Linux Guide #1: Making the Switch

Now that you have toyed around with Knoppix, you should be able to find an ISO of your choice on the Internet or buy the distributions for a low price online or even at many retail stores. However, I have included a simple list of places to find Linux at for your convenience:

Download it at www.linuxiso.org

Buy it at www.edmunds-enterprises.com/linux/index.php

Purchase Red-Hat Linux at Wal-Mart

I’ve obtained it, now what?

Not so fast there, soldier. First you need to start reading up on shell commands. Remember those “CD, DIR, VER” commands from DOS prompts? Well, knowledge of those is essential to using Linux. The problem is that Linux has its own set of important commands, and not all of them are the same as in DOS. Try these commands in Knoppix.

Before You Continue

If you ever need help with a command, you can always type the command followed by a “–help” and you should get a “Usage” instruction set.

Command	What it Does
CD	Changes the directory. Pretty simple idea; if you want to go from / to /Joe, you would type: “CD Joe.”
DIR	Lists a directory’s contents. Example: “DIR” returns: bin cygwin.bat cygwin.ico etc home lib sbin tmp usr var
CP	Use it to copy one file to another folder. Usage is: “CP source.file destination.file” so an example might be: “CP gcc.txt /home/Justin/gcc.txt”
MV	Same as copy command, except it moves a file.
RM	To delete a file: “rm file.name” To delete an entire folder: “rm –rf file.name”

Stay Tuned

Don’t worry … I’ll be back for the next in this series. Hang tight, and next time we will install your distribution and get you started with Linux.

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Alan
Oh, so you think you’re happy with Linux, eh? How about the half-day you spent getting the video to work and the new card that you had to buy? How about the assumption that you are an expert and the consequently shorthand instructions that are useless to anyone but an IT graduate? How about the instructions that are just plain wrong (“All you have to do is download it and burn a disc…”) How about having to go to four different forums to find an answer because the first two of them tell you that it’s easy and you should be able to figure this out after you klemtate the horgel and doesn’t tell you that it won’t unless you fleeg first, and the third one starts talking about some other issue like how evil Microsoft is for providing the world with OSes that work. How about unspecified dependencies? How about the whole attitude that people really want to spend their time solving puzzles instead of getting to accomplish the work that they got their computers to do?