Friday, January 18, 2013

What is the best linux distribution for learning to use many?

Q. First, a bit about my background.. I currently work as a Network Engineer, mainly with Cisco routers/switches and VPN devices. I am throughly familiar with Windows, both as a workstation and server, and have one more test to go to complete my MCSE. However, I have no real experience with Linux, and feel like this is both a hole in my personal knowledge and in my resume. :) I can do basic user stuff both from a command line and in Xwindows, but have no real command of it.

That said, I intend to rectify this. I want to start using Linux as my primary operating system on my personal PC, as I feel this is a great first step to really force myself to learn it. I need to know what distribution would be best for me to use. My concern is some of them seem to have alot of propriatary tools that are not found in other linux distros, I want to find one to learn on that will best allow me to be comfortable on any linux distro I run into in the future. Thanks much for your advice!

A. Linux truly is a wonderful operating system! If I'm using a PC, I greatly prefer using it to Windows. It's much more stable, secure, etc. But you already knew that. =]

Personally, I would suggest you start out with OpenSuSE. It's easy to use, yet it is very powerful. Its installer is also pretty easy. I recommend that because a lot of businesses that run Linux on their client systems use SuSE (the only difference between that and OpenSuSE is that SuSE contains closed-source programs; therefore, you have to pay for that distro).

I hope this helps! Good luck!

How much Linux do I know to qualify for some of these jobs out there?
Q. I'm an MCSE/MCITP have my bachelors, and 8 years experience but never touched Linux. I noticed a lot of jobs require some Linux. Obviously I'll never be a guru as I don't use it on the job and never have, but what's a good place to start and how much of it do I need to know to get around comfortably?

A. Get a hold of a few old computers, set up a LAN, and learn how to do anything you can think of. Start learning basic shell commands and how to look up such commands, "man" looks up the manual (docs) for each command, "apropos" searches man pages for a word to find a related command, etc.

If you have a network printer figure out how to use that. Set up apache webserver. Play around with bind9 configuring DNS zones for your LAN. Learn how "samba" interacts with Windows file and printer sharing and WINS. Set up a couple of mail servers using sendmail or postfix and learn how to successfully send mail between them.

And when you get comfortable enough with it, set up a Linux computer as your internet router, masquerading your private LAN from the internet, port forwarding, and other firewall rules (basically learning "iptables").

I am 1700 miles from our factory, so I am not sure what all they use Linux for. But it has been used as a safe public smtp interface for our mail, forwarded into/out of our internal Exchange server. They use Smoothwall Linux for "squid" web proxy (I use IPCop on an old K6-2/400 cpu for squid). Our document retrieval system for literature and drawings is apache webserver in Linux with search pages/scripts written by our network guru.

How to cut and paste something in Linux, using the terminal?
Q. How do I go about cutting something in one directory and placing it into another directory in the terminal?
What are the "commands" (not sure if that's what they're called) and what are their arguments? I would appreciate anyone with helpful information's assistance.

Thank-you.

A. 1) If you are talking about copying text from the terminal, you can copy with ctrl+shift+C, and paste with shift+insert (might be 'ins' on the keyboard).

2) I'm assuming that you are actually talking about moving, or copying files in your computer. Here are some basic commands;
ls - lists files in the current dictory

[john@Aaarch ~]$ ls
43375-coolarch.png 64roms Desktop
[john@Aaarch ~]$

cd - change dictory

[john@Aaarch ~]$ cd ./Desktop/
[john@Aaarch Desktop]$

cd ./ will let you change to a subdictory within the dictory you are already in. cd / will change to a dictory from the beginning of the filesystem. cd /home/john/Desktop is would be the same as cd ./Desktop, if I are already located in /home/john. To move to /home/john, my home dictory, I could also use cd ~/.
so, I could also do cd ~/Desktop, because "Desktop" is a subdictory within /home/john. If you login as another user, you will have a different home dictory, and to change to john's dictory, you will have to use cd /home/john. Home dictories are usually located in the /home dictory.

Another feature is to move up to the parent dictory with cd.
[john@Aaarch Desktop]$ cd ../
[john@Aaarch ~]$ ls
43375-coolarch.png 64roms Desktop
[john@Aaarch ~]$
Simply type cd ../

To switch to another user, you would use su. Don't worry, this will only effect the terminal use issue su on, and you can always switch back.
To switch to the root user (administrative user), you can simply type in su. You will be prompted for the password. Be very carefull when working with the root user. You can damage your system. Only use the root user when needed.

If you get lost, you can use pwd to find your location.
[john@Aaarch Desktop]$ pwd
/home/john/Desktop
[john@Aaarch Desktop]$

To copy and remove files you would use these to commands:
cp - copy
rm - remove
There is as a command to just move files (cut and paste), but I don't use it too often.
mv - move
Too copy and remove dictories, you can use the -r arguement.
cp -r
rm -r

[john@Aaarch ~]$ cp ./43375-coolarch.png ./Desktop/
[john@Aaarch ~]$ cd ./Desktop/
[john@Aaarch Desktop]$ ls
43375-coolarch.png
[john@Aaarch Desktop]$

Keep in mind that Desktop is a dictory. Dictories are usually a different color, if your terminal supports that. To get even more information of files, you can use ls -l instead.

Another useful command is man. man will let you view the manual pages of a command, if there is any availabe. Most distros come with the manual pages installed, and can be very help if learning new commands.

These are just some of the basics, but you will be using these commands as long as you use the terminal. I suggest you read some linux guides and documentation. I'll list a few that I know of, but remember that google is your friend, and also try posting on some forums as well.

http://www.linux.org/docs/
http://www.linuxhq.com/guides/LUG/guide.html (pretty old, but explains the basics)
http://learnlinux.tsf.org.za/



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