About Lester L. Martin II

aight lester i got a question. I am a new found windows hater an just installed ubuntu 10.x on my computer. Now i am a leaner an like to play with cars which i can do well but i am strugglin to figure this linux open source out. Clearly i am behind alot an need some training. Could u reccommend a good book source or somthin to help me learn the linux world.I do better at hands on but i dont have anyone around that nows anything about this set up.

Ok, glad to hear you're liking linux. I'm going to make some clarifications later on in this message.

One is that I don't hate windows, just I know that it is not the best solution for almost any job (except playing video games usually).

Second, Ubuntu is a great choice for beginners. I've used linux for a while now, and I must say I did start in kind of 2 places. CoLinux (which lets you run linux in windows), and Puppy Linux. Neither did too much of what I wanted so I gave up on linux for about 3 months. Then I found Simply Mepis (linux based) and installed and used it. I loved it and it was a great introduction.

Ok, here's my main clarification. There are 2 terms you need to know, linux, and distro. A distro is a distribution of linux, and basically just wraps everything up in a good package to make linux easy to use. Linux is the kernel (you don't notice a kernel at all). GNU is the userspace pretty much. All the commands you run from the command line usually came from GNU. The X system is what provides graphics. Window Manager/Compositing Manager manages window decorations and providing a place where widgets (all the buttons check boxes and such) can composite and render themselves. X in most cases manages input (keyboard and mouse), and output (video). A desktop environment takes programs that fit well together and kind of packages them as a whole to give you the experience you see (it packages the Window Manager and a couple or more utilites together such as a file manager). A distro packages linux, GNU, and a desktop environment for you to use.

Ubuntu is a relative of Debian. Ubuntu is a distro. As a distro, it packages linux (kernel 2.6.35), GNU command line utilities (all the ones needed to make stuff work), and a desktop environment (Gnome) for you. There are different utilites that could be pushed in to make stuff different. For instance, all linux distros use the linux kernel. Nothings to stop them from packaging all the BSD utilites and replace the GNU utilities with them. (but most don't want that). The main thing a user interfaces with is the Desktop Environment and ther are a ton of them. I personally use KDE as my desktop environment (DE from this point on) of choice. There is E17, LXDE, XFCE, GNOME, ETOILE. A window manager is usually substituted in UBUNTU, instead of gnomes metacity you are likely using compiz fusion as the window manager. KDE uses ah--- i forget, but there are some standalone window managers that you could use as well (Fluxbox and Openbox for example).

To me, the distribution you use determines the flexibility you have as far as changing "everything". I've participated in the use of many Distros, thereby I'm a linux user, because I am using linux in general. The Distro I currently use is Fedora (since I can get Single Sign On to work at my house with it easily).

I will not call myself an expert, and I will admit that some of the terms I use may not be exactly the correct terms, however, I am pretty knowledgeable. Email me any time you need help.

As far as resources for Ubuntu, I recommend the Ubuntu wiki, and ubuntugeek.com

These sites list a couple of books for you.
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/free-ubuntu-linux-e-books.html
http://www.linux-books.us/ubuntu.php
http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=ubuntu+books&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=1420947717&ref=pd_sl_97yrt7e06o_b

I will note here, that I'm self taught. All I know comes from reading wikis and experimenting and reading the programs manuals and following the examples of others. Therefore, I recommend you do the same. I have also come to find (besides hardware error, and extreme filesystem error (that almost never occurs)) that anything you mess up in linux can be fixed if you care to spend the time. Sometimes (if you set up correctly), re-installing is easier.

For starters, I recommend you learn about linux file systems, and how to mount them. Then you can have 2 filesystems on your computer. A root filesystem (where linux and programs are stored) and a /home filesystem (where all your documents are stored). This makes it way you can reinstall without loosing data. Then from there proceed to learn whatever it is you would like linux to do.

Also, just because something says it's for your distro doesn't neccessarily mean it's so. Sometimes stuff will work from one distro to the next and many times it won't. Some instructions will work across many different distros and some won't. Don't let that discourage you. Instead, look at what the instructions steps are and try to map them to steps that typically work for your machine.

Finally, have some morals. Live by them. I feel people should get paid for their work. However, I feel that they should get paid what someone thinks it is worth. Therefore, I may buy half an album on amazon or 7digital, and somehow actually have the whole album because the charge they are trying to make is unreasonable and legacy. It was understandable when the CD medium was so expensive, but now that it's not and it's not required it is not understandable. It cost almost nothing to make a copy and so that's what I feel I should pay. There are many other morals, ethics and such I have, but they don't necessarily have to be yours. If you don't agree with some sites morals but do enjoy there instructions, use there instructions and disregard their tries to influence you morally and ethically. Basically, people will try to change you, but if it's not something you agree with, don't change, and just because you don't agree with them doesn't mean there directions on how to fix something shouldn't be accepted. Accept people as they are and take advice as is and modify it to your purpose.

So here are my main recommendations.

Find stuff you like and learn it.
I like KDE so I use it
I like google chrome so I use it
I like amarok (a media player) so I use it
I like easy recoveries
so I backup data often and keep seperate /home partitions.
I believe data in a house specific to a user should be accessible by any computer in that house. Hence my using single sign on (same username and password at every computer in the house all managed through a single server), and a shared /home directory (using glusterfs because nfs has led to many troubles such as broken pulseaudio, hard to set directory permissions, hard to set who owns what, and so on. CIFS (samba, windows filesharing) also for some reason didn't work well with kde when I first tried so I gave up on it and haven't come back to it for about a year.

I've used the following distros, Debian, Aptosid, Linux  Mint, Archlinux, Fedora, Simply Mepis. This doesn't include any of the distros that I've encountered by going to websites.

Each distro has pros and cons, and I've been looking for extreme flexibility, stability and an up to date distro. Used to be archlinux I depended on for that. Now I'm using Fedora due to also wanting ease of use and installation. State what you want, and try stuff out until it fits the foot you've created. I will probably try many other distros in the future as well, but I'm less into trying specialized distros based on another distro unless there happens to be a great amount of deviation and it is made know from the previous distro on which the distro to be used was based upon.

If you come across anything you think I should try, or is new, or you need help, feel free to email me, or post here or private message me. Hope this was helpful.