[jamie7823]

I was just wandering if there was any programs I can get to learn linux or freebsd before i reformat my drive and explore a new operating system. I have been practicing a lot of new things like. Sharing programs and games over a network by tweaking my registry and so on. I need to know what to read up on and some kewl stuff to try with windows that could help me in another operating system. So far just sharing a game over the network was my biggest success. That may not seem like alot but i was mighty happy.

[horndude]

cygwin
minGW

both setup a bash shell and can be setup to compile alot of apps written in C to run on windows--->meaning you can compile many linux apps and run them on windows, and also have a unix like shell to work with

********************
Or, download a live cd like knoppix and play with that, live cd's run from the cdrom and in a RAM disk so they dont touch your harddrive at all

[jamie7823]

where can i get this linux and unix shells at?

[horndude]

http://www.cygwin.com/
http://www.mingw.org/
http://www.knoppix.org/

[jamie7823]

thanks alot man. Any other stuff i might need to do?

[horndude]

http://www.tldp.org

start reading how-to's and guides

[jakec]

jamie7823,

Hey man great to see you are getting interested in Linux, O.K so you want a way to learn about Linux without having to re-format, A live CD will do what you want. A live CD runs entirly from CDrom and doesent touch your HDD. After you have come to grips with that why not just dual boot, so you can have both Linux and windows on one machine?

As for reading:

http://www.reallylinux.com/docs/basic.shtml
http://www.ss64.com/bash/
http://www.userlocal.com/helpbasic.php
http://www.linuxgeek.net/beginners/node3.html
http://observatory.phy.queensu.ca/L...ual/node50.html
http://www.cns.uni.edu/cns-computing/help/unix-cmd.html
http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~pavon...terCommands.htm

Those should give you basic Linux Commands

For more in depth reading, (still KISS principal applies)

http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

And for Networking:

http://www.lesbell.com.au/Home.nsf/0...b?OpenDocument

this is A little complicated, Hold off on this till you have mastered the basics

Hope this Helps,

Jake

[jamie7823]

ahhh. Linux on cd. You got instructions on that one?

[macdude425]

You download a Live Linux CD image and burn it to CD.

This should pretty tell you how to do it with Knoppix, probably the most popular Live CD for Linux.

http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Downloading_FAQ

[jamie7823]

dang guys youve saved me alot of time thank you all