jokeripa Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 I seem to be drifting to and from Linux, but I definately would like to learn more about it, I dont even have much of the basics commands down, but I can get around the GUI pretty easily... Anyway, I got offered from a friend two 'Linux for Dummies' books. One of them is just Linux for dummies, and the other Linux administration for dummies, and he is giving me a really cheap price for the both of them... ..only problem is, is that they are from 1998'ish! Has Linux changed dramatically since then, or could they still be useful? Thanks, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted February 7, 2008 Veteran Share Posted February 7, 2008 Yeah, the basic concepts will be pretty much the same. Some details may have changed. For example, ipchains is depreciated. Well, gone may be the better term. It was replaced with iptables, which pretty much does the same work, but was added for the 2.4 kernels, I believe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jokeripa Posted February 7, 2008 Author Share Posted February 7, 2008 Nice one mate, thanks, I'll pick them up then. Instead of making a new thread I'll just ask here :p I bought a USB Bluetooth device, which works fine under XP (after installing drivers), but not Linux. It will show up under usbview, but not saying anything about Bluetooth, and doesnt show at all under hciconfig. I tried searching for Linux drivers, but couldn't find any, any suggestions? I've got one more ;) I have two wireless cards one connected by PCIMIA, one USB. The PCIMIA works (as far as searching for networks, but as soon as I try any injection, or even open Kismet it will stop working, this is why I want to try the USB one. Both of them are supported by the distro I'm using, but only the PCIMIA shows up under iwconfig/ifconfig, the other one shows up under usbview and usb devices.... any suggestions? :D Thanks, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Borbus Posted February 8, 2008 Share Posted February 8, 2008 (edited) Just a note, I doubt the books are actually about Linux, what they're probably about is GNU/Linux, or GNU itself for that matter. Remember Linux doesn't actually do anything on its own... every program you run, bash (your shell), rm, mv, cp etc. (these are called the GNU core utilities) are part of the GNU OS. So don't think about running commands on the Linux kernel because that is not what you are doing. That knowledge helped me to understand how it all works. You don't get that level of understanding from using Windows. The answer to your question in that case is, yes Linux has changed significantly since 1998, but GNU has not, therefore as far as you are concerned GNU/Linux hasn't and the book is not outdated. It might be outdated about hardware support, though. SATA didn't exist in 1998, now it's effectively the standard for home PCs. So the book might refer to your hard drives as /dev/hda etc and partitions as /dev/hda1 etc. but your devices are more likely /dev/sda etc. And even then you don't just use GNU/Linux, you use a distro. Unless you're actually trying to get a piece of hardware to work at a low level (which it almost definitely does), don't say you are trying to get it to work with "Linux". This is where your distro comes into play, in some ways your distro is more important than the fact that you are using Linux. Ubuntu will detect and automatically configure wireless devices quite well in most cases, but other distros, like Debian itself, certainly will not. So in a nutshell.. what distro are you using? Edited February 8, 2008 by Borbus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted February 8, 2008 Veteran Share Posted February 8, 2008 Oh god. A lecture on "Linux is the kernel, and you never see it". Yes, technically that is correct. But it is common practice, even by Torvalds himself, to refer as the entire installation as a "Linux" system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4CxbqFxVnstmA Veteran Posted February 8, 2008 Veteran Share Posted February 8, 2008 You might actually want to make a separate post for your other problems if you want to get more people reading who might be able to help. Old books seem more helpful and consistent when they talk about the command line, from what I can gather. I think though that most of the information you'd want on shell commands can actually be got online. Though I admit I buy books myself because I like to read away from the computer and they can be more convenient for reference. As for dodgy wifi, whenever something like that gives me trouble I admit first thing I do is install ndiswrapper and get Linux to use the Windows driver.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ID2 Posted February 8, 2008 Share Posted February 8, 2008 Oh god. A lecture on "Linux is the kernel, and you never see it". Yes, technically that is correct. . . I found it interesting and informative. . . But it is common practice, even by Torvalds himself, to refer as the entire installation as a "Linux" system. "Torvalds himself" is Linux isn't he, and would naturally want to refer to it as his baby? The GNU part originates from someone else I believe, (who would naturally want to use the GNU reference). I've never heard it called "GNU", only "Linux". . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4CxbqFxVnstmA Veteran Posted February 8, 2008 Veteran Share Posted February 8, 2008 I found it interesting and informative."Torvalds himself" is Linux isn't he, and would naturally want to refer to it as his baby? The GNU part originates from someone else I believe, (who would naturally want to use the GNU reference). I've never heard it called "GNU", only "Linux". . It is interesting (see also here). As much as I admire Richard Stallman I can't say I ever call it 'GNU/Linux'. When people ask me what that is there on my laptop or when I say what OS I use, I just say 'Linux'. See here as well for what I think will likely become Shift's take, or at least a rough sketch of Shift's take. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Borbus Posted February 8, 2008 Share Posted February 8, 2008 (edited) Oh god. A lecture on "Linux is the kernel, and you never see it". Yes, technically that is correct. But it is common practice, even by Torvalds himself, to refer as the entire installation as a "Linux" system. Yes but Linus also says that users should not be concerned with the OS at all and it should be completely invisible to them. I just wanted to make it clear that when you run "commands" such as rm, mv etc. you are not actually telling the kernel to do something, you are running a program and therefore it's just like running any other program... I think it helps to understand it that way. For the record I also say never use or hear the term GNU/Linux, well I might type it sometimes, but it's too much of a mouthful to say. I think it is important for people to know that they are actually using most of the GNU OS, but the fact is Linux and GNU/Linux do mean the same thing 99% of the time. It also depends on what you consider the 'OS', is the kernel(ie. Linux, Mach), or the whole system that can actually do something (ie. GNU/Linux, OS X)? I think I used both ways of interpreting OS in this post, and I know Linus does. Stallman interprets it as strictly the latter. Edited February 8, 2008 by Borbus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jokeripa Posted February 15, 2008 Author Share Posted February 15, 2008 This thread got quite interesting! Borbus, nice post man, good reading. I'm using the Backtrack 3 distro on a LiveCD. James7, what do you do when the driver is only an .exe file? Last time I tried to play around with NDISwrapper I remember it only wanting a .ini or a .inf. Thanks for the replys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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