Linux Howtos Anyone Can Understand - Introduction
Linux is a very powerful operating system for both the desktop and server environments and contrary to popular belief, Linux really is ready for the desktop - at least the software itself is. Unfortunately that is not the case with the documentation.
I started this blog many years ago to document some of the more common questions linux administrators ask. When I originally started these howtos a lot of these issues were either undocumented, or if you're an entry level administrator, the documentation which did exist may as well have been written in swahili. The documentation reads as though it were written by developers with asperger's syndrome, for senior unix administrator types.
Also, for the first fifteen years or so that Linux existed whenever users and junior system administrators would ask questions, linux developers and senior administrators would often reply "RTFM" (as in Read The F***ing Manual) or "man (command)." Also, as I stated on Slashdot, a popular technical news site and blog, or those same people would tell users to "read the howto" but the problem was the howto either assumed you already knew some basics about the project, or worse, the howto simply said "to be completed later." When users would point this out, those same jerks would respond "It's open source. Document it yourself." Way to go guys - this is why Linux wasn't taken serious for the first 15 years or so it was in existence.
My goal here isn't to document all of Linux ("Linux" as most people use it commonly means the entire distribution, and is absolutely enormous). My goal here is to attack common problems and annoyances in a way that even end users with a basic working knowledge of Linux can follow. These howtos are not part of a Linux primer, but a means to get yourself out of a jam when problems occur. I will also be publishing some useful shell scripts I have written over the years.
Having said all of that, I hope that you find this site helpful and welcome you to make suggestions for more howtos. I don't promise to write them or even respond to your emails, but if a problem strikes me as a common issue a lot of people need help with, I'll try to make the time to write up a howto. Unfortunately as a business owner, I work a TON of hours and have about 50 howtos in various states of completion but not ready to publish.
My background: I've used Linux off and on since it was first published as a seven-floppy distribution. At first I found it daunting, even though I knew DOS, Windows, Commodores, and Amigas very well, and when not going out I was spending the rest of my free time programming on the Commodore and Amiga computers. Unix was a different beast though; it was a multiuser operating system designed with security in mind from the ground up, so I had to unlearn a lot of bad habits. What I mean by that is on DOS, Windows, and the Commodore/Amiga computers, there was absolutely no security whatsoever, and although those operating systems were actually more complex in many respects, they were also easy to work on because I always had full access to everything. So, learning different, in many cases more cryptic commands and also learning to wrestle with Unix-style security was alien to me.
I did catch on though, as I quickly realized I had to let go of preconceptions and that other platforms were poorly designed, and that Unix security was a smart idea. So, I quickly learned the ins and outs of chown and chmod, and also learned to deal with .rc (now usually .conf) files. What really got me into it was X (often called Xwindows) though; I found it extremely powerful and flexible, especially compared to Windows 3.x and Windows 95.
Also, Linux was very rapidly, eh, "evolving" right before my eyes. Although the Linux environment was amazingly powerful, it was immature; good applications were scarce, and to complicate things, many hardware manufacturers were actually hostile toward Linux users and refused to help get their hardware working with the operating system.
When I built my first Pentium, I had bought a Diamond Stealth 32 card. I knew the chipset (ET6000) was supported by X and that was what I had based my purchased decision on. Unfortunately, Diamond made the card difficult to work with by insulating the interface from the chipset, and had public statements to the fact that they refuse to support Linux. They were actively hostile toward the rapidly growing operating system. So, I was stuck with a video card that worked at only 640x480 resolution, with 16 colors. That wouldn't do - but unfortunately I was also a poor college student with no money for a different card to replace the one I just purchased. I did some reading on BBSes and newsgroups and learned what little bit some had been able to do with the card - which was not much. So, I decided I was going to get this card working - I was determined. So, I learned a little bit of x86 assembly and wrote a utility that would probe the video card and run a program to display a test pattern, and it would use the keyboard to navigate through addresses and values. When I found one that worked I had it log the values to a file. Once I did that I modified the source for the X server and got my card working in glorious 15-bit color! I never did think to submit that code back with the XFree86 project. At the time I didn't know they would accept code from just anyone. My next video card ended up being an ATI card - at the time they worked fairly well with Linux.
Then, I entered the workplace. I worked jobs which were 100% Windows so Linux had to go - so I didn't use Linux much at all for a number of years. When I left the corporate world to found a company, I went back to Linux, and was amazed at how much Linux had matured over six years. Not only was the desktop usable out of the box, it automatically detected most of my hardware (now it detects and configures all of it) and came with gorgeous desktops that would make Mac users green with envy. On top of that it came with really good office suites - notably koffice and openoffice.org.
Beyond all of that I'm a fairly seasoned network engineer and Linux system administrator, and worked for many years fulfilling quality assurance and release engineering tasks as well. My love is release engineering. I don't claim to know it all, but I know how to RTFM and I do know how to research and leverage various resources and also get advice from various technical communities I participate in.
