Comprehensive Linux course: 20 lessons with GUI as sort of an afterthought

[Alex M]

Hi, folks,

I have found a very comprehensive introduction to Linux course which I
thought might be worth mentioning here. it's general Linux though
Debian appears to be the main focus. There are 20 lessons which,
just from skimming through them, appear to me to have been rather well
written in my professional opinion as an instructor and writer of
curriculum. I think it would be a nice link to include in a further
reading section on one of the Vinux wiki pages. You be the judge:

http://www.linux.org/lessons/beginner/toc.html

For the convenience of anyone just reading this with your screen
reader on "overdrive mode", I've copied and pasted the titles of the
lessons below.

Enjoy,
alex M

List of lessons:
Lesson One
Objectives
What is Linux?
Installing Linux
An actual install
About Debian GNU/Linux

Lesson Two
Installing Debian GNU/Linux
Partitioning
Plunk that CD in the drive
Sundry installation tasks
Reboot and basic configuration
Completing the install process

Lesson Three
Working with Linux - First Things First
Working as another user

Lesson Four
Creating your 'routine' in Linux
The Linux file system
The basic directory structure in Linux
Some more cool short cuts
In Linux, everything is a file
What's left

Lesson Five
Day to Day with Linux
Virtual Terminals
Text editors in Linux
Text editors in Linux - Cont'd

Lesson Six
Shells in Linux
Frequently Used Shell Commands
The 'cp' command
The 'mv' command
The 'mkdir' command
The 'rm' command

Lesson Seven
Plumbing with "pipes" in Linux

Lesson Eight
How to get more information with Linux

Lesson Nine
Other interesting and useful commands
The 'grep' command

Lesson Ten
Power user commands
'tee', '>', '2>'
'whoami', 'whereis' and 'which
'echo' and 'wc'

Lesson Eleven
Miscellaneous commands

Lesson Twelve
Becoming a super user

Lesson Thirteen
Commands to control your system
kill'
File systems in Linux
Mounting file systems
Umount command - unmounting file systems

Lesson Fourteen
File permissions in Linux
'chmod' explained
Using 'chown'

Lesson Fifteen
Backing up your files
Untarring and unzipping files

Lesson Sixteen
Installing New Programs
Debian Updates
Installing new programs on Slackware

Lesson Seventeen
Printing under Linux
Using Linux to access the Internet
ADSL with Linux
Dial-up connections with Linux
Getting in touch with your ISP

Lesson Eighteen
Getting Linux to make sounds
Recording Sound
MP3 format
Ogg format
Compact Disks

Lesson Nineteen
Graphic User Interfaces with Linux
The GUI family tree
X-Window configuration
To boot or not to boot (in graphics mode), that is the question.
Choosing the look that's right for you
Protecting the environment
Internet Browsers
Email clients
Office suites, word processors and spreadsheets
Little goodies to improve your quality of life
Tips and Tricks for X-Window
More X-Window Tips and Tricks
A final word about X-window

Lesson Twenty
The end of the beginning

[Burt Henry]

Alex, I can do rather a lot with Vinux for someone who'd never seen a
Linux installation before mid July, but I'm certainly a beginner and am
interested in checking this out.
One question though: what do you mean by "overdrive" mode?
I saw this term mentioned somewhere else recently, but this is not a
term I am used to hearing. Is this Orca specific?
B.H.

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[Tony Sales]

I think he just means people who have a very high speed setting?

       *and I’m on Facebook*

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[Burt Henry]

Very good intro my man!
The chmod explained section for instance
http://www.linux.org/lessons/beginner/l14/lesson14b.html
is as clear an explanation of this important command, and permissions in
general that I've seen/could not have done any better myself.
Please Tony, consider including some of these short lessons in Vinux
docs, and link to the whole mini-course.
If everyone read this with in their first week of using Linux some
questions to this list could be avoided, and even more important ppl
would understand exactly what they are doing when following a list of
instructions given on a web-page, in a wiki, or by a friendly Vinux user
on this list. For me understanding what I am doing is as important as
the end result in many cases, and of course can often not only fix one
issue in the short term, but give one the tools needed to avoid problems
and deal with them in the future when they pop-up.
Teach a man to fish....
Thanks again for sharing Alex.
B.h.

On 12/08/2010 11:53 PM, Alex M wrote:

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[Tony Sales]

I would be happy to add some links to documents like this to the website - if people could send me links to useful websites for beginners I will add them to the website as soon as I get any time.

       *and I’m on Facebook*

--

[Alex M]

It just means you have your screen reader going about a hundred miles
a second and you are just zooming through your e-mail. I do this
quite a bit on this group, actually. I have digest messages I get on
my inbox. When I want to post, I log on to googlegroups.com itself
and post from the newsgroup. Keeps the inbox less cluttered as this
is a rather lively list.

alex M

[Alex M]

I liked the section on grep, myself and the sections on ps to show
processes and how to kill one propperly. The bit about installation
can pretty much be skipped over by most vinux users unless you truly
want to get a full understanding of how another distro might approach
installation. Gave me a whole new appreciation for how easy Vinux was
to install I can tell you and, besides, you can't follow those
instructions without sighted help.

Alex M

[Richard Claypool]

why not aplie message rules? I have a heap of them dealing with subjects
and mailng lists. I created a sudo bullian logic to my emails so that, even
if a messag has a subject line say db-review, it will go to my personal
folder.

alex M

[Burt Henry]

Yes, Ubuntu gives what most think is the most user friendly interface to
start with, and then the goodies that Tony finds, and all the heavy
lifting that Bill is doing to iron out the wrinkles so we can mostly
just plug and play.
I wonder if I'd have jumped right in if we had to compile everything we
wanted to install and use.
And the 3.0 (Lucid) installer was and is great.
Can't wait to see how things run on nice new multi-core hard-ware.
(guess I have to wait, but will be fun)
B.H.

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

I am really impressed with Linux Mint Debian - it also is plug and
pray. xxxx I mean play.

[Burt Henry]

Yes, I've read this around on-line quite a bit...where I live, there's
no big-biz, and for the most part what passes for a geek is some dude
who knows how to do some dumb_sh*t in winnders.
Think there are a couple of profs over at the community college who do
know their stuff abit
/need to hook up.
And this reminds me,, in Debian, would be 5.x I think, is it not
automatic to copy directories recursively? (this was coming off of a
ntfs-windows partition, and going on to fat32)
OT I know, but though you may know off the top of your head, or Trev?
B.H.

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>>
>> Vinux Home Page: http://vinux.org.uk/
>> Vinux Wiki
>> Documentation:http://wiki.vinuxvirtual.org.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page
>>

--

[Tony Sales]

As far as I know you have to append the -r option if you want the
contents of directories to be copied using the cp command.

>>> *and I’m on Facebook*

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>
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> *the above was probably written by-
> Burt Henry
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--
drbongo

Dig that crazy beat on the drums: <http://vinux.org.uk>  The best is
getting better!

[Deborah Armstrong]

Not including the entire thread in my message but I noticed people
discussing problems copying directories.

For me the best command I've found to copy stuff is pax a gnu-ish kind of cp
with a clear detailed manual.

The Pax (latin for peace) got its name because it also archives, and was
supposed to make peace between all the disparate archiving utilities out
there, because it supposedly supported them all. However, I usually use tar
to archive and pax to copy huge numbers of files:

To use the pax copy (not archive nor compress) mode:

cd into the source directory

Ensure the destination directory exists; if it doesn't, use mkdir to create
it

Issue this command: pax -rw . destination_directory

Note that you don't include the f switch in copy mode, as an archive file
doesn't
get created. Instead, the old directory structure is directly recreated into
the
new directory structure. This can be much easier to remember than the tar
equivalent:
 
tar cf - . | (cd
destination_directory; tar vpxf -)

Pax seems to be included automatically with most distros.

--Debee

[Burt Henry]

Thanks, I assume this was a cli CD this cat was using, but he seemed to
be having so much trouble, (he was trying to copy some bits of of my
winXP box that would not boot, and wound up with more empty directories
than data...lol..and the XP installation was only a few weeks old/same
buggy laptop that I am writing this on/thank you for Vinux again)/ I'd
never had my hands on a Linux machine back then anyway.
B.H.

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>>>>
>>>> Vinux Home Page: http://vinux.org.uk/
>>>> Vinux Wiki
>>>> Documentation:http://wiki.vinuxvirtual.org.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page
>>>>
>> --
>> *the above was probably written by-
>> Burt Henry
>> (registered Linux-user 521,886)
>> Contact Info: *email, GTalk&AIM-
>> (burt1...@gmail.com)
>> *Follow Me on Twitter-
>> @BurtHenry

>> *and I�m on Facebook*
>>
>> --

>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
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>> To post to this group, send email to vinux-...@googlegroups.com.
>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>> vinux-suppor...@googlegroups.com.
>> For more options, visit this group at
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>>
>> Vinux Home Page: http://vinux.org.uk/
>> Vinux Wiki
>> Documentation:http://wiki.vinuxvirtual.org.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page
>>
>

--
*the above was probably written by-
Burt Henry
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Contact Info: *email, GTalk&AIM-
(burt1...@gmail.com)
*Follow Me on Twitter-
@BurtHenry

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