Just do it...

During my short time here with AO, I have seen many linux newbie questions. I have also posted a few myself. One thing that I have learned - especially after it was reiterated on a couple of occasions - is that I could learn this OS best by "just doing it." And so, I tackled a project that would allow me to gain valuable experience and force me to learn at least enough to get the job done. My point is this - the advice that I was given me here and by others was good advice to say the least. Hands-on has proven to be the best method of learning in this case just as others. The problem with learning a new OS is just that - it's new. For many, this is a terrifying experience. My recommendation - get a copy of a few distros and load'em up. Play with it. Of course, you will have to familiarize yourself with a few basic commands. There's definitely research involved, but the best way is to just do it! I can give one recommendation if you are used to a Windows environment - get a copy of Linux for Windows NT/2000 Administrators The Secret Decoder Ring. This book was great! Probably the best peace of advice - read, play, read, play, read, and keep reading...oh, and I can't forget asking questions here on AO! I have received a lot of great advice and good tips. Don't underestimate your fellow AOers! Take some time to do a search on the Home page. You will come across a lot of good threads here. Use the resources available.

To the oldheads: I felt like this could possibly help those that are feeling discouraged about learning this great OS that we have grown to appreciate. I know I was a bit intimidated, but I'm over it now... ;)

yeah
Although linux is easy to learn, for a beginer with windows experience gets a little confused over the distributions and window managers. But as the time goes by, definitely he will improve.
In my case, my first experience with a linux distribution was 2 years back when i was given a redhat (6.x) installation CD. But trial was a partial success , but i can't configure the xwindow quite right by that time. Then only i started curious about such an os and as the time goes by
it happened.

In my opinion, the fellow AOers are giving very nice advices. nice

Along the lines of this subject. People who may be dreading the partitions and configuring may also opt to get a Lin for Win distro such as phatlinux which gives you the ability to get your feet wet with linux without all of the stress of installing a distro on a new partition. I believe phatlinux released a beta for XP which supports NTFS. I myself started using linux this way and where as I am still a newb to open source it was a great development and learning experience. But as t2k2 said and I quote "just do it"

I have an old 486 machine running a version of linux. I'd hate to guess how many times I've ended up changing or deleting something and having to reload, or reformat and load the distro again.

I don't find linux easy, I find it dangerous. It's a dangerous OS. Everything is there for the viewing, and changing, tinkering with or wrecking, and I can't stay away from it.

I feel your pain Chuck. I have the same problem. The good thing is that I have a test box at work that I can break as much as I want. I am learning a lot, however. I definitely wouldn't have learned as much by just reading the material.

I have just recently install Redhat 7.3. I think they have taken a lot of the installation and configuration pain away. I had done previous installations of Redhat 6.1 and even though I am an old DOS user I still had a big learning curve. They have covered up the complexities with a decent GUI interface. The nice thing is that you can still get "under the covers" and play with the config files directly. I have been using 7.3 for about a week and like it a lot. The one downside I can see is that as they make life easier the box needs to be much bigger than it used to be. My full installation took a little over 2GB and the GUI runs a little sluggish on a 350Mhz with 128 MB of Mem.