[Novalug] Educational Material

[Peter S. May]

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Robert Mortensen wrote:
> I am fairly new with using Linux.  I currently have Kubuntu and Xandros
> installed but want to learn more about using a command line interface
> rather than just the GUI.  What books would you suggest that I
> purchase?  If you only had one choice, what one would you purchase first?

I'm not sure how much or little time you might have to devote, or indeed
whether you have an extra machine lying around somewhere, but the single
most educational experience I ever had with the OS at the prompt level
was Linux From Scratch (<http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/>).  I'd
messed with GUI-oriented versions of the system for about two years
before picking this up.  It's a free book that walks you through
manually building the packages necessary to assemble a functioning Linux
system.  Granted, the resulting system is not really for anyone who
doesn't have the time to keep an eye on all of the updates for the
different packages, but in my case it resulted in a fantastic router box
that ran on very old hardware (until that hardware died!) and I gained
some intuition about the ./configure && make && make install cycle.

I'll also ditto Nino:  Cruising man pages for fun will teach you a lot.
 The GNU folks are adherents of "info" (another documentation system)
but man pages tend to read more succinctly.  Also, two of the most
humorous things you can type at the prompt are "man man" and "man bash".

Good luck
PSM

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