Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
2009/3/4 John jake...@sky.com I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but I was just wondering, are there any websites or books that are Ubuntu specific, that are easy to read and understand Before spending any money on dead tree books take a look at http://www.ubuntupocketguide.com it's a free to download pocket guide for Ubuntu. It might answer some of your questions. And as others have said hunt down your local LUG for help and support. LUGS are a great community :-) Colin -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
2009/3/4 John jake...@sky.com: I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but I was just wondering, are there any websites or books that are Ubuntu specific, that are easy to read and understand. I want to try using my Terminal more, and I think I'm now ready to start learning. Read man pages. The first UNIX like system I used was a VAX-VMS system. I would open the xman application, and just browse the commands. Also, if you see an instruction to use a command followed by some cryptic codes, look at the man page for that command a learn what the switches mean. If you are completely new to the terminal I guess the first few commands to learn are:- ls cd df du mv cp Once you can use them, you are well on the way to being able manage your files from the terminal. As I said before, if you don't recognise what those commands do, then type man ls at the command prompt to read the man page. -- Philip Stubbs -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
2009/3/5 Philip Stubbs phi...@stuphi.co.uk: Read man pages. The first UNIX like system I used was a VAX-VMS system. Er, VAX-VMS was not remotely UNIX-like and did not have a man command, nor ls, cd or any of those. The directory-listing command was not ls, it was DIR or indeed any abbreviation of DIRECTORY. To change directory, instead of cd, you used SET DEF. The help command was HELP, not the obscure man. And so on. VAXen ran Unix - indeed, Unix was developed on VAXen. But the native VAX OS, although much much later rated POSIX-compatible, was VMS which is nothing like Unix in any way. Indeed back in the day I used VAXstations with VMS and DECwindows - there's one downstairs, waiting for a new hard disk, in fact - and I don't think they even had an xman command. Were you perhaps thinking of Ultrix or something? Your general point - that reading man pages is a good way to learn - I entirely agree with, but your example is incorrect. -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lpro...@gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat, Yahoo Skype: liamproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • ICQ: 73187508 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Liam Proven lpro...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/3/5 Philip Stubbs phi...@stuphi.co.uk: Read man pages. The first UNIX like system I used was a VAX-VMS system. Er, VAX-VMS was not remotely UNIX-like and did not have a man command, nor ls, cd or any of those. Quite right, none of this Unix nonsense... we used to have VML and God knows what else... oh, I guess we'd better mention edt or (if you were really advanced and modern) tpu... if you couldn't do it with the numeric keypad on a vt200 terminal then it wasn't worth doing... Blimey, memories flood back... Sean -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
I approve of this wild topic drift :) On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 1:04 PM, Sean Miller s...@seanmiller.net wrote: On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 1:01 PM, Sean Miller s...@seanmiller.net wrote: Quite right, none of this Unix nonsense... we used to have VML and God knows what else... oh, I guess we'd better mention edt or (if you were really advanced and modern) tpu... if you couldn't do it with the numeric keypad on a vt200 terminal then it wasn't worth doing... What did they call PF1? Was it the gold key or something? It was the basis of pretty much every editing command we used to do in edt/tpu... cut was PF1-4 I think etc. etc. - Show quoted text - Sean -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
Ian, Ian Betteridge wrote: I approve of this wild topic drift :) Yes, me too! I was a grewat lover of OpenVMS (to give it its proper name) and all things VAX and Alpha. I still have an Alpha workstation running OpenVMS running under my desk! On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 1:04 PM, Sean Miller s...@seanmiller.net mailto:s...@seanmiller.net wrote: What did they call PF1? Was it the gold key or something? Yes, it was the gold key. I think on some keyboards it was actually coloured gold. It acted as a kind of meta or shift key. It was the basis of pretty much every editing command we used to do in edt/tpu... cut was PF1-4 I think etc. etc. The beauty was you could quite easily redefine which keys did what, which was a problem providing support to a user who had completely re-arranged his/her key functions! And, of course, VMS invented clustering and did it (and still does) much better than any system since (IMHO). Regards, Tony. -- Tony Arnold,Tel: +44 (0) 161 275 6093 Head of IT Security,Fax: +44 (0) 870 136 1004 University of Manchester, Mob: +44 (0) 773 330 0039 Manchester M13 9PL. Email: tony.arn...@manchester.ac.uk -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
Liam Proven wrote: [...] VAXen ran Unix - indeed, Unix was developed on VAXen. But the native VAX OS, although much much later rated POSIX-compatible, was VMS which is nothing like Unix in any way. Hello, Liam. Wrong! - Unix was developed on pdp11's: I used it on a pdp11/23 + 11/34. However, the US Government sponsored research at Berkeley to port pdp11 Unix onto VAXen, and make use of its virtual memory architecture (the pdp11's had 'segmented' memory architecture). This is why the kernel is known as vmunix (vm = virtual memory) and this was adopted by Linux as vmlinuz, where the 'z' denotes a compressed kernel. In fact, I had one of the original 'free' academic BSD4.1 source code licences, which I used to compile and boot BSD Unix on a VAX750 and 780 - Happy days :-) Bye, Tony. -- Dr. A.J.Travis, University of Aberdeen, Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health, Greenburn Road, Bucksburn, Aberdeen AB21 9SB, Scotland, UK tel +44(0)1224 712751, fax +44(0)1224 716687, http://www.rowett.ac.uk mailto:a.tra...@abdn.ac.uk, http://bioinformatics.rri.sari.ac.uk/~ajt -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 5:03 PM, Sean Miller s...@seanmiller.net wrote: I remember driving my friend Hugo Fiennes in, perhaps, the late 80s to pick up a PDP 11 running Unix. I remember him joking about she sells c-shells etc. I've jsut spent 10 minutes trying to work out why I knew that name. Empeg. I was THIS . close to buying one of the prototypes back in um... 1997 (ish) I think. -- Steve When one person suffers from a delusion it is insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion. 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
This page of Hugo's is fascinating... http://utter.chaos.org.uk/~altman/mp3mobile/ We have REALLY gone off topic now. Sean -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
Flippin' hell... he developed the iPhone??? http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/news/article1/ Arrghhh where did I go wrong? Sean -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
Sean Miller wrote: Flippin' hell... he developed the iPhone??? http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/news/article1/ Arrghhh where did I go wrong? Sean Hi everybody, I have quite enjoyed learning about this, even though it did go off topic, it was quite interesting. Thanks for the link, I have downloaded it, and am reading it now. Thanks again, you have a big help. John. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
2009/3/5 Liam Proven lpro...@gmail.com: 2009/3/5 Philip Stubbs phi...@stuphi.co.uk: Read man pages. The first UNIX like system I used was a VAX-VMS system. Er, VAX-VMS was not remotely UNIX-like and did not have a man command, nor ls, cd or any of those. Ok. I can't remember what the command on the VAX system were. I suggested those commands as being something useful to know for a person using the command shell on a Linux box for the first time. Indeed back in the day I used VAXstations with VMS and DECwindows - there's one downstairs, waiting for a new hard disk, in fact - and I don't think they even had an xman command. Were you perhaps thinking of Ultrix or something? No. I guess my memory could be wrong, but I am certain I was using a VAX VMS system running some form of X windowing system and it had the xman program. I can picture myself at the machine I used, and in that part of the office all the machines were VAX VMS based. The only other machines were some state of the art 25 MHz 386's :-) and a couple of IBM RS6000 boxes running AIX. It was a little while before they would let me play with the IBM's as they were the new toys. Your general point - that reading man pages is a good way to learn - I entirely agree with, but your example is incorrect. Thanks for that. For some reason, I find it interesting to hear how people tackle learning to use a computer or Linux for the first time. As we have discovered, my memory may not be that great, and I can't remember what I went through to learn some of the stuff that I now take for granted. I find it really hard when people ask questions to things that I think should be self evident. Having a complete newbie document what they find, and how they struggle with and overcome issues helps me to keep a fresh perspective. Also, it helps to make clear what aspects are not as transparent as they could or should be. Thats all. -- Philip Stubbs -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Guys you really make me wish that I was old enough to have done all of this. The only way I can get close is by playing with the oldest servers I could find in my college when I ran it for them for a while (VMS based). One thing I still find funny about that OS is the Crash command. Sean Miller wrote: Sun did us a course in Solaris at Foster Yeoman (we were the first UK Oracle 7 production site, beat that!) and I have to say that Unix and VMS were about as different as chalk and cheese. But I worked it out and became a Unix expert as I'd been a VMS one... Sean -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkmwX/cACgkQa2GqWmDvHcPnVACgiphN7KGVUCm9RTfLSMW69/C4 UvAAn2vbiJTOErK/mZHtd1g7awPHN6Vm =YZ0M -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
2009/3/5 Philip Stubbs phi...@stuphi.co.uk: No. I guess my memory could be wrong, but I am certain I was using a VAX VMS system running some form of X windowing system and it had the xman program. I can picture myself at the machine I used, and in that part of the office all the machines were VAX VMS based. The only other machines were some state of the art 25 MHz 386's :-) and a couple of IBM RS6000 boxes running AIX. It was a little while before they would let me play with the IBM's as they were the new toys. Oh, well, VAXen did indeed run X.11, AKA X windows... But on VMS, not on Unix. Your general point - that reading man pages is a good way to learn - I entirely agree with, but your example is incorrect. Thanks for that. For some reason, I find it interesting to hear how people tackle learning to use a computer or Linux for the first time. As we have discovered, my memory may not be that great, and I can't remember what I went through to learn some of the stuff that I now take for granted. I find it really hard when people ask questions to things that I think should be self evident. Having a complete newbie document what they find, and how they struggle with and overcome issues helps me to keep a fresh perspective. Also, it helps to make clear what aspects are not as transparent as they could or should be. This is a very common thing, I find. Most people do not know how they learn stuff. I used to train people for a living, and it amazes me how little people know about what they need to know. Show me a 20-step operation, and my notes will have 25 or 30 steps, just in case. I *know* I will forget stuff. But I show people 20-step operations and they write down 3 or 4. And lo and behold, next week, they can't remember how to do it. I find it very hard to understand, but then, I find people hard to understand... -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lpro...@gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat, Yahoo Skype: liamproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • ICQ: 73187508 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
[ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but I was just wondering, are there any websites or books that are Ubuntu specific, that are easy to read and understand. I want to try using my Terminal more, and I think I'm now ready to start learning. Thank you. John -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
There are books on Ubuntu (such as Ubuntu Kung Fu, and I think there's Ubuntu For Dummies) available in book shops. I've only seen them in the (for lack of a better term) BIG Waterstones - in particular the one in Manchester city center. If your looking for a dead-tree type of thing, I suggest having a look in your local bookshops for one on the shelf, and having a flick through to see if they have what you want. I'll take a guess (since I haven't read them) that these kind of books arn't CLI orientated books though, as they're aimed towards beginners who need to know GUI stuff too. Not too sure about websites. The way I learnt was to start using Terminal for things such as installing programs with apt-get, or dpkg,and unpacking archives etc., and whenever I did something I would look for a way to do it in the CLI. I've managed to pick up a few things doing only that, and it's given me a basic understanding of how terminal works. You could always try things that way (or if your system can run a virtual machine of Ubuntu, you may want to do it in there so as not to break anything accidentally!). Hope that helps a little! -- Simon Wears munkyju...@gmail.com | http://MunkyJunky.com MunkyJunky on irc.freenode.net -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu....
Hi There is a Unbuntu Linux for dummies that been wrote with 8.04 in mind however try to download unbuntu pocket guide it free, I can't think of top my head where I got it from I am still learning so enjoy and get to a LUG group with question wrote down and fire it at them or go to unbuntu irc and do same there! Simon Wears wrote: There are books on Ubuntu (such as Ubuntu Kung Fu, and I think there's Ubuntu For Dummies) available in book shops. I've only seen them in the (for lack of a better term) BIG Waterstones - in particular the one in Manchester city center. If your looking for a dead-tree type of thing, I suggest having a look in your local bookshops for one on the shelf, and having a flick through to see if they have what you want. I'll take a guess (since I haven't read them) that these kind of books arn't CLI orientated books though, as they're aimed towards beginners who need to know GUI stuff too. Not too sure about websites. The way I learnt was to start using Terminal for things such as installing programs with apt-get, or dpkg,and unpacking archives etc., and whenever I did something I would look for a way to do it in the CLI. I've managed to pick up a few things doing only that, and it's given me a basic understanding of how terminal works. You could always try things that way (or if your system can run a virtual machine of Ubuntu, you may want to do it in there so as not to break anything accidentally!). Hope that helps a little! -- Simon Wears munkyju...@gmail.com | http://MunkyJunky.com MunkyJunky on irc.freenode.net http://irc.freenode.net -- 15 Stanley Place, Lancaster, LA1 5PN rik_bol...@btinternet.com - 07866439588 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu
Hi John, On 21/12/2007, davisjo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am early 60 and thought I should learn something new. Being an avid night schooler I saw a course of evening class tuition in Ubuntu and enrolled. Out of interest, where was this course? -- Steve Garton -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
[ubuntu-uk] Learning Ubuntu
I am early 60 and thought I should learn something new. Being an avid night schooler I saw a course of evening class tuition in Ubuntu and enrolled. It was a good start to my transition but by the end of the course, had more questions than answers. This is because I want to configure things my way and also use ham radio and other software, written for Windows. The course showed me the basics which would have taken a lot of magazine reading to become familiar with and probably saved endless frustration. Learning anything new requires transition through the pain barrier to get there. Now a year later, I feel I have done it and come out the other side. Studying with the OU was just the same. I use only Ubuntu in the radio shack and XP in the study. Mainly because my wife would rather use software she is familiar with, however she now uses Firefox and Open Office so that is a start. You have to want the challenge to learn anything. Have a Good Christmas John Davis-- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/