Linux Noob
Community Forums/General Help/Linux Noob
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| Yes, I know I'm mildly spamming the General Help forums right now, but this should be the last post. I have a lot of potential business coming my way, and really need to up my game on web design. Conveniently, anything that I don't already know, I can usually pick up pretty fast. I know almost nothing about Linux, other than that it is generally used for webhosting. How would I go about learning\using Linux on a Win7 laptop? Do I have to install a dual boot OS, or is there an app that could do it? If I need to use a virtual console, like VMware, what might the cost of such an application be, or are there free ones? Thanks! Just help me get started with Linux, and I can handle the rest. |
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| VMware Player is free, but slightly limited in some respects (no 3D acceleration). VirtualBox is also free, and I would say better than the free version of VMware. Dual booting is the best option in my opinion, because you *have* to learn once you've fired it up. Can't escape back to Windows if things get confusing. Dual booting is very easy to set up - with a modern Linux installer it's no harder than a regular install (e.g. Ubuntu will automatically detect Windows and offer to do the hard work of setting up partitions automatically). There's also Wubi, which installs Ubuntu and possibly other kinds of Linux to a loop-mounted device (i.e. a file) on your Windows disk, which has the advantage of being able to be removed in Add/Remove Programs when you get bored, but it's also slower and not officially considered reliable or stable. Advise against, as dual-booting for real is so easy (and since you pretty much know you're going to keep it, in this case). Machtelt Garrels' Introduction to Linux is nice and easy introductory reading for a quick overview. Note that there's quite a lot of difference between the Linuxes available. Ubuntu is the most popular with beginners, but you might find something like CentOS more appropriate for "serious" use (actually I have no idea how true this is). At any rate it will give you experience with a commonly used business OS. (The mighty Wiki says it's the most popular for web servers.) The biggest thing though, is to not be afraid to get your hands dirty. Use the terminal for everything, at least at the beginning (there are many graphical environments - you don't need to get confused by their trivialities). Run "man" on every command. Try things and see what they do. ...then get programming some C, Java, and anything else you intend to use, at the first opportunity! (C is the language to know on *nix systems, but Java and Python, and to a lesser extent various flavours of Lisp, are also important.) Last edited 2011 |
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| Wow, many thanks Yasha! I think that pretty much answered my questions, and gave me all I need to get started. Dual boot it is then! Cheers, |
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| I'm not really quite sure why you would need to use Linux in regards to webhosting, unless of course, your planning on using a VPS or dedicated server with no control panel (For working out the file system or something) If you are going to use either one of them, there's still no need to install a full linux distro on your machine, as you can access your linux server via a SSH terminal and manipulate it from there. If your you just fancy playing around with it, for the hell of it, there is still no need for a full install because usually distro's have a "Live CD" option that lets you boot it and use it before committing to a full install. http://www.livecdlist.com/ If you just want to play around with web based trinkets such as PHP, mySQL or Apache, then xampp or wamp will work just as well running on Windows then anything else (probably better in fact, as I had a nightmare with mySQL on OSX). If your running your site on a Linux based shared hosting package, you really really don't need to know anything at all about Linux, because ultimately, these types of packages wont let you anywhere near the guts of the server, you'll be set at what php versions are installed, and for mySQL, they will probably have something like phpmyadmin that will allow you to handle your database(s) easily. Dabz Last edited 2011 |
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| idk. The fella who's interested just said he needed a 'Linux guy'. Could well be he has no idea what exactly that means, and just needs a 'web guy', which is quite likely. I've been fannying about with Wamp and will be building a test website using pure HTML today, but I'd better have at least 'some' experience of Linux just in case this fellow really does want a Linux guy. I think I'll hold off on installing it for a bit though ;) |
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| I would prefer my website on a Linux box than a Windows box, because its more stable and more secure. BTW Linux (unix) is used for much more than webhosting ;) |
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| BTW Linux (unix) is used for much more than webhosting ;) I know ;) I've been reading up on the feller. (By the way, my professor for one of my computer classes wanted us to each post a discussion about application compatibility on the class forum. I mentioned monkey a few times :D ) |
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| Although all what Yasha said I agree with, except I would vote for a virtual environment. I have seen many people who have killed their unix installation while playing with the different commands. A little typo and you may have killed several hours of setup for all your stuff. With a virtual environment you can easily make a snapshot or copy at any time and freeze that state. One mistake does not kill your time spent. Moving that virtual machine to somewhere else is again easy, using it on the desktop and transfering it to the laptop is just a copy. The time spent on setup is only used once and the VM is independent of hardware. |
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