Linux.
Anyone experienced enough to teach me the ropes since old Mandrake 5? I chose slackware because it's pimp. I have forgotten everything about linux, since I was about 15 years old and used to have it as my only OS. Now, I'm dumb again. I've got to reteach myself everything about it, including the way the OS works compared to Winblows.

Unless there are linux non-snobs here, you'll get about 50 "RTFM"s. That 'tude turned me off awhile ago when I was motivated to jump into the scene. Hopefully it's changed a bit and/or we have a non-representative linux-using population here :)

How about some neat video tutorials? Let me know if you're interested.

RTFM!@!!

LOL, what about torrents? I have found a ton of ebooks on linux for when I get a small secondary computer

I develop on linux almost exclusively these days. There are alot of good distros, but I use Ubuntu just because its brain dead and the Debian package manager really does kick ass on RPM in my opinion.

What are you looking to do?

I think the only real way to learn is to dive in head first -- and ask questions when they come up.

O'Reilly has a few linux books that I've skimmed -- some sections are decent -- but I wouldn't recommend reading them but maybe consult them when you have questions.

Sites like:
http://stackoverflow.com/
http://superuser.com/
http://www.linuxquestions.org/
http://nixcraft.com/

are usually where I end up for questions.

PS Slackware is not pimp. http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity

4/5 of my boxes run Fedora 11,12 and 13.
1/5 of my boxes run Windows 7 (primarily for CS:S)

but.. but.. but... ubuntu is like windowsssss!
i have downloaded:
Backtrack Tutorials (which is currently what I'm using)

I'll take any books/manuals, etc. I used to read the mandrake blue handbook every day. been there, done that with the RTFM.

You mean Gnome is like windows?

Yeah, pretty much. But so is KDE, and XFCE to some extent.

The advantage of Linux (esp distros like Ubuntu and Fedora) is that they have the GUI benefits of windows, but the command line power and flexibility of *nix systems.

Also, Ubuntu and Fedora have great package management features that save you an unbelievable amount of time handling dependencies and building packages.

Ubuntu probably has the same feature, but Fedora has a live-usb and live-cd distro options available that allow you to boot into the OS and try it out. If you use a USB drive, you can add a persistent overlay that will allow you to customize the distro between reboots.

Most of the popular distros usually have that option, or at the very least the live cd option, if I remember correctly (or at least quite a few of 'em do, I don't keep tabs on every distro). It's not just limited to Ubuntu and Fedora.

Also, I guess it depends on which community you join when looking for help. There are some communities that are really helpful to people who are new to linux and there are still some that get snobby when you can't do everything via command line.

My very first was Ubuntu, and I really enjoyed it. Why not just use google to search for some Linux Communities. They generally will have forums, with begginers sections where you can ask questions, or are loaded with tutorials

Basically what Fomenta said...having a desktop is very convenient...beats the hell out of using screen to manage multiple terminal windows and its basically impossible to do anything on Linux without running multiple terminals.

Also with Gnome, KDE, and other X Window managers you can run real IDE's like Eclipse or NetBeans if you want to write code, and there are alot of other handy apps that require an X Windows manager. Network analyzers like Wireshark beat the crap out of using a command line packet trace utility like tcpdump.

Linux/X is pretty much the shit. Even the hardcore Linux geeks I know use X on the desktop...about the only Linux installs around these days without X are dedicated servers.

Yeah, my version of slackware uses X. I've used KDE/Gnome, but I've never been into it. Since I was always broke, I couldn't afford to buy accelerated graphics cards, so X was easier for me. It took some of the sting away when I had KDE and I couldn't use accelerated graphics.

The only thing I really think I need help with is using the console to do everything I want, and knowing what packages are available and the possibilities of each. Linux is both independent and co-dependent on many things, and I like this. I need to understand administration and managing packages/administrating windows and sessions. I'm working on it.

You gotta be using a windows manager on top of X...plain X is painful to look at. I run my Linux in a VM on my Windows box, and since VMWare decided only to support accelerated graphics for Windows VM's I don't get any 3D acceleration but Gnome is still pretty cool without it.

Knowing what all the packages are for is all but impossible...you will start picking up which ones are more commonly used than others after awhile, but basically I just install stuff when I try something and it complains saying I need such and such to do that. That's definitely something I like about Ubuntu/Debian is it will give you a clue of what you need rather than just the standard "command not found" message when you attempt a command that has a package dependency which is not installed. The RedHat and SLES boxes I work on don't tell you shit when something is not installed, don't know about other distros.

RPM is a decent package manager, but I have seen it corrupt its database and when that happens its usually time to blow away the OS and start over. Synaptic/Aptitude is much more user friendly. We code for RHEL 4/5, SLES 9/10, and some freaky internal IBM distro called MPC which we use in embedded appliances, so I am more familiar than I want to be with RPM, :)

I am not much of a technology bigot, I coded Java from '96-2000 until .Net came out and I hopped on that train because it was light years ahead. Now Java is back in front with the new 1.6/1.7 JDK and the defocusing on J2EE so I am back on that platform. In my book nothing beats simplicity and Ubuntu is by far the easiest to manage Linux distro yet so I will use that for my personal stuff until something better comes along.

So, I broke down and installed Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha today through VM. I mean, it's not bad, but I completely lack any direction with it. I'm used to heavily relying on a console to use commands, and the package manager on this thing is ridiculously easy. I'd like to get into theme editing or something, to make this shit look elite.

Very cool...I think you are going to like it. I love the Synaptic package manager, it makes finding shit so goddamn easy. You can also use aptitude from the command line...I do that alot when I am in the middle of something and I try to execute a command that is missing. Ubuntu basically tells you what package to install when you do that so doing a quick apt-get install <package> is quicker than launching Synaptic.

Here is a good link for info on changing the Desktop theme in Ubuntu:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/ans ... _and_fonts

I had mine decked out to mimic a Mac for awhile, but ended up reverting back to the stock desktop when I upgraded from 9.04 because a bunch of shit stopped working. Have not gotten around to tweaking it yet.

Just remember, it's ew-boon-two and guh-nome!

My roommate gets annoyed by people pronouncing it wrong so for some reason I get annoyed by it as well.

I use CentOS at work. Seems alright.

Yeah I'm also practicing with CentOS right now. I sued Suse a long time ago but wanted something different to play with, and it's pretty good.

Yeah, I try to do as much as possible by the command line because of the speed, but Shredder's examples of Eclipse and Wireshark are excellent examples of where using a GUI dominates.

I know you're into the BT3 stuff -- so a lot of these apps might be fun: http://sectools.org/ -- many run only on Linux or have weak Windows ports

Here are some cool things I've done on Linux that can help you get acquainted with it -- if you need help w any of these let me know
-- Install Apache2, get PHP working, get MySQL working, get phpMyAdmin working
-- Install Subversion Server and Configure that box or another to commit to a repository on your subversion server over ssh
-- Play with the firewall (iptables)
-- Generate a self-signed cert, and set up apache to use SSL
-- Create and check in a pgp key (I'll sign it!)
-- Set up WebSVN
-- Set up a cron job to automatically add and commit files in a certain directory to your repo
-- Access folders on your linux box from your windows box via Samba

Nerds.