[CLUE-Talk] New here

[Charlie Oriez]

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On Tuesday 08 January 2002 14:27, SynWild at aol.com gave up the right 
to remain silent by saying:
> Hello,
>        I have just made the decision to try out the linux system
> and would like to know what variant is recomended.  I am basically
> working on learning programing and would like to become much more
> familiar with how diferent opsys work.  I figure if I get started
> on this now it will make schooling that much easier.  Thank you for
> your help.
>        Will


I second Jeffry's recommendation of Mandrake.  I've installed their 
7.0 and 8.0 releases.  I believe they are at 8.1 at the moment.  

I was a Windows user who had two semesters of basic unix as an 
undergrad (Arapahoe Community College, though my degree was from 
elsewhere), but never really used it.  My home desktop and every 
machine I had at the office was windoze.  My work experience was as a 
MVS/Cobol MF programmer (that's mainframe for those with dirty minds).

Besides Clue-talk and Clue-tech discussion groups, there is also a 
worldwide Mandrake newbies discussion group to handle support issues 
for newbies which I found to be useful.  Details are at 
http://linux-mandrake.com Note it has a couple of hundred posts per 
day.  Given that the newbies discussion group was dedicated to the 
specific release, and Mandrake staff participated, I found it the 
most useful source of info.  There is also a Mandrake usenet froup 
which of course was as useful as any Usenet froup.    

You'll also need the correct books sitting by the side of the 
computer.  Softpro is your friend.  The first time you go there just 
stand inside the door in silent awe for a few minutes before buying 
anything.  They have one store on the south side of Denver on 
Yosemite below Arapahoe.  There is another somewhere around Baseline 
in Boulder.  There may be others.  I send my students there when the 
college bookstores where I teach prove inadequate.  (Disclaimer - I 
dont work for Softpro - it would be too much like an alchoholic 
getting a job bartending)

Judging solely based on their distance from my fingertips as I sit 
here at my desktop, I found "Running Linux" (Third Edition, 
O'Reilly), "Linux Complete Command Reference" (SAMS), and "Using 
Linux" (Fourth Edition, QUE) as the most useful.  SAMS has a pdf 
version of the reference on CD which comes with the book.  QUE had  
what are now obsolete versions of Red Hat source and Star Office on a 
CD (Man8.0 has Star Office 5.2 as part of the distro).  There are 
also pocket references put out by O'Reilly for Perl, Vi, and probably 
other tools.  Descending in usefulness, but still useful, were "Linux 
in a Nutshell" (O"Reilly) and "Teach Yourself Linux (SAMS)".  

The main packages to learn as part of the process include Perl 
("Programming Perl", from O'Reilly), MySQL ("MySQL in 21 Days" by 
SAMS), and "KDE Desktop for Dummies".         

All of this is just my opinion.  Other no doubt have other opinions.
- -- 
Charles Oriez   coriez at oriez.org
39  34' 34.4"N / 105 00' 06.3"W
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