A little help?

witnessmenow

I just started work experience and i've been told i'll basically be working with linux for my whole time here!

Unfortunatly my college barely scratched the surface of linux so im fairly lost on what to do!

I'll be writing drivers and such (apperently) And have been given "linux device driver" to read. But im not getting on great with it. Can anyone recomend me a decent place to learn pretty much all about linux!

I know some simple stuff like mkdir, ls etc already

ethernet

The Linux Documentation Project is pretty useful.

Also, I'd suggest reading O'Reilly's "Running Linux". Some of the screenshots are a little out-of-date but the content is pretty good (covers a lot, from basics to more advanced topics).

Good luck on work experience BTW

Khannie

Jaysus. Talk about being thrown in the deep end. On the plus side, it'll be golden experience to have on your CV.

This is just my opinion, so take it with however much salt you like:

First thing you should do is stop using windows immediately. Download the linux that you'll be using in work (probably redhat enterprise, in which case you should get centos (the free version)) and start using that for everything you do until you feel comfortable with linux.

Expect lots of reading. Linux use is not initially intuitive.

Expect frustration. Linux use can be frustrating at the offset.

Go though some linux tutorials you'll find on the internet. I'm sure others on here can link you to some good ones.

After a while, it'll just "click".

witnessmenow

Thanks for the suggestions lads! I'll have a look at that book, I'll be so fed up about reading about linux!

Khannie i like your idea of dumping myself in the deep end with using linux for everything. I've one massive problem with it though. I've my laptop dual booting ubuntu and windows. And I've no problem replacing ubuntu with a more terminal demanding distro, my problem is my wireless card. Its supported by ubuntu, but the switch to turn it on isnt!

My laptop is a medion MD 96500 , and its wireless system is based on acers system.

This should sort it out but i never even got it going in ubunutu so i'd probably struggle big time with in something else.

Anybody know how to use this?

Khannie

The pre-packaged RPM's for fedora core on that page you linked should work on RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or Centos too. If not, and you're going to be writing drivers, a good place to start is compiling ones you know will work.

PogMoThoin

Try ndiswrapper and use the windows driver for your wifi card. What i ended up doing on my Acer with an Atheros wifi card. More here

witnessmenow

My wireless card actually works, just not the button to turn it on!

There is a setting in my bios for the wireless card to "remeber last state" If enable that , go into windows, turn on my card reboot to ubunutu my wireless works fine, but heres the funny one that bios setting resets itself to "always off" the next time i boot into windows!

Wine doesnt work with that buttons program either

Orion

I believe that the new version of Ubuntu adds a lot of wireless support so that might be your answer there - 6 days to go.

For RH/Centos you could always run it in a VMWare session. Get it all installed and working then take a snapshot of the installation. That way you can roll back to a known working version with a click of a button. Then play away - don't be afraid to break anything knowing that you have that fallback.