Linux Foundation online course

[wtebv]

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.

[Keith]

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

[Brian000]

Perhaps 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

[Mad Penguin]

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

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/LDP/intro-linux/intro-linux.pdf (Intro)
• 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/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 ...