic commands of linux and tried . As I look at the whole scheme of things there is just so much to learn when playing/using linux. Its hard to figure out what to do next. Is it just based on personal needs? Or are there things that need to be known before moving to the next level? What is the next level? Any advice/URL's would be appreciated. Feed me with information. :)

[jaygee432]

Relax and have fun!

[bdg1983]

You actually don't need any url's. If you did a full install of your distro, you will most likely have around 3-400mb of documentation already there sitting on your hd.

My distro for example has all the faq's, how-to's, application documentation and different admin guides in /usr/share/doc some being in various formats. It would take months to read all that.

[grannydmb]

Yeah I'll just keep reading those man pages and how-to's and have some fun. Sounds good to me. :) Maybe I'll try my hand at installing that slackware that's kicked my a** for a few quite a while now. :)

[Joeri Sebrechts]

Linux is actually very simple once you bend your mind around it.

Everything personal to you goes into your home dir. System-wide configuration goes in /etc, files that change go in /var, essential files go into /bin and /lib, essential files for root go into /sbin. Program files, libraries and documentation all end up in /usr, where the /usr/local branch "should" only contain stuff you add yourself to the system.

I suggest you pick up a copy of 'Running Linux' from O'Reilly if you're interested in really learning all the commands, what they do, how they interact, and how to set up and run most services. It's a good book. Otherwise, running "info" from the shell is a good index into a lot of documentation, if your distro's docs are based on info. Info is a bit tricky to navigate, but if you remember that backspace gets you the help screen, it's not that hard.

Edited:
Now that I think of it, search google for the search term "unix unleashed", without the quotes, and you should get a lot of relevant entries. There are various version of unix unleashed, all with different focus, and they all teach you how to operate a unix machine from the shell. Very decent material. And completely free.

[ 12 October 2001: Message edited by: Joeri Sebrechts ]

[AdaHacker]

Originally posted by grannydmb:
<STRONG>Maybe I'll try my hand at installing that slackware that's kicked my a** for a few quite a while now. :)</STRONG>

That's actually a really good idea. I messed around with Suse and Redhat for a while and didn't really pick much up. Then I switched to Slack and no longer think of myself as a newbie. Not having any really new or exotic hardware, I found that I could get a basic installation of Slack up and running very quickly. However, if you want any of the bells and whistles (literally - you have to do sound configuration by hand), you have to learn a little more about your system. Add to that the manual dependency handling and such and you've got quite the learning experience on your hands. Personally, I find the manual configuration much nicer than all those fancy graphical tools that only sort of work. And as an added benefit, Slackware 8.0 is pretty up to date in terms of the software bundled with it (that was my only problem with 7.1).

Outside of that, the best way to learn is by doing. Just find something you'd like to do, something you want to change, or just something to make your life a little easier, and then do it. Get all your hardware set up, get your desktop how you like it, and then just play around until you find another big project. Write little scripts to simplify or automate things for you. Optimize the kernel to your system. The docs are there to help you along the way, but just reading them isn't enough. In my experience, if you don't do it, it probably won't stick.

Just my 2 cents.