[PLUG] I should have known better

[Jon Scully]

On 6/20/06, Michael M. <nixlists at writemoore.net> wrote:
>
> So after playing around with some other distros (and one other OS), and
> a visit to Powell's Technical, I decided to go back to Debian (Etch,
> this time) and try to learn the hard way.  :-)  That is, I got a couple
> of books:  Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 Bible and The Debian System.  I think
> part of my problem with using Linux has been my piecemeal approach to
> fixing problems as they come up, rather than trying really to understand
> what's going on -- understanding not just why something goes wrong, but
> also why it goes right.  In other words, I don't really get how it all
> works.  Playing around with Arch Linux and, to a lesser extent, Gentoo,
> helped give me some perspective on how other distros do things.  It's
> useful and interesting for helping to separate out what things are
> common to "Linux" from what's specific to Debian (and Debian-based)
> distros.  But I think, for me, the best way to learn is to stop the
> dabbling for awhile, dive into one distro headfirst, and try to learn
> what happens from the moment the machine gets turned on until it gets
> shutdown.  Debian is one of the better documented and best-supported
> distros around, despite not having a corporate backer, so I'm going with
> that.  If there'd been two relatively recent several-hundred-page books
> each documenting Arch, Gentoo, or Slackware, I might've gone with one of
> those, as I like the simplicity of their layouts in comparison to
> Debian.  (Ubuntu, on the other hand, is just too complex -- like Debian,
> but harder.)  If there exists somewhere a course like "Linux for
> Non-Programmers," I'll sign-up.


Having tried Red Hat, Ubuntu, Arch, Gentoo, et al (9 years of Linux), I
finally settled on Arch.  Have tried others since I started using Arch, but
keep coming back.  (Writing this on Toshiba Satellite over its built-in
802.11g WiFI -- using all native Arch binaries.)  Am also biased toward KDE
(makes Suspend-to-RAM just work, for example).  Why do I pick these?  I like
to enjoy my PC experience.  Heh.

For example, I don't like having to install a distro and then run around
finding mp3 and nVidia binaries from other sources -- and hoping the other
sources have packages that were put together with the same care as the folks
in the dristro.

The Arch forums are close to a "Linux for Non-Programmers".  The Wiki is
also good -- though it tends to be a bit stale, at times.  Have found the
Gentoo Wiki more complete / up-to-date and often applies closely to the Arch
environment.

Although, having said that, I also picked up Mark Sobel's "A Practical
> Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming."  I got it more
> for the the commands and editors parts than the shell programming part,
> but maybe I'll learn something.


That's a very good start.

Just my two cents, of course.