where did..

[Somenoob]

Where did you learn most about Linux in general? and what source do you find most useful?

[Minyaliel]

My nerdy archery companion ;) Else, I did enjoy the advice in some books, but these were in Norwegian, and I don't think they've been translated :P

[cyberb0b]

Nerdy college friend back in 1999.

No online documentation. No forums. No wikis. My most useful resource was man pages. Does anyone still use those?

[xtacocorex]

I taught myself most of what I know.

I had a semi-formal intro to the Linux command line in my freshman Numerical Methods class in college.

In a higher level Numerical Methods class, we had to use Linux exclusively for the class. In preparation for the class, I installed Red Hat 9 on my laptop and have been using Linux ever since.

For help, I usually asked my friends in IT at work and looked on google/man pages.

[richbarna]

I've got a couple of mates that sort out the security for servers in Businesses and Banks, we get together every now and then and they teach me about anything I care to ask about. In our group there are 3 Newbies and 4 experts.
I prefer learning hands on as opposed to reading. This forum has taught me a lot too. I tend to wait until I have a problem, then read up about the ins and outs.
Sometimes I'll read about something that takes my interest. I'm currently into Networking, Encryption, Authentication and hacking (the good type).
Maths is my big downfall so I will probably be studying that again soon :(

[ComplexNumber]

i learnt most about linux by using linux, writing bash scripts, etc. its the only way to learn well. whats that old saying. *ponders*.......
we remember 20% of what we read, 30% of what we hear, 40%
of what we see, 50% of what we say, 60% of what we do, and 90% of what we see,
hear, say, and do. one often learns a lot about linux by helping other people on forums because the very act of trying to explain something to somone in such a way as they can understand it helps to organise things in our mind.
also, its amazing just how much one can learn by finding things out for ourselves. i recently had troubles with trying to get my wireless connection working. i searched through many forums on the net in my effort to get everything to work, and almost gave up at one stage. along the way, i learnt more by actually doing things for myself than i would have by listening to, perhaps, 30 hours of tutorials on the topic.

[Christmas]

First on a romanian forum, I learned there the basics using Red Hat for a couple of days and then FC 4. After that reading this forums, online documentation and just experimenting with Ubuntu. I keep learning all the time, I'm still a newbie.

[23meg]

I learnt everything I know from the net and man pages. Books, courses, magazines are overrated.

one often learns a lot about linux by helping other people on forums because the very act of trying to explain something to somone in such a way as they can understand it helps to organise things in our mind.Agreed; once you start getting involved in it regularly you learn lots of things without noticing in the process. Once the *nix basics become second nature you start to learn much faster.

[Ob1]

the Terminal man pages

The Official Ubuntu http://www.ubuntu.com/support --> Documentation section.

this is very useful for typing in error msg, i most often find the solutions among the serch results. http://www.google.com/linux

Various linux web sites.

And of course this forum, and especially the Support & Resources section.

[beercz]

Using linux, surfing for answers, couple of books, asking a couple of mates.

[G Morgan]

I learned the most while setting up Gentoo via the command line using the minimum install disc. Ensure you have the documentation and its relatively smooth and once you've got it working CLI fear is completely shattered. I tend to recommend doing it in a VM just as a learning experience for those who are adventurous.

Much of what you learn is Gentoo specific but the general mode of thought can be picked up and reused in most Unix environments.

[drummer]

My most useful resource was man pages. Does anyone still use those?
All the time.
I taught myself just by using Linux. I started off just booting Knoppix from CD and using that whenever I could and when I got my own computer I installed various distros and emmersed myself in it.