Course of Study for new Linux User

[preacherman481]

Hi,
Here's a topic I hope might be interesting for Linux users. If you were to going to begin a school to teach people to use Linux, what would you teach them, and in what order would you teach the subjects? Give some reasoning for how you prioritize the subjects.

[nonades]

At school I'm taking a Linux class that is really meant for IT majors so were already familiar with OSs so the professor that teaches the class started us off with the meat and potatoes of linux and we started with CLI stuff..

If I were to teach a class it would depend on how knoledgeable the people were (or weren't).

If they didn't know OS's that well I'd start them offf with moving around the GUI (and introduce them to the different window managers) and give them the basics of the filesystem.

For more knoledgeable people I'd do it like my professor is doing it and introduce them to the CLI first and foremost then teach them about the FS and so on and so forth.

[Relyt]

Good Day Sir,

When I first ventured into Linux, folks were kinda tight lipped, so it was a step-by-step with the manual. I have to admit it was a good learning process and now the hardest part for me is getting the plastic off the CD Cases . Now-a-days you can still be a Command Line Commando, however we can also take advantage of the streamed lined processes for the installs and they are far easier. I didn't go into the actual install. Gore has written a multitude of Tutorials for the actual installation of a multitude of Distros, so no need to duplicate effort. However if you wanted to provide a class, I think I have provided a fairly straight-forward approach.


New User

-Brief Overview/History

-Acronymns/Abreviations that they will encounter during install (dev, hda (hda1, 5, and so on), hdb, hdc, hdd, root, partitions).

-Preparations Before Installation. (HDD Space Available, Hardware Compatibility Lists (Printers, Modems, Sound Cards, Monitors, NIC's, etc) , Boot Options, Overview of Installation Procedures they will encounter, Overview of KDE/Gnome, etc.)

-Determine which Distro (New users: SuSE, Mandrake, Fedora Core 4, etc. If current hardware allows, might want to play with a live version first!)

-Install (Default - let the newer distros do everything! Decide on boot options, Set up installed firewall (IP Tables) should be just clicking or checking the box for a default rule set, etc. Launch either KDE or Gnome upon startup.)

-Getting online. (Should be already detected & config'd but go over modem/nic & config as appropriate for a beginner's install. LAN as appropriate)

-Basic Commands

-Downloading & Installing Packages, Updates etc.

-Finding info (man command, help, etc.)


cheers

[preacherman481]

Hi,
Relyt, I hadn't actually planned to teach a class; this topic was just a vehicle for getting anyone who responded to seriously think about what is most important to learn on Linux and what priority they would give each subject. However, if I ever do, I might use your outline here, as part of the basis for it. Certainly what you have given here would be a great outline to follow for a never-before-used-Linux person. Question: How long do you think it would take to cover this amount of information? One or two days, a week? I think that if I were to do such a thing, after the things you have given here, I would start a person into learning more of the command line, a heavy duty text editor (emacs probably, since that is what I have decided to major on). After that iptables (I still need to learn that myself).
I do pretty well as long as I stick to the GUI stuff, but now I am wanting to go deeper into the command line and non-GUI apps.

[@tt!tud3]

In my beginning use of linux, I'm finding that the first thing I need to learn is how to install programs, which involves some command line.

I'll qualify that by mentioning that I had to learn some partitioning before installing the OS on a dual boot.