Linux, Anyone?

[wulf]

Excellent - glad to hear you got somewhere. My recommendation would be to spend a bit of time learning how to use the "command line interface" (CLI), which might be called something like "terminal" (deadly name, but there you go).

One of the strengths of Linux from my perspective is that you can do all sorts of things just by typing in a few simple commands rather than having to point and click your way through. It's particularly handy with file management, especially if you want to do something like rename a batch of digital photos to take away the generic stamp put on by the camera and give them a name that captures time and place.

For example, rename 's/DSCF04/garden.20061026./' DSCF04[78]*.jpg, which would rename all pictures like DSCF0484.jpg to garden.20061026.84.jpg for any pictures in the range of DSCF0470.jpg to DSCF0489.jpg. That sounds a bit unwieldy to explain but, once you get the hang of it, speeds up operations across large groups of files (the first command to learn is probably cp (copy) so that you can work on copies rather than risk squishing your originals while you are still at early stages of learning!).

Wulf

[Muddypause]

Excellent - glad to hear you got somewhere. My recommendation would be to spend a bit of time learning how to use the "command line interface" (CLI), which might be called something like "terminal" (deadly name, but there you go).

I read somewhere that it was also called the 'shell'. I had to do a bit of playing about with it to get the modem working. There are several sets of instructions for this modem on the web, but they don't all seem to work, and at the moment, all the script is mostly jibberish - I just typed the stuff in without really understanding what I was doing. But I think I found out that 'cd' is 'change directory', 'ls' is possibly 'list', 'mkdir' is presumably 'make directory' - but get a bit stumped by most of it.

But having got this far, I am prompted to ask a few questions:

1) The stuff I have been typing into the terminal is presumably a language. Is this what Unix is? And is there a recommended guide on the web, or even a book, that can get me started in it?

2) It seems to have been a lot of effort to get just this far, and now they've released the next version of Fedora. Have I got to start again, reconfiguring everything each time I update?

3) There was a third question. Been thinking about it all day. Damned if I can remember it now. Ah, yes! Viruses. I know Linux is meant to be relatively immune from these sort of things, but is there a virus checker that I should have (Fedora seems to have a built in firewall, though I've no idea how to use it yet)?

[wulf]

Yes, "shell" is another term that is used. In fact, under Linux there are multiple shell programs that can be used to give broadly similar functions (ie. a command line interface for controlling the computer). By far and away the most common is bash (the Bourne-Again SHell... it's a joke; to grasp it, you have to remember that most programmers treat The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as the apogee of humour ). It does provide a language for talking to the computer - that's probably as good a description as anything.

You'll find plenty of references searching round online; after a quick browse, I thought the LinuxCommand site looked a good choice for being informative without immediately launching into material for which you would need a computer science degree!

If you want a book recommendation, then I have found Learning the bash Shell to be useful, although it probably gets more detailed than you'll need for sometime yet.

On the other questions, I'm not exactly sure how Fedora works but you certainly won't need to upgrade the whole system straight away. There should be some way to get security updates and bug fixes - I would expect there to be a fairly obvious desktop icon or menu item to get you there. Certainly for the moment, I think you can ignore the whole field of virus checkers - the scale of dangers is nothing like what you'd find surfing around with an unprotected Windows machine (not least because Linux gives a much tougher default target with a smaller userbase, many of whom are very technically competent; not an attractive target for the script kiddies!).

Wulf

[Muddypause]

I thought the LinuxCommand site looked a good choice for being informative without immediately launching into material for which you would need a computer science degree!

Looks like an excelent choice to me. I can actually understand most of it, and that's a major landmark in itself.

Thanks for your advice and encouragement, Wulf.