Become a Linux Guru

[scott]

On 02/04/2011 09:40 AM, devicerandom wrote:
> On 04/02/11 12:20, Amedee Van Gasse wrote:
>> On Thu, February 3, 2011 19:50, devicerandom wrote:
>>
>>> And in any case , step 1 is ditching Ubuntu and going with Gentoo. I
>>> used it for years, and it teached me much more about Linux than any
>>> binary distribution could.
>>
>> I have used Gentoo, and I respectfully disagree.
>> It's not because your pc spends 80% of its time compiling with the
>> -go-faster-stripes and -break-my-cpu compiler options that you actually
>> learn something. Except when your name is Neo and you can somehow
>> magically absorb knowledge when the compilation output is scrolling 
>> across
>> your screen in a Matrix-inspired green on black font. :-)
>
> I answered this above. Installing Gentoo is already a learning 
> experience. And no, compiling in itself doesn't help -but when you're 
> dealing with normal cases (e.g. incompatbile GCC, recompiling a kernel 
> often) you learn usually a lot.
>
>
As opposed to rolling your own and Gentoo, don't forget Slackware and 
Arch. Both are pretty minimal installs and you need to learn a lot 
quickly to get your system where you want it. I still think the idea of 
using a distro that is widely used is a better choice, though. Once you 
become familiar with a deb or rpm based distro, you will be better 
prepared to deal with the idiosyncracies of a distro geared to the more 
knowledgeable user.
Learning shell scripting is a must. There are many good tutorials and 
books. Google is your friend here. I learned a lot just by doing things, 
some ended up not being very smart, others worked out well. Back in the 
win95 days, I broke my system regularly. Taught me a lot about what you 
should or should not mess with. Fixing it was always more fun than 
breaking it. I actually enjoyed trying to undo things I did, especially 
when I wasn't quite sure exactly what I did to begin with.

Have fun.
Scott