Blair Armeau

33 – Beyond This Course

Please note… This information no longer exists at the referenced locations.  This is only a copy of what was available in 2003.

Basic Linux Training™

Beyond This Course

Henry White

If you have read the lessons and related chapters and sections in whichever textbook you selected, if you have done the assignments, and followed up on the other leads posted on the mailing list, you should have a very solid, basic understanding of the Linux operating system. You should feel comfortable enough to handle almost anything as a user and be well on your way to dealing with the routine tasks of system administrators. I say ‘should’ but not all of you will – Unix is notorious for its steep learning curve So there is a lot of the ‘YMMV’ factor with regards to exactly when you individually accumulate enough background material to achieve ‘critical mass’ and begin to show signs of making any significant progress

One thing I hope you will do this weekend is review all your notes. Make corrections where needed, elaborate where your notes get a little thin, clarify where they get a little fuzzy. Do it while it’s still fresh in your mind; don’t wait 6 months to get ‘around to it,’ do it now! Use your original notes as a rough draft and rewrite them. (More about that later.)

I strongly recommend that you find a Linux User’s Group nearby and get active – if you aren’t already. If there’s not one where you live, start one – many LUGs that didn’t exist a year ago, now have over 100 members Many others have expanded into new neighborhoods, with more meetings conveniently scheduled for the majority of members; more installfests; more opportunities to learn and grow. http://lugww.counter.li.org

Also, you might want to register yourself and your machine at the Linux Counter – http://counter.li.org – if you haven’t do so already. That’s a bit of personal favorite since I’ve been on the board of directors and US Country Manager for years So you’ll have to indulge the shameless plug.

Chances are better than even that your first distribution will not be your last. In the first year or two, most people will jump around quite a bit until they find something that really suits their fancy. In time you’ll come to appreciate the wisdom of recommending the ‘el cheapo’ multiple-distribution sets – and hopefully remember to recommend that rather than whatever one you are currently using Once you have settled on your preferred distribution, subscribe to as many distribution specific mailing lists as you need to and can handle – their security alerts and announcements as a minimum are too easily overlooked. Since you have a preference, you’ll probably want to concentrate your ‘help’ effort on that preference, rather than ‘generic’ Linux.

You’ve gotten a full and complete operating system with all the development tools you’ll ever need as standard equipment, and you got it free. Now you need to get more familiar with all the things your software can do – whether it’s KDE or GNOME, OpenOffice or StarOffice or one of the other suites, etc. You can keep it your software purely GPL and Open Source, or judiciously add commercial software with restrictive licenses as you see fit. All the documentation and online support you’ll ever need is also free and readily available 24/7 in HOWTOs, tutorials, mailing list archives, newsgroups, IRC channels.

Where you go from here is entirely up to you. You’re more than welcome to stay on this list and go through another term for your own benefit, or to help the next group get started on the right foot. I really believe that the best “learning” is teaching, and the best “teachers” are those who are still fully charged and enthusiastic about the subject matter As I’ve mentioned time and again, you only have to be an hour or two ahead of the next person to be able to help them!

Which bring us to my main topic: the emphasis from day one when Linus B uploaded the source code and announced it on USENET has always been “community” and whatever contribution you can make. Frankly, nobody cares whether you are a world-class Unix programmer or not! Everyone can contribute something! Otherwise the ‘community’ degenerates into a handful of people doing all the work – until they burn out and quit.

Take the documentation, for example. It was perfectly acceptable for those of us with some familiarity with another Unix variant to put with badly written, incomplete, and often badly out of date instruction. That doesn’t wash with the incoming new users who couldn’t even pronounce Unix or Linux 6 months ago IMNSHO all the docs need to be rewritten with that new generation of users in mind. And guess who’s going to have to carry the load?

It doesn’t have to a full-blown, formal HOWTO – we’re not really interested in publishing academic papers, just getting the facts straight and putting those facts in the hands of the people who need and can use them. Frankly, some of your notes made in the last two months might be extremely helpful to dozens, hundreds, thousands of others in the weeks, months, years to come. And by extension, the local LUG is another great place to “give something back” – there is ALWAYS a need for presentations and not all of those presentations really warrant taking up more than a very few minutes. Many LUGs are also involved with community projects like wiring one of the schools in the area for a LAN, setting up their web server and email accounts, etc.; and there is always something else that *could* be done at the monthly meetings and installfests – even if it’s just helping to set up the tables, etc. The best bet, IMNSHO, is to begin sharing what you know, and learning more in the meantime on mailing lists, newsgroups, and IRC; these have all sorts of built-in advantages, especially with regard to finding a convenient time for your schedule and your level of expertise.

According to my crystal ball, Linux is on the verge of another huge influx of new users. All you have to do is read the reports of all the international corporations adopting Linux as a replacement for Windows/NT; all the institutions, government agencies and departments adopting some sort preference for ‘Open Source’ software; and, of course, M$ continuing to commit public suicide with ridiculous EULA, increased license fees, and sending in the stormtroopers from the BSA and/or an army of lawyers to intimidate users who are anxious to break free. The only semi-official survey that was extensively researched was the one in July ’97 by Red Hat that guestimated roughly 7 1/2 million users worldwide. That was about the time of publicity craze when all the ‘discovery’ articles started appearing, and before the huge media event of the IPOs and their record setting run ups No one really knows the number of current users. Red Hat recently began crowing about one million members in their Red Hat Network, but I seriously doubt they will ever sponsor another survey to count all Linux users – too much competition and contention over which distribution actually has the most users In any case, I put that number at somewhere around 30-40 millions; the actual number is not important, what is important is that those numbers have been growing at an increasing rate for the last decade, and I predict they will at least double in the next two-three years, and probably re-double as a minimum in another five-six years. Any way you slice it, that’s a LOT of new users – and *you* are the people they are going turn to for help!

One of the most famous quotes in all Linuxdom is “Linux is supposed to be fun!” So enjoy it! It doesn’t have to be “all work and no play” – although that is the approach on this list for obvious reasons with a group this size Socializing and just having fun can and should be an integral part of the local LUG, at monthly meetings, troubleshooting sessions, installfests, and at computer shows.

The US$199 machines from http://www.walmart.com are going to make it easier and affordable for hundreds of thousands if not millions of users to try Linux with all the hassle of the installation and configuration. If they’re smart they’s cross-upgrade to Debian ‘woody’ right off the bat And then there is Knoppix for a great demo without touching their frail and fragile Windows partition at all!

All things considered, I think you’ve made a wise decision, and the future is very bright for all of us. Linus B has said that most of the “cool stuff” in future is going to be in userspace; as far as the kernel goes, NSA has been working on a “security enhanced” version of the kernel, and IBM has a couple of hundred of the programmers working full-time on Linux. And all that is just the tip of the iceberg!

Copyright © 1997-2003 Henry White. All Rights Reserved.
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