To learn Linux you don’t need pen-copy and other stationary at your disposal. Just a cool mind, bubbling with confidence. Get a cup of coffee, sit back and relax. The plane is about to take off!

Learning Linux isn’t getting some specifications. Its a complete Operating system, which has user friendly GUI and has some great OS concepts for the geeks. The former part is not a big deal as its similar to learning windows, the latter part needs to be covered.

Before getting started please read these two FAQ:   FAQ 1 and FAQ 2

1) Get to know about the other distros: Do you know any other distros apart from the distro you are using? Say if you are using Ubuntu, do you know about other famous and friendly distros which are making as much news? Other great distros include Fedora, OpenSuse, PCLinuxOS and some examples of geeky ones are Gentoo, Slackware. Leave these geeky ones if your taste doesn’t match. Be a n00b till you feel free to break out to the wider world.

• List of Distros
• Comparison of Linux Distributions

2) Know about the history of the distro you are using: It may look foolish! What do I have to do with older versions? This is a nice way to know about the trend which your distro is following. What are the features they expect to include in their future releases. What mindset these distros follow while releasing their new versions. What is the release cycle of your distro? What is the next release date? Isn’t it useful? Think twice!

3) Learn about the different desktop Environment: There are many desktop environments available out there which include GNOME,KDE, XFCE. What are their features? What are the specialties? What are their requirements? Which one is lighter, which one heavy? I have hundreds of question to ask, you might be having much more!

4) What is a Kernel: Quite basic but a big geeky question! I have heard people looking at each other’s face when this question is asked and then they look at me. In Layman’s language, we can explain it as a heart of OS. Compare it with engine of a car, where kernel is engine, gasoline is external power, mouse as driving wheel. Oh wait! My explanation is becoming too dumb! There is not just Linux kernel available, search for GNU Hurd and many more kernels available, out of which Linux is most popular. Hey did I mention that Linux is just a kernel, the whole OS is called a “Linux based distro” or simply GNU/Linux.

5) Linux File System: You should learn about the filesystem tree of Linux, how different partitions are mounted/accessed. Did you know that each device connected to the computer is represented by a file, each disk, partition are also represented by a file. These are called special files. Even directories are files, they are infact a file which point to an array of files. Where are all the configuration files stored? Its in /etc. Where are partitions mounted to be accessed (Ans: /media). Where are all the installed software’s executables go? (Ans: /usr) Where are all the device files stored? (Ans: /dev)

6) Permissions: This is one of the biggest hurdles for a newbie coming from windows world. According to him, this one is the most annoying feature at the beginning until he/she learns why is it actually needed. It contributes a lot to the security enjoyed by Linux boxes. You can make a file read-only for others, writable for the whole world or give the write permissions to some limited people by forming a group. Fine tune your policies as you like, nobody gonna stop you anytime.

• Linux File Permission Guide
• Changing File Permissions

7) Root User: If God who holds unchallenged powers exists, then why cant we apply the natural law to this beautiful OS too? There can be many users whose powers are at par with root user,but never equal! Heard about sudo? It’s used by non-root users.This is a keyword to be prefixed before those commands which require root access like installation,network configuration. For this the user must be in sudoers list (by default most users are in this list)

• The Sudo Manual
• What is Sudo in a n00b language

8 ) The different Applications for Linux: Who says that there are shortage for applications/softwares for Linux. Bring him to me, rest I will take care Coming to the point, I can say that there are thousands and lakhs of softwares available all of which are in the repositories. Now what is repositories? Hope you have already checked out the FAQ’s Link given at the start of this article. You don’t need to hunt them down and install, just an apt-get or yum is self sufficient.

• Applications available for Linux
• Some Applications available for both Windows and Linux (some examples)

9) Package Management: This is one topic which I would speak less and ask you to work on more. This is one of those topics which had unlimited theories and similar crap to waste time by writing in the blog. Trying it out hands on would be the best way of learning. Basically there are two types of Package Managers, Debain based which uses APT and Red Hat based which uses YUM. Both are good and provides you alternatives in case you arn’t satisfied with one. I think I have said enough of package management. A Linux software doesn’t come packages as one single exe file. Many different packages constitute an application. Don’t worry about which all packages you need to download, this is the place where package manager comes into play. It resolves all dependencies which are required for installing some simplest to complex software. For more knowledge Click Here

These topics are just pointers for “How to Start? Where to start from?”. It isn’t a complete reference, remember “Google is your Friend”

Wait for another blog post, you would be able to gulp down the second one only if you read this and did tried out yourself most of the things.

Have Fun Mates!

Well after going through a large number of guides like this i finally thought about giving guide at cchtml a try, well the hings mentioned are really great but not all steps are needed so here is a simplified version

Here i assume that you have not done any of this step before and are doing it for the first time but if that is not the case then this might not work for you.
Ok so first step installation of drivers, there are two steps for this as mentioned in the cchtml wiki one automatic and other manual, for automatic you need to enable the restricted repositories by going to System>>Administration>>Software Sources, and the typing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-generic restricted-manager
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
which will install the drivers by downloading them from net, if you dont have the bandwidth to download that much you can go for the manual install where we will build those file, here i assumed that you have copy of the ati drivers .run file which if your Ubuntu is installed by me could be found at “/”, to build we need to install certain packages
sudo apt-get install module-assistant build-essential fakeroot dh-make debhelper debconf libstdc++5 linux-headers-generic dkms
to build the packages type
sudo bash ati-driver-installer-8.443.1-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/gutsy
in the directory where you have the ati-driver-installer-8.443.1-x86.x86_64.run file, this is the latest file at the time of writing but you might have a different file this will work with any driver after 8.38, as they have AIGLX support anyway now we need to install the packages made type
sudo dpkg -i xorg-driver-fglrx_8.443.1-1*.deb fglrx-kernel-source_8.443.1-1*.deb fglrx-amdcccle_8.443.1-1*.deb
when you do that you might be asked
Configuration file `/etc/xdg/compiz/compiz-manager'
==> Deleted (by you or by a script) since installation.
==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version.
What would you like to do about it ? Your options are:
Y or I : install the package maintainer’s version
N or O : keep your currently-installed version
D : show the differences between the versions
Z : background this process to examine the situation
The default action is to keep your current version.
*** compiz-manager (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ?
just answer Y to the question and proceed, once this is done you now need to edit the xorg.conf file type
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
and replace
Section "Device"
Identifier “Generic Video Card”
Driver “vesa”
BusID “PCI:1:5:0″
EndSection
WITH
Section "Device"
Identifier “Generic Video Card”
#Driver “vesa”
BusID “PCI:1:5:0″
Option “VideoOverlay” “on”
Option “OpenGLOverlay” “off”
EndSection now just restart the X server but pressing Ctrl + ALT + Backspace, all done this will give you the Basic 3D effects but who is satisfied with that we need more so we will go for installing Compiz settings manager, for this type
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager gcompizthemer subversion
svn ls https://svn.generation.no/emerald-themes
now accept the certificate and fetch the themes by going to System>>Preferances>>Emerald Themes Manager,
to enable 3D effects go to System>>Preferances>>Appearance then Visual Effects select Custom and edit your settings by Preferances
now you are all set to blow everyone up with your Linux box’s 3D effects enjoy

People have a myth in mind that Linux is still command line. So the event started off with the Vista-Ubuntu Compiz video. Shubhendra first showed them the effects of Vista and the whole crowd was quite astonished that such effects were really possible? We asked them how much of RAM you require for them? Hardware requirements? Answers were- “Minimum 1GB RAM”, “2GB RAM for proper aero effects”, “Dedicated Graphics card” and many more. Next we showed them the Beryl-CompizFusion effects on Ubuntu. Now people didnt know to say next. We again asked for hardware requirements. This time we got replies like “1GB RAM”,”512MB RAM”, “Graphics Card”. No buddies! It runs on 512MB of RAM without even a Graphics Card. Next I showed them the same effects on my laptop to prove that they were not false. The greatest myth regarding Linux was cleared.

Next was my turn. I know the section was a bit boring since I had to speak on the Open Source and Free Software philosphy. This was the arena where we all three tried hard to explain the people what it really is !! Next I told them the history of Linux in the hope that it would turn out to be interesting but it proved to be more disastrous. It became too technical. Well, leave it.

The last and most important part was the questionnaire round. People kept asking the questions like they had sessionals the next day. This was the place where as first year guy “Ankur Shrivastava aka OS” jumped in. Till now he had been controlling our presentation slides. Now we all four tried our best to quench their thirst of knowledge. Some people did ask foolish questions, but we do know the importance of patience.

Before concluding, we asked those people to stay back who really wanted to get involved in this work. We would be building website relating to LUG,Manipal. We plan to have blog,CMS, Wiki and forums on the site for the betterment of general public. To out expectations more than 30 students stayed back to register themselves. All of them have been assigned the work and now I hope on the first Saturday of next semester we can hold an install fest for letting people work on this hot-hot thing