I can understand that all too well, I remember when I started out with Linux, and especially vi, I spent an hour trying to remove all the "~" that vi had put in there ;)
Course, in addition to the PLUG, which is a great source of information (wish I could make more of the meetings, but I teach until 10pm at night M-Th), there are classes out there that cover that material. At Mesa Community College (and others ;) we teach CIS126DL which is intro to the Linux OS, and covers much of that material. I teach it at MCC, along with Der Hans, Dennis Kibbe as well. Let me know if you have any additional questions,
Phil Waclawski
From: "James Dugger" <
james.dugger@gmail.com>
To: "Main PLUG discussion list" <
plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 6:21:41 PM
Subject: Re: Looking for October presenters for PLUGdev
I am new to the group and to linux and thought I would give a newbie's opinion here. I am not concerned right now about kernel issues (directly) I am trying to resolve basic fundamental issues. Things like file and directory permissions, configuring your system for network connection (i.e. network addressing, setting up your domain, hostnames, nameserver resoltuon)
While I know that any one of these can get very very complex, even just the first few steps have been pretty huge. But I want to learn. There is only so much you can learn in a linux forum depending almost entirely on the disposition of would-be experts and how they can communicate.
My perspective is that even though I have worked in a highly technical field as a power user in Windows it is obvious pretty quickly when making decisions to configure even the smallest of home network systems that I have relied heavily on Microsoft to help me configure things.
Consider that most homes in the US have more than 1 computer and many have more than 2. While just about anyone can download Ubuntu or (other distro) follow instructions and have a system up and running in 1/2 hour the minute they have to network 2 or more computers life just got way more complicated. In today's world were every home may have some sort of network, the amount of things I have had to learn and do to network my home systems would make Linux a deal breaker for many people.
The frustration is that there is no place to go to get a general overview of what needs to be configured, and how to do it. I know there is no one answer, but there are best practices and they are going to differ depending on the need.
I have been "mapping net work drives" in Windows for 15 years and never new until 3 months ago what SMB/CIFS was or Samba, or NFS, Having to understand Samba alone just to get Linux/Unix to talk to Windows or MAC can cause many to run screaming back to $MS with there wallets open.
Maybe there needs to be a PLUG beginners group or a CONFIGFEST if this is too braud to tackle in presentations. But after the last 3 months of trial and error configuration problems in my network at home I would eagerly sit through a 4 hour hands on well prepared discussion on file server configurations with SMB/CIFS and understanding how to get smb.conf and fstab and file permissions to work together.
Sorry of the length. $MS is an addiction I am trying to beat everyday.
James