Hello from a newbe

[GeneP]

Hi All. I just got my ubuntu 5.10 reinstalled and runnning. I was surfing the web 5 minutes after I finished the install. Its on an old pentium 2 - 450 with 256 meg of memory. I am amazed at the speed. Its almost as fast as my 2 gig hrz XP Home.
When I started in computers it was with Dos 2.11 and I am fine with the command line. Even though I programed on Unix in c for a few classes, I don't know much about Linux. I have 12 ebooks that I downloaded but they aren't much help yet. Maybe when I get deeper into them.
I downloaded FireFox 1.5 from Mozilla and tried to install it. Not much luck as yet. I use firefox 1.5 on XP so my bookmarks wikll work. When I get it installed.
I have no idea what "sudo" is, but I will find out. I am looking to replace Microsoft products, but at this stage I'm not sure.

[Miguel]

Hi Gene,

Welcome to Ubuntu!!!! I hope you enjoy yourself and learn a lot over here. About ebooks, if they are handbooks, most are slightly updated. They are good for things that don't change like vi, or emacs or shell scripting, but are not so good when describing things like latest hardware or desktop environments... because these get outdated quickly. It won't be long till you find out that google and forums are your friends ;)

About Firefox 1.5... If you haven't downloaded the source code (which you probably haven't, since it is slightly hidden), it is as easy as unpacking the tarball* somewhere and running the binary**

*: Most compressed achives in Linux are not .zip but .tar.gz or .tar.bz2. Double clicking on the files will open file-roller, something similar to winzip. Just remember to extract it to where you have write permission

**: You can run a binary on a terminal by going to the directory where the binary is, and then typing ./name-of-binary (the dot and slash ARE important). You can also create a shortcut in your desktop or in your bar.

For any doubt you have, please, ask. It will be a privilege to help you (I've played Morrowind for too long)

[jobezone]

Also, check out the Help that comes with ubuntu, especially the "Ubuntu 5.10 Starter Guide" .

[Lin-X]

Advice on the subject of documentation and self-instruction: there is a huge amount of information available for the student of Linux, however, it's all jumbled together.
Some books, articles, etc. are slanted to only one distro or one particular configuration of hardware, or etc; some are out of date, aimed too high above or below the newbie, or are too sketchy to be useful. All of this is so mixed up together and there is so much to learn that after awhile all this information adds to the frustration rather than eliminates it. So ... advice from someone who is very much a student: choose one thing you want to do, gather the information, then do the thing until you understand it and have it down pat. Then go to the next thing. Otherwise, eventually, you will find yourself going around in circles and spending more time sorting information than using it.
Anyway, welcome to Ubuntu Linux. There is nothing so satisfying as the knowlege that you own your operating system and, therefore, your computer. You can change it, share it, give it away, upgrade it, down-grade it, whatever. That's the way it should be.