Best way to learn Linux

[admin]

I need ur help guys. I have been told at work we are going to start to install and use linux on our servers.

I know nothing about linux and need to learn fast, How do you think I should go about this??

Read a book? Just go ahead and install?? Im not even to sure where to start?? Do you know any good websites for beginners??

[Canada2113]

partition your hard drive and dual boot linux. Then get a book. This way you can read it and do it at the same time. Linux isnt really hard, its just different. Completely different. Take all of the assumptions you have and get rid of them.

[Pirate-M.Lifnen]

Google Linux, and read as much as you can about it. Once you understand some of the basics, it's time to select a distro. Get one like Ubuntu, Red Hat, or Open Suse, and learn your way through it.
All the things you would want to learn will be online, there's no need to spend money on a free OS .

A book probably could help, but really, you'll be fine with just reading up on it, and actually using it.

Also, for some great "getting to know Linux" info check here.

[DarkED]

Don't bother wasting money on a book. It may help you with some basic commandline stuff but Linux changes so frequently that a book about it is usually obsolete six months after it is published. All of that information can be found online for free anyways.

What you should do is, download the Ubuntu (or Kubuntu) 7.04 install CD. Boot it, get a feel for the way the GUI works, then use the link on the Live desktop to install it.

If you have any problems, go to Ubuntuforums.org or on IRC at #ubuntu on irc.freenode.org.

[darth vader]

The words that sum up my thoughts are quoted from here:

http://http://www.interparse.com/deb...all/index.html

Live CD distros like Knoppix are very good for allowing a non-technical user to surf the 'Net safely or to have a very nice desktop setup with a minumum of fuss. And they can be used for learning since they are 'full' versions of 'real' Linux. But, for learning the absolute basics of Linux, nothing beats a command line install where you specify EVERYTHING that will be on your new PC.

I have been playing around with linux for about 10 years now and it has definitely changed quite a bit in that time.

There are so many variations of Linux. If you knew what version you would be installing that would be helpful also.

A good beginner site would be: The Linux Home Page at Linux Online

[nigeluno]

partition your hard drive and dual boot linux. Then get a book. This way you can read it and do it at the same time. Linux isnt really hard, its just different. Completely different. Take all of the assumptions you have and get rid of them.

It's is like when you first learned Windows it seemed strange but as you got to know how it worked it got easier, same with Linux. There are a lot of great site that deal with Linux and there is no need to buy a book till you know what will be installed at your job, must GUI are easy but the real work comes from the command line, but the System administrator will be dealing with that, so just look forward to this as a learning experience.

[kmc77]

I started my Linux conversion with Mandrake (now called Mandriva), and the best learning tool for me was mandrivausers.org. I was on there daily, asking questions. One thing that I found, is that the members of Linux forums are typically very patient and helpful, as they all remember what it was like to make the switch. Like canada 2113, I dual booted for about 3 months, until I felt comfortable enough to go solely Linux, then I dual booted 2 Linux distros. This is when I really began understanding the OS. I used one distro as my "learning" partition, where I could mess with everything (mainly the networking, hardware, etc) and learn some shell/bash and CLI, and the other distro as my "stable" distro. That way, when I screwed something up so bad, I couldn't bring up my X server or my network, I had a backup that would let me get back on mandrivausers.org and ask how to fix it. So, as far as my experience goes, I'd pick which distro you want to use (I know Suse was mentioned above, but I kinda stick clear of suse ((Ask a Linux user about Novel to find out why)). Also, live disks are nice to look at, but you won't really be able to "learn", in any depth, Linux untill it's installed on a HD. Once you have your distro, join the official forum, and start asking questions. When you feel comfortable, start playing, but make sure you have a backup computer or partition to use for Q&A when you break,(and you will) your "play partition".

[kapital_killa]

If you are going to be working on linux servers then will you be using a GUI (graphic user interface) or the CLI (command line interface)? Most people recommend using the CLI for servers so it does not use unneeded resources. If you're using a GUI then I don't think it will be too hard to go from windows to linux but the CLI is pretty difficult and is a lot to learn.