The Linux.uk Community Forum

I am a new Linux user. I have received on this forum nice help from other members regarding few issues I encountered.

About 10 days ago I started an online beginners course offered by the Linux Foundation. I am finding it fascinating. Of course "beginner" means many things, so I found few chapters too easy (pretty basic stuff on the GUI and software repository); and then some of them well over my head. They do require study.

The course teaches the main distributions, it's not possible of course talking about all of them. Definitely doing the job for my Linux Mint; and quite interesting finding out more about CentOS and Red Hat.

I have by now gone through 35% of the course, and am definitely very excited by the learning curve. It is a useful course, but you really have to concentrate if you are an average user. The synapsis says you just need to be a standard computer user, but in truth they do expect you to know quite more than the basics.

Good challenge though, I feel I'll be much less average at the end of it!
I thought of sharing this experience.

Many thanks for reporting on this course, WT. 

The Linux Foundation provides many Linux courses, and this one looks like the one you are using: https://training.linuxfoundation.org/training/introduction-to-linux/. 
My own learning has been from this forum and other websites, and from a book: "The Linux command Line" by Shotts which is very good, moving from the simplest examples to advanced functions.  It is available as a free PDF download here:
https://www.alloteacher.com/2021/08/the-linux-command-line-complete.html
or as hard copy:
https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-home-_-Results&tn=The%20Linux%20Command%20Line%3A%20A%20Complete%20Introduction

Perhaps other Members will tell us their prime source of Linux learning.....

Keith

QuotePerhaps other Members will tell us their prime source of Linux learning.....

I was spoiled, and work sent me on a classroom based, UNIX Fundamentals course - while I didn't really need UNIX for that job, it gave me the ground work to consider alternatives to Windows at home.  ...and that meant that I could avoid all natural sources of viteminD for several years! Therefore, If you know the "what's but not the how's", then personally, I'd recommend O'Reilly, UNIX and LINUX in a Netshell (2 separate books).  Both are all about syntax, so you do need to know what you want to do first!

However, nowerdays, I guess the internet spoils us all... Any issue or problem is now solved by simply finding your preferred search engine and reading what somebody else did long before us.  The ease makes us (well, at least me) lazy, and I no longer do the things I used to.....  I once maintained a WIKI of my own reminders and issues/solutions and write shell scripts to help me remember or simplify syntax.... (if that reads as though I'm disappointed, it's because I sometimes feel like I "copy and paste" rather than learn!)

I know that a many "techies" don't learn well from books alone, so if you're like me - then you need to find a purpose and something that you can build.... once you start that, whatever it is, then this forum is here to help you if you get into trouble.

...and while I don't condone finding what should be paid books free on-line, this feels legitimate enough to post here:
https://gist.github.com/augbog/d65f6600188fece854cb341734c5fd12
and also these... I've seen most of these on the shelves of Server teams.
https://www.adminschoice.com/10-must-have-oreilly-books-for-system-administrators

At the risk of sounding "old" .. they don't make documentation like they used to ....

It feels a little as tho' many years ago, I guess because we didn't have 'the Internet' and all we had was dead trees, documentation had to be 'better' than it is today. When I want to learn something these days, my first port of call is always Google, picking up a book is kind of a second choice.

The first complete(ish) Unix system I installed on my computer was called "Coherent", and one of the things that made it really cool was the manual that came with it. Now although Coherent is no more, and although it's a little different to Unix, the manual is (from memory) first-class and in terms of basic theory, not all that much has changed between then and now. If it's of any use to anyone, you can still see it (online) here;

http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/manual.php (http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/manual.php)

The Linux Documentation Project sports many good (free) online resources, although the site looks somewhat dead, the quality of the PDF's isn't too bad from an educational perspective, albeit in some cases maybe a little dated.

   
• https://tldp.org/ (https://tldp.org/)
• https://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/intro-linux.pdf (https://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/intro-linux.pdf) (Intro)
• https://tldp.org/LDP/sag/sag.pdf (https://tldp.org/LDP/sag/sag.pdf) (System Admin Guide)
• https://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/Bash-Beginners-Guide.pdf (https://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/Bash-Beginners-Guide.pdf)
• https://tldp.org/LDP/GNU-Linux-Tools-Summary/GNU-Linux-Tools-Summary.pdf (https://tldp.org/LDP/GNU-Linux-Tools-Summary/GNU-Linux-Tools-Summary.pdf)

Unfortunately, about 15 or so years ago, many aspects of Linux (like documentation) seemed to become quite 'commercial' in nature, and although there are many good books available today, they're generally not free. It's an interesting thought that although many current authors expect to get paid for their work, the authors of the original Linux documentation (and code) were generally doing it for the community (and were unpaid). [not necessarily a critique, just an observation] .. I do wonder ultimately where this apparent shift in attitude will lead ...

I bookmarked the Linux course. However, I don't know if I would be able to do it as I'm HOPELESS at maths. I have dyscalculia. Do you need to be good at maths to do that course? Also what are the system requirements of a laptop to be able to do the course? I get the impression there are projects to do.

Matilda,

I don't think computer users have needed maths for (at least) the past 20 or 30 years.  Even modern programming languages don't require it - although logic (which has it's basis in maths) would be considered important for any complex programming. 

But if you look at the prerequisites for the  course you're considering, that should clearly state if maths is required (i suspect not)

not knowing the course nor its content, I find that Linux runs on almost any hardware - from a £5 RaspberryPi Zero with half-a-gig of ram, to modern servers with several hundreds!  Reading this forum, you'll see many of us use old hardware, often something like "dual-core with 2gig RAM".

If you're concerned, it may be worth emailing the course provider and asking them for their recommended spec and installation. in fact, i'd expect the course notes to detail the distro you should be using too.

hope this helps - but I think you'll be fine & good luck...

Thank you for the reply Brian. I have been caught short so many times in courses, jobs and situations where maths (beyond simple sums) has been required so I try to prevent that embarrassing eventuality!

Programming language makes me rather nervous--- what is that lol.

I would never make it as a programmer!

I have used the terminal on my Linux computers many times but it's always been what fellas on here have posted in response to an enquiry I have had.

I would say my greatest achievement IT -wise was installing Peppermint on an old HP laptop several years ago, following instructions given in real time from Mark Greaves via this forum. It took us about 4 hours  (with lavatory and coffee breaks). I could only marvel at Mark's patience lol.

But it is a good one for a (general) job  interview question on situations on following instructions ha ha.

You fellas are doing well to get any computer to do much on 2 GB of RAM!

I've got a lil' netbook running on Peppermint 9. It does well but it's kind of slow loading web pages : the processors on these are not that great and it has an HD not an SSD.

I'm getting the computer shop I know to sort me out with a reconditioned laptop which will have 8GB RAM, plenty of memory, SSD drive and a good processor.

I've been using Chromebooks for my main laptop for the past 5 years or so, as I like the integrated way they work-but I bought an Asus flip one off Amazon, listed as used but like new. Worked fine then it died overnight- just wouldn't power up the next morning. Got it sent back, refund etc. I then bought a new one of the same model. It lasted 2 days and died overnight too! Blummin' weird.

So maybe summat is telling me to go back to Linux as my main laptop. I was mostly just using this netbook for scanning documents and images, and Audacity music file editing.


Really, I was just thinking of doing the Linux course to expand knowledge, not really expecting to get to the finish line and pass the exam. I expect my non tech brain to give out at a certain point! However, I recently got in touch with an old university friend who has a Phd in Archaeology and during a mention of computers and tablets etc he said I am better at tech/IT than him. I'm not sure what that says about me--maybe I'm on my netbook far too much and become a bit of  nerd ha ha.


When I receive my new Linux laptop ( should be in 1-2 weeks ) then I'll have a read of the course content.