The best book for an absolute beginner to learn linux/unraid

[rwickra]

OK I will be honest. I've been using my unraid for the last few years (and it has been working great for the most part), but I'm a deadbeat when it comes to troubleshooting and I rely entirely on folks in the forums to tell me EXACTLY what to do on the commandline. I look at scripts written by folks to accomplish pretty cool tasks and I'm baffled by the syntax... I hear about terms like kernel, GNU, distros and I really don't understand what they are....

 

The problem is that I am a doctor. I know everything there is about taking care of patients, but I know nothing about programming with UNIX or Linux. I was passionate about computers when I was a kid and I was a whiz at programming in BASIC (back in the '80s when it was hotstuff). Now many years later, I find the craving to understand the inner workings of the OS of my beloved piece of hardware at home, and I am amiss.

 

So with that in mind, can anyone suggest to me the best resource to UNDERSTAND Linux. I can pick up numerous books about shell scripting etc, but I want to understand the basic terminology, how the UNIX OS thinks, and then, also something that describes how to be snazzy with the commands we execute on unraid.

 

I'd be forever grateful if someone could point me in the right direction, without knocking my lack of understanding of the subject. For what it's worth, the fact that I can "administer" (and I use that term in the loosest sense) a 20 TB server running flawlessly and serving up my movies, tv shows etc, is quite a sentiment of what a great OS slackware based unRaid is.

 

Thanks!

[steini84]

I read a linux for dummies back in the day that was a pretty good start

[marcusone]

Pick a distribution (Ubuntu fedora Mint centos etc) download And play with it. Then use the community forums or Google search to find how to do things. A good exercise is to setup a LAMP server or other service and customize it a bit.

 

Sent from my SGH-I727R using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[doorunrun]

Well, you don't sound like an absolute beginner to me!

I agree on the "Linux for Dummies" ...BUT consider  "Linux From Scratch"  and build the whole thing up by hand!

The overview from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_From_Scratch and the main page: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/index.html

It's also available in book form or can be downloaded.

 

I haven't worked through it yet, but it's on my bucket list 

 

[tr0910]

I'm not sure a book exists that does exactly what you want. I'm also a geek from the early 80's but ended up engineer instead. Moonlighting at night, I  put together some of the early networks with arcnet / Novell 286. UnRaid reminds me of NetWare 286.  Solid stable, but NetWare 386 came next and totally revolutionized networking.  UnRaid 6 looks to be a similar product.  Back in those days before the internet, CompuServe and a 1200 baud modem was how you learned. There was no book.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

 

[WeeboTech]

When I was starting to learn unix, the Orielly books were the most helpful.

 

I like the 'learning' books for beginning.

after I'm a lil seasoned, I pick up the 'cookbooks' since I learn by example.

a good shell scripting book on bash would be helpful for unRAID.

 

A linux for dummies book may be useful at first.

 

 

Running Linux, 5th Edition

A Distribution-Neutral Guide for Servers and Desktops

(this is a lil old, but may serve the purpose).

 

How Linux Works

What Every Superuser Should Know

 

Linux for Non-Geeks

A Hands-On, Project-Based, Take-It-Slow Guidebook

These will be useful after you are familiar with the command line.

 

Learning the bash Shell, 3rd Edition

Unix Shell Programming

 

Linux in a Nutshell.

 

There are probably many free guides out there.

Start here -> http://www.tldp.org/

[mr.sparkle]

Maybe grab an LPIC book and work through it? They're distribution agnostic.