Introduction and Advice

[Jon 'maddog' Hall]

Hi Jake,

Welcome to the list.

I will take a whack at your questions, and I am sure lots of people will
chime in:

>What is the best way to get started?

Well, you made a good move just by joining this list. :-)

The next thing would be to find the closest user group to you, which is
probably DLSLUG, the one that meets in Hanover at Dartmouth.

http://wiki.gnhlug.org/twiki2/bin/view/Www/OurChapters

Go to their meetings and just say "hi".  Don't be intimidated by anyone,
because we have all had our "first day with Linux".

Also ask around your school to see if any of the students are "into
Linux"...some of them may be willing to help you get started, or you may
find someone who would like to get started with you.

Go to your local bookstore (Barnes and Noble or Borders) with a cup of
coffee and sit in a comfy chair looking through the books on Linux that
meets your needs.  If you are familiar with computers using "some other
operating system", then you may find "Linux for Dummies" being a bit too
elementary for you.  Usually the books have a copy of the distribution
they are talking about in the back of the book, and they step you
through in how to use it.

>Is there a particular distribution I should be looking at?

Well, since you know there are "distributions", and are asking which one
you should use, you are a step ahead of most windows users. :-)

I normally tell people to use a distribution that others around them are
using (Birds of a feather flock together), so you can share ideas,
problems, etc.

These days I would probably suggest in this order:

o Ubuntu
o Fedora
o openSUSE
o Debian
o I-am-sure-that-someone-will-shoot-me-for-leaving-out-their-favorite

All of these you can pull down over the net, burn your own CD-R or DVD
and run "Live" on your hardware to see if all the hardware works before
you install it.  And you can install all of these as "dual boot" so you
can boot either Linux or that "other operating system".

>What is a good first language to learn?

Depends if you are a programmer or not.  If you have no programming
skills at all, I would recommend something called "shell scripting".

Linux (and the Unix system that it was based on) comes with hundreds of
little programs that do various things:

o sorting
o searching
o editing of different types
o formatting
o on-and-on

with the command interpreter built into the system, you can do amazing
things.  And there are lots of books on "shell programming" out there:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%
3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=shell&x=0&y=0

Remember to buy an extra large coffee when you go to the bookstores.....

Next language I would recommend is Python.  Both an interpreter and a
compiler, used a lot in web programming, very powerful.

Next language after that is "C", which the operating system is (mostly)
built on.

Next language after that is "C++" or some type of objective C

Next language after that is lisp or scheme

And I am sure someone will find fault with my not saying "Perl" or
"Ruby" or any of the zillion languages out there.

>What do people think are good resources (both online and books)?

www.linux.com
www.sourceforge.net (for "Free and Open Source Software")
www.linux.org

from there it goes on forever.

Since you teach in New England, I would also like to introduce you to
David Trask:

David Trask <copperdoggy at gmail.com>

who runs an event each year called FOSSed:

http://www.fossed.com

I try to go every year even though I am not an active teacher.  It is
both fun, inspiring and hands-on.

You should also be aware of the National Center for Open Source and
Education run by Bryant Patten:

http://ncose.org/

Now I will shut up and let others have their say.

Warmest regards,

Jon "maddog" Hall