Baslinux mailing list

[Lee Forrest <lforrestster AT gmail.com>]

Reading is important, and the linux runner will be doing a lot 
of it. From now until forever.

But practicing (applying/experimenting-with) what one has read
is critical to the learning process.

Books are good, but on-line docs are much more convenient. If you
are going to use books, get a book stand or a sturdy music stand.

(So that you can have the book open at the level of your screen
and right beside it.)

When you read about something, explore it on your computer. If
the book/net-doc is talking about the proc virtual filesystem, cd
to /proc and check it out. Use the manpage to explain what the
book doesn't. If the book is covering commands to run, run them.
Check out the manpage and experiment with the various options and
args.

And so on. 

(There are also the info pages, if you have them installed with the
info program, and the docs in /usr/doc.)

For BasicLinux, which is slackware based, there are many relevant
docs on the various slackware sites, most of which are linked to
slackware.com.

There are the HOWTOs (and other docs and links) at tldp.org

There are many manpage repositories, like http://www.linuxmanpages.com/

Here's an interesting link:  http://www.linuxforums.org/ 

There are lessons galore on the web. Here's one course (can't vouch for
its quality or lack thereof)  http://www.linux.org/lessons/ 

The mailing list archives of gnu.org are a treasure:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/  

You know about the BasicLinux list archives.

This is a seemingly-dated linux course that is excellent:

http://rute.2038bug.com/rute.html.tar.bz2

You'll never be able to come close to having all the information
you will need in hardcopy, so get used to searching the internet
and bookmarking every possibly useful site you come across. You
can always weed out the useless ones later, but may never find a
particular site again with a search-engine.

Be sure to study this page:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/refinesearch.html

And don't mess with just www.google.com, go straignt to the
advanced search page with 100 returns set in advance:

links-0.90 http://www.google.com/advanced_search?\&num=100\&hl=en

Alias it to "goog" (using your favorite browser, of course), by
putting this in your /etc/profile:

alias goog='links-0.90 http://www.google.com/advanced_search?\&num=100\&hl=en'

Until you reboot (or restart X), you'll need to enter this in any
existing window you wish to use that alias in:

# . /etc/profile

(That "." tells the shell to re-read the file, and you are
running a discrete shell in each window.)

Make sure you have a window manager that allows you to switch
between screens with keystrokes, so that you can have one or more
docs and one or more "play" screens up, and switch between them in
a blink, without removing your hands from the keyboard.

It's been my experience that split screens (or variations on that
theme) just don't work out well. You need a full screen to see
the context of what you are reading at the moment and to display
the output of many commands. Or the output of multiple instances
of variations of the command.

If I am studying something, I'll often have 5 or 6 open windows
devoted to the project, 2 with instances of a browser displaying
non-local webpages, 1 for 'play', 1 with a manpage, 1 with a
pager displaying another local doc, or a browser displaying an
index to a whole directory.

Another alias, which makes creating new windows a breeze:

alias x='rxvt -ls -g 106X35 +sb &'

If you are using a different xterm, then use its name and check
its manpage to see if any of the options are different. The
-ls means to make the shell a login shell, the -g could be
-geometry, and the +sb means to leave off the scrollbar. You can
use Shift+PageUp/PageDown to access the beginning of any output
that is too long for a single screen.

If you want to increase the number of lines in the window's memory
there will be an option for that, too. For rxvt it is '-sl number'

If that's not the right size to fill your screen, find the right
numbers with:

# stty size

and reverse the order of the two numbers for your xterm.

Learning the basic skills to _do_ what I have described above
is obviously your first priority, starting with using a search
engine and browser (remote and local html) and a pager for local
docs and mastering your window manager and how to explore your
filesystem.

Basic touch-typing skills are a must. You can't get by with a
mouse and hunt&peck typing.

Once you have learned the basics, learn bash. Of course, you have
been using bash all along, so I really mean to learn more about
bash. Any command is a script. The better commands/scripts you
can write the better you will be able to run linux.

(You may be using a different shell, but it will be a closely
related one like ash or zsh or ksh. If you aren't, then something
is wrong.)

My greatest linux pearl-of-wisdom?

It's all about files. Everything you do will involve files.
Locating them, installing/un-installing them. Modifying them.
Creating them. Displaying them. Executing them. Linking them.
Changing their permissions and ownership. Converting them to
different formats....

The kernel is just a file. Streaming audio is just a long file
that you 'read' as it downloads (like tail -f). On linux, even
devices are files are far as the OS is concerned (/dev).

Lee

-- 
BasicLinux: Small is Beautiful
http://www.basiclinux.com.ru