Learning Ubuntu/Linux basics?

August 9, 2005 5:53 PM

Any good guides on getting up to speed with Linux? Specifically Ubuntu, but also general things like filesystem, permissions, installing/uninstalling software, etc.

See, I got this Toshiba Qosmio laptop. It's a Media Center PC, so it has all the TV tuner, and A/V output/inputs. It's actually quite a marvel, hardware-wise. Problem is, Toshiba decided they didn't want to give me the Media Center Edition discs, just a Ghost image of what they think the hard drive's supposed to look like. They think it's supposed to look like whatever the people who pay them money want it to look like, so I have to deal with uninstalling all the AOL and Microsoft trialware crap.

Anyway, the TV tuner is apparently some model I can't get a WDM or VFW driver for, which means that it only really works in Media Center, which I find pretty repulsive. I was hoping to learn Ubuntu so that the next time I get some hardware worth doing something with, I won't be crippled by Microsoft and whatever OEM that'll be.

posted by hoborg to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Rute is the typically suggested new-users guide to basic Linux command-line skills.

Ubuntu also has a wiki, which contains their documentation (such as it is).

Your best bet is to somehow find and attach yourself to somebody who is already skilled with Linux and learn from them... and I'm not volunteering. Sorry. :-p
posted by nmiell at 6:27 PM on August 9, 2005

nmiell's got some good resources for you. But I just wanted to add that "get Linux working with some random laptop A/V hardware" sounds like you're setting yourself up for a lot of frustration. Linux is good at a lot of things, but drivers for funky hardware is not one of them. If your goal is a media center PC, I suggest you start with hardware that's known to work well with Linux. Sites like Myth TV should steer you the right way.
posted by Nelson at 6:38 PM on August 9, 2005

I've got to second Nelson. Linux isn't really great for what you seem to want to do -- unless you already know how to hack device drivers together, and who does? (Not me.)

In my case, just getting a fairly common wifi card working in my venerable IBM Thinkpad was a real trial -- and the sound card another hassle of its own, and this wasn't weird new hardware deliberately designed to be difficult/closed.

For every single problem, however, being able to correctly identify each piece of hardware helped. Network devices with MAC addresses, for example, you can google for lookup charts which identify manufacturers basedon MAC allocations, and so on, and from there you can google until you find someone who managed to get something hacked together.

For my Thinkpad, though, there wasn't a single site which said "get this, run it, done," it was arduos. Once it was all up and running (though flakey as hell) I decided it just wasn't worth it, and I ended up going back to XP, and having everything 'just work' right away, and stable.
posted by The Monkey at 6:52 PM on August 9, 2005

Nah... don't listen to those haters. There's an active laptop discussion area over at ubuntu forums where you can get your questions answered.

I'm not familiar with that particular laptop/linux combo before, so you might wanna scan the forums before digging in too deeply... but dual booting should allow you experiment without committing one way or the other.

The best way to learn linux is to just run it and try and use it for your daily activities. If you have specific questions, just join your local linux user's group mailing list. Some nerd will help you out.
posted by ph00dz at 9:35 PM on August 9, 2005

From your question it seems like your a relative newbie to the Linux world, so I'm going to agree with those above me for the most part.

If you'd like to learn what this new-fangled-world of Open Source Software is like, I'd reccommend purchasing an old pc, running standard hardware that you can hack around on. Don't spend more than $100 if you don't have anything in house.

Trying to get a Laptop up and running correctly w/o the proper level of experience is probably going to cause you no end of problems.

The above is ESPECIALLY true if your hardware is proprieatory, as this seems to be the case.

In any case, Ubuntu is a good distro to get started on, although my personal prefernce is Debian.
posted by WetherMan at 11:21 PM on August 9, 2005

I certainly didn't mean to be a hater, I like linux, and I've been using it since about 1995, when I installed off a pile of floppies into a 20 meg partition on a 120MB HDD in a 486sx25.

My point was really... Linux isn't easy, you need to go into this with your eyes open, and know that sometimes a driver just isn't available and that is more likely to be true with newer or unusual hardware, hardware support is one of the biggest problems with linux. So, how useful would your Toshiba be with no sound? And if the TV tuner doesn't work?

I haven't used Ubuntu specifically, so I can't directly answer your question, that's why I was more general in my advice about learning how to look up specific hardware - unless you're lucky enough to find someone who has documented the entire process of installing Ubuntu on your exact model of laptop, you might have to do a lot of searching around to find all the right drivers and so forth.

I'm with WetherMan on favouring Debian, but if a former flatmate is anything to go by, it's definitely not for beginners. So it looks like Ubuntu, which appears to be built on Debian, is a really good choice.

I don't know if you've tried installing Ubuntu on the laptop already, or if you are just doing some research before you download it, or whatever, but maybe you should try what ph00dz says, install it dual-boot and just see what happens.

But maybe a more realistic solution in this case is to install the horrible ghost version of the OS, set it up exactly how you like, and make a new ghost of your own?
posted by The Monkey at 11:46 PM on August 9, 2005

Thanks everyone. I guess I wasn't really that clear. I don't necessarily need to replace XP Media Center with Linux, just want to *learn* linux so that I can eventually make the switch. My current problem is getting this thing to dual-boot, but I don't mind sticking with the Live CDs for the moment to just dive in. Thanks again!
posted by hoborg at 12:45 AM on August 10, 2005

I've done linux training a couple of times and have seen a lot of total beginners get up to scratch (like, up to the level of basic sysadmin stuff) within a week. If you've got time to devote to it then you can learn it easily. I think the main thing to realise with linux is that the learning curve is going to be steep. But, hey, that's the sort of thing I like.

Ubuntu is a weird one to learn with, because one of the central things about unix is the distinction between the superuser account and the user accounts - and ubuntu doesn't even make you set a root password (!). Everything
is done using sudo. Weird. First time I installed it, it didn't set everything up the way I liked so I typed su and only then realised I didn't know the password for root. Had to walk up to uni to do a websearch.

If you want to become efficient at unix you have to realise that it's all based on text files. All the config files are text files. Many of the basic commands (less, more, grep, sort, cat, tac, head, tail, sed, awk, nl ...) are to do with viewing or manipulating text. You're not really going to be able to call yourself a linux or unix expert unless you know how to use one of the major text editors: Yes, if you want to be a geek, you have to be able to use emacs or vi(m). Now I'm a vi-girl myself, but I'm not going to get all evangelical on you. You just have to be competent at using one or the other - a powerful text editor makes life so much easier. Want to change the way apache behaves? Edit a text file. Want to add new hardware? Edit a couple of text files...

Others have linked to resources you can use. O'reilly's running linux book is good if you want paper stuff.
posted by handee at 1:40 AM on August 10, 2005 [1 favorite]

I seem to have developed a crush on handee, in a matter seconds.
posted by Necker at 9:35 AM on August 10, 2005 [1 favorite]