Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> The biggest mistake you can make if you're new to Linux
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | The biggest mistake you can make when you're new to Linux is not reading
> | documentation or a book. Linux is much easier to install and get it up
> | and running than it used to be, but you'll have a much smoother experience
> | if you do some reading up front.
> |
> | Linux after all is fun. And it?s free. That?s a good combination. Put
> | knowledge on your side, and you are ready to start with this new
> | adventure!
> `----
>
> http://manufacturedenvironments.com/2006/09/08_the_biggest_mistake_you_can_make_if_youre_new_to_linux.html
>
> Good link to be pasted instead of "RTFM".
My first taste of *nix was Berkley SysV years ago, and at the time, and
for a long time, I didn't read up much about it at all. I discovered
most of what I needed to know with "man <command>; /<search term>". Mind
you, I did have the advantage of being in a lab filled with other Comp.
Sci. students that I could just swivel round to and ask "what's the
command to do xxx"; helped even more by the fact that the lab had
students from different years [hacking on company time :) ]
Programming was a different matter; of course I *had* to buy the books
on Pascal, SML and C, etc., for coursework, but later on I started
getting into the O'Reilly books on things like BIND, Sendmail, etc.,
more out of curiosity than anything else.
These days I pick up more (and quicker) by reading the config file than
reading any manual. The only exception is video transcoding with
transcode and mencoder ... I still need to work from examples with those
... good God they're complicated, but then I'm not really a "video" guy.
I must say though, that once you get the flags set up correctly, the
results are stunning, not least because tools on Windows (like the famed
TMPEGEnc and VirtualDub) can so easily get confused and b0rk if you feed
them something they don't like (happened recently with a progressive
(non-interlaced) XviD AVI ... TMPEGEnc wouldn't transcode the audio
stream). Mencoder just chewed it up and spat it out in perfect PAL DVD
format, then gave me a funny look as if to say "Phhffff ... too easy".
Anyway, back OT: I sure could use a book on MPlayer and MEncoder, the
man page just don't cut it, and "examples" on the Web tend to be
"sporadic" at best, and out of date (depreciated flags) at worst.
--
K.
http://slated.org - Slated, Rated & Blogged
This message has not been photoshopped in any way.
Fedora Core release 5 (Bordeaux) on sky, running kernel 2.6.16-1.2133_FC5
01:02:06 up 84 days, 1:18, 3 users, load average: 0.18, 0.06, 0.12
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