Originally posted by: DouglasAdams
thanks hevnsnt, i really appreciate that and i'll certainly try it ltr today.
Klixxer: would you care to point me in the direction of which doc's would be best to read 1st?
i've already read quite a bit of stuff but it sortof tasted to me as if it was all a little out of date and so i was rather dubious about it. i am prepared to read but i'm not prepared to wiat until i've read everything ever written about linux before i give it a try - give me hands-on training every time! unfortunately, much that i've read seems to be either waffle or too deep and doesn't seem to understand that us virgins are like cavemen who have never even seen a car b4. the 1st thing we need is to be told "this is a steering wheel and it makes the car go left or right; this is the brake, press it when you want to stop", etc.
anyway, thanks again
Depends on your distro, every distro i have ever tried have had extensive documentation on their homepage.
If you are looking for specific command help type man "command" in a terminal window to get to the man pages for your packages, for instructions how to use the man system man man.
Learning *nix isn't easy, but it's well worth the time it takes and beats finishing Doom 3 for the fifth time.
If you have anything specific you wonder about this is a good forum, you could start by searching for posts made by the members i mentioned above, especially Drag who goes out of his way to help people.
If you need to do it without screwing anything up, try a virtual machine software package like vmware and install it in there, as you look for more info you will learn a lot.
I am in a bit of a tight spot and have little time to visit the forums these days (I am in Afghanistan) so it might take a while if you ask me anything, but i would be glad to help if i can.
My recommendation, start out with installing it in a VM, vmware or bosch both work just fine i am told, don't have much experience with bosch though, but drag recommends it and i trust him so...
Go with a basic distro like Slackware, arch, crux or debian, i prefer Slackware but many others prefer the other distros.
Welcome to *nix world, this ride never stops.