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Back to UF - User Diary Index
| Books for Linux Newbies? |
by chasmosaur |
2006-03-27 15:10:04 |
Oh kind and helpful UFies...
So while I've always looked over my husband's shoulder as he's played with one Linux distribution or the other over the past few years, we've finally had the opportunity to load Ubuntu on one of my machines.
I want to make it clear - my resistance has not been out of fear or dislike, but mostly because I am an accessibility and usability guru for web design - I use Windows XP because of marketshare issues (though you can't make me surf in IE!). Basically, I need to work primarily with what my general target office works with. Annoying but there it is. This new Linux installation is on an old machine that desperately needed the new hard drive that my sweetie installed this past weekend, so now I have a machine to spare (i.e. - one that I can destroy and rebuild ;) ).
So I'm playing around and obviously confused. Other than checking for the differences in site rendering on a friend's Mac with OS X, I've really never come anywhere near actually *using* Linux. Hubby is more of a tinkerer and not much of a teacher, so I'm kinda treading water unless I can figure out this stuff on my own. I do best when I can actually crack a book open and make notes, but the Debian books I found at the bookstore seemed dense and over my head.
Can anyone recommend a good beginner's book? I'm not really a hard-core programmer and need to have things laid out, without assumptions of pre-knowledge. (In other words, I'm constantly badgering team members to actually tell me how their acronym-speak translates into English ;) ) Too many years in Windows-World has left me with certain habits I need to get over.
Any help would be appreciated. Oh - and hubby gave me Ubuntu because he says it's nice and stable and the interface is good...and I'm a stickler for interface, seeing as I design them ;)
A few books I leafed through:
- I was hoping I could use Linux for Dummies (or the All-In-One Reference), but they don't seem to work with the Debian distro, let alone Ubuntu.
-"Linux for Non-Geeks" (ISBN 1593270348) looks like it has potential, but it works around Fedora, and I have no idea how different that is from Ubuntu. Could I still get how to do the basics in an Ubuntu distro from this book?
- "How Linux Works" (ISBN 1593270356) also looks like it has potential (I particularly liked the appendices in the back), but I was kind of cross-eyed after looking at half the books in the Computer section of the store and I just couldn't tell anymore.
Are the last two worth my time and money, even though they don't deal directly with my distribution? Are any of the O'Reilly books good? There weren't any on the shelves so I didn't get a chance to flip through them.
Thanks for any help! |
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[ Reply ] |
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I had to teach myself, by myself | by chrisbee | 2006-03-27 23:47:51 |
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