How do you learn?

[wondering_jew]

About a year ago I got rid of windows all together and installed the warty preview release sight unseen, and windows hasn't been on my computer since. I did this with no real experience using linux but felt right at home pretty quickly (overall like switching from an automatic to a stick shift ). I've never been afraid of breaking my computer and tend to dive into things a bit over my head and understanding and have learned quite a bit that way, I have a terminal open all the time and find it to be faster for everything that I know how to use it for and I no longer panic just because my kernel does. But I think I reached a plateau as far as learning how to use linux better. I still have problems that a friend of mine can fix 2 seconds flat and I have no idea how or how he figured it out from the error msg I received, because I don't understand how it all works beneath the gui. The different tutorials etc avaliable online don't seem to be written for people at my skill level they either stop where I already know or pick up way over my head. These forums are a huge help but also people do tend to presupose that I know things that I probably should but do not (remember that I'm a philosophy major not a cosci major I don't know how to program anything etc) and I end up cutting and pasting a lot of commands without knowing why it works, only that it does. Overall I am self sufficient, though mostly because Ubuntu is solid and doesn't need a lot of fixing but partly by just figuring it out. I guess the question at the center of this babble is how do I get from where I am now to where I want to be? How did you learn?

[tseliot]

How did you learn?
I hang around the Forum and its HOWTOs and I use Google so as to find out something more about the processes described. Curiosity is the key.

[aysiu]

(remember that I'm a philosophy major not a cosci major I don't know how to program anything etc) and I end up cutting and pasting a lot of commands without knowing why it works, only that it does. I was an English major, not a CS major, so I, too, don't know how to program. In the beginning I cut and pasted a lot of commands I didn't know. After a while, though, you start to notice patterns in the commands. There are still commands I don't know, but I think as I use them more, I'll come more to understand what they mean.

For example, I have no idea what this command means


sudo fdisk -l

I know what sudo is, but I don't know fdisk -l.
All I know is that it lists all my partitions and their sizes and types.
Maybe later I'll get a better handle on all the commands.
I think familiarity comes with time.

[bob_c_b]

A combination of "doing" stuff hands on, lots of How-To and pages and a moderate stack of books (call me a geek but I love my Oreilly books). I'm a network admin and love to tinker so I am almost disappointed when everything just works ](*,)

[XDevHald]

basically every post that is different in cases of user(s) issues I find myself learning from their mistakes and also reading up on advise from other users that have been in that area before and treating others with that knowledge.

Google is a factor, but not a guide to me.

[Muhammad]

How did you learn?

These forums and the Ubuntu Unofficial Guide were of invaluable help to me.

[Kvark]

I have a terminal open all the time and find it to be faster for everything that I know how to use it for

I end up cutting and pasting a lot of commands without knowing why it works, only that it does.
Sounds exactly like my situation on the command line side. To feel perfectly at home in a terminal and know how to use it for many tasks but still have a relatively limited dictionary of commands.

Whenever a command I don't know pops up in a howto or such. I search for more info about it on the net. My command dictionary is quickly expanding this way.

Also it's good to search for more info about the commands you have already used a lot. For example I used ls for months before realizing that there was no need to cd to a directory before listing it's contents and that it's possible to list the contents of several directories at once.


In general it sounds like Ubuntu works too well for you, perhaps you should dual boot with something harder like Gentoo.

[poofyhairguy]

These forums are a huge help but also people do tend to presupose that I know things that I probably should but do not (remember that I'm a philosophy major not a cosci major I don't know how to program anything etc) and I end up cutting and pasting a lot of commands without knowing why it works, only that it does.

I'm 4000 posts in and I still do that.

If you want to learn- do what I did- help out in the beginner forum. You can really hammer out the basics that way.

[Brunellus]

I studied history and politics (with a bit of classics on the side here and there), so I don't have a real formal computer background.

I am, however, an insatiable reader. I bought a book: How Linux Works: What Every Superuser Should know by Brian Ward (San Francisco: No Starch Press, 2004). It's very well-written and informative; a good book for the newbie. It's not distribution-specific, nor does it insult my intelligence.

I read it once, cover to cover, and have been referring to it from time to time.

Generally, I teach myself through little, specific projects: getting my network running, learning how to administer my mother's computer via ssh, customizing my desktop, and so on. For each, I dive into these forums, the wiki, and the man pages. Other distribution's fora/wikis are also useful to me...the Gentoo wiki is awesome in this respect, if you learn to filter out, mentally, all the gentoo-specific things (USE flags and whatever).

The main things are 1) keep an open mind; 2) read copiously BEFORE you do anything and 3) pay close attention.

[majikstreet]

I learnt Linux mostly from reading forums and howto's. Not neccessairly these forums, but many ones.

Google is a great resource.

I'm not an expert, but I know enough to get around.

If you are the type that likes to read books, buy some books.

I know people who like to read online but don't like books.. I like both!

For PHP and MySQL, I heartliy reccommend Beginning PHP and MySQL from Novice to Professional by W. Jason Gilmore

Most of my PHP and MySQL knoweldge comes from there.

majikstreet

[ubuntonista]

I hang out at the forums - even before I was registered, and now, I read the mailing list mails - I am even catching up on the old ones. Since I wanted to keep track of things, and not have to search for fixes I found, and then, err... forgot, I started a weblog to keep track. Youc an follow it if you like, I will be posting at least a tip a day, and you can ask questions there too, if you like. The blog is at http://ubuntu.wordpress.com.

Happy learning~!

[Galoot]

Read this (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/debian/chapter/book/).

There will be a test later.

[Stormy Eyes]

I guess the question at the center of this babble is how do I get from where I am now to where I want to be? How did you learn?

Since you're a philosophy major, I suspect you'll know what I mean when I say that I begin with the final cause, or with the end, in mind. In other words, I first determine my goal. For example, I wanted to strip certain characters out of the output of a script so that the output would look pretty in a menu. With that in mind, I looked for a tool that would let me search for a text pattern and replace it with another pattern. I could do this already in vim (a text editor), but I needed something scriptable. A little research on the net suggested that I use sed. Since I had not used sed before, I needed to know how to do with sed what I wanted to do. Thus, I had to find a howto that offered examples. Once I found such a howto, I experimented and applied what I had read to the problem I wanted to solve. After some experimentation and testing, I made the script do what I needed it to do, and had achieved my goal.

I am not in the habit of asking others for help on forums or mailing lists; I prefer to search on my own without the need for waiting for others to provide me an answer. I only turn towards others if my efforts to help myself fail. I personally think, due to my chosen philosophy, that this is how a reasonable man should act: he should first attempt to help himself before turning to others for help. By doing so, he earns pride, and can improve his situation without unnecessarily imposing on others.

[poofyhairguy]

I am not in the habit of asking others for help on forums or mailing lists; I prefer to search on my own without the need for waiting for others to provide me an answer.

If you are going to do this method: use the Gentoo Forums!

[GreyFox503]

Whenever someone gives me some commands to enter to accomplish some task, I always view the man-page on those commands first. Some complain that man-pages are confusing or too technical, but if you take the time to read them you will learn more specifically what it is you are about to do.

For the 'sudo fdisk -l' example, 'man fdisk yields: "fdisk - Partition table manipulator for Linux". It then goes on to describe exactly what the command does and how to use it.

[Stormy Eyes]

If you are going to do this method: use the Gentoo Forums!

I do. I leave no page ungoogled in my search for answers.