[svlug] Newbie Linux question

[Paul Cubbage]

Scott,
Welcome!  Don't be too confused by the (too many) opinions on which 
distro to use.  It's a compulsion of communities to focus on the OS.  
All of the major names have good features.  Find one that feels right 
and quit looking or you will spend too much of your life on futzing.

The howto forge has good info.  Take a look at the one on OpenOffice 
templates 
http://www.howtoforge.com/using_and_customizing_openoffice_templates  OO 
is one of the best opensource projects but suffers from the idea that it 
is replacing m$ and is thus a bit complex.  That being said, you can get 
a lot done, once you learn how to navigate through its many, many features.

A skill you'll want to pick up is whatever package manager is on the 
distro you use.  Red Hat style aka RPM based systems work pretty well 
with YUM.  On the debian/ubuntu side, apt-get and synaptic are well 
worth knowing.  There's also urpmi on Mandriva and YAST(?) on SuSE etc.  
They all promise to free you from "dependency hell"  and they all will 
put you there at one time or another so, whatever you use, learn the 
details of your package manager.  Repository location is a major issue 
on some.

GIMP is a great package if you are into graphics.  It's parallel to and 
as good as/better than PhotoShop depending on which flame war you 
follow.  The latest GIMP book "*Beginning GIMP: From Novice to 
Professional" *by Akana Peck, is highly rated and very useful.

I hope that helps.
Be free and open!

Paul Cubbage

Scott Chau wrote:
> Is there any online or books you recommend for understanding linux?  
> Basically I've started computer in the Dos days so I'm comfortable 
> with commandline as long as it has a "/?" so it tells me what options 
> I can do.   My only experience with linux has been hacking my tivo, 
> setting up a simple webserver on an old 386 (using RH 6 w/ apache only 
> w/ no GUI) , tinkering with the mac OSX for x86 dual boot with xp, and 
> finally using those Live CD (but I really didn't feel like I learned 
> anything because it just ran... didn't have to do anything)
>
> What I want to do is be able to understand the file structure and 
> bascially things on how things  work.  For example, on windows I know 
> where programs are intalled by default and where the registry is and 
> where the user information is stored.  I have no programming 
> background at all though.  I have a laptop Sony SZ220 that I want to 
> dual boot my XP with some type of linux.  Any recommendation?
>
> thanks and take it easy on me.
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