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Ask HN: Recommendations of best resource to learn Linux - Debian dist.

by smadam9 on 8/27/11, 5:26 PM with 2 comments

Since the variety of opinions here is so large, I'd like to ask the community for their opinion on the best resource/guide/reference for learning general topics within the Debian Linux distribution.<p>I have no specific requests of knowledge such as server, security or media, but just an overall "broad topic" resource to learn commands, OS architecture and configuration.<p>What resources did you use to gain the knowledge you have? For me, I usually refer to forums, articles or directly to the Ubuntu help site for example. Is there a better resource for general knowledge than the way I am going about learning now? Do you recommend a book or another resource other than first hand trial and error?

  • by fractallyte on 8/27/11, 7:36 PM

    To really learn about the OS architecture, set aside a partition on your hard drive, and use debootstrap (within a chroot environment) to build a new OS from scratch.

    Build up, from kernel to init and the barest of coreutils (busybox is an excellent substitute, with everything you need already built-in). Boot up from this partition, check the console messages, and keep going until you can get to the login prompt without any errors. You'll soon find out how the systems hangs together.

    (Of course, there's also Gentoo and Linux-From-Scratch, but you specifically asked about Debian. Gentoo is far better suited to this, but also takes far longer...)