newb

[James Wilkinson]

Jerod Johnson wrote:
> I'm a college student and I just installed Fedora on my old laptop
> in order to learn more about Linux.  I'm really quite new at this
> whole Linux thing, so I was wondering if anyone had any websites or
> books that I should look at so I can get my computer rolling. 

Hi.

Welcome to Linux!

You could do worse than giving http://fedorafaq.org/ a glance.

You should learn about yum, apt, or up2date pretty quickly. It's
unfortunate, but even on Linux you should keep your software up to date
if you want to be a good Internet citizen (and keep your laptop yours).

Learn how to use Google and Google Groups. Learn about the archives
to this list at http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/ or
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=fedora-list&r=1&w=2 .

Work out what you're interested in. You can treat Fedora like a
traditional Unix, and script everything in sight, or you can treat the
command line as something to be avoided as much as possible.

Try setting yourself goals, and try to work them out. Getting e-mail
working on Fedora might be a good start! (Your e-mail to the list
contains one long line per paragraph: that's generally considered
annoying. Most Unix clients won't do that).

> In particular, I need driver external hardware (both USB and PCMCIA).
> My school has a Linux User's Group, so I'll probably talk to them as well.

Drivers in Linux work slightly differently to those in Windows. The
OS comes with built-in drivers for most stuff. These will get updated
as you update the system, and are usually the best option.
Alternatively, there may be drivers in various yum archives that you
can install, drivers with some source available, or binary-only
drivers (the earlier options are better). For some network cards
(particularly wireless), there are "wrappers" available that enable
you to use Windows drivers.

Let us know which devices you're having difficulty with, and we'll see
what we can do to help.

You'll probably want to ask lots of questions. No-one minds that, even
the ones that sound stupid, as long as you take a few minutes to check
the archives to make sure no-one asked the same question 5 minutes ago!
But once you've tried to use the system for something, you'll at least
know the questions to ask.

Have lots of fun (you should do, anyway).

James.
-- 
E-mail address: james | Legacy (adj):
@westexe.demon.co.uk  | an uncomplimentary computer-industry epithet that
                      | means 'it works'.
                      |     -- Anthony DeBoer