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 Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 4:48 pm
My Computer Operating Systems teacher has finally given and is teaching about the Linux OS, took two Linux fanatics to do it (myself included), but of course sense he knows nothing about Linux he is having me teach it. Last week we installed a couple of distros onto a HDD (Mainly SuSE because thats what I had laying around). He wants me to teach the class a couple of easy things to show them the difference between Winblows and Linux. He wants me to show them how to do different tasks using both the GUI and CLI:
Adding, editing, removing user accounts
Adding, editing, removing user passwords
Making files
Making directories
Moving a file from one directory to another
How to make files using VI
Yea I know simple tasks, he also wants me to teach them other things that is "general knowledge" this is where I hit a road block, I can't think of anything that is "general knowledge" with out getting into to many details... If anyone has any ideas of things that I can cover please post your ideas, any help would be greatly appreciated.
Current suggestions/ideas:
Touch
SU/SUDO
Finger and Pinky commands
Virtual consoles (F1 - F6 screens)
top
free
vmstat
introduction to software management
mounting
ifup/NetworkManager
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Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:28 pm
See what he generally teaches, like look at your notes, and see what he has done for teaching "general knowledge" on previous OSes he taught about. Then see if you can apply to within Linux.
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Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 5:47 am
top? vmstat?
pine, mutt, lynx?
Maybe show off command line versions of IM clients, like pork?
For GUI "works just as well as a day-to-day desktop machine as Windows!" land, show off OpenOffice, pidgin, xmms and xine, and maybe show them how to mount/unmount CDs and flash drives?
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Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 6:12 am
Zher See what he generally teaches, like look at your notes, and see what he has done for teaching "general knowledge" on previous OSes he taught about. Then see if you can apply to within Linux. He only teaches winblows even he should be teaching other OS because it is a computer operating system class not a M$ operating system class. Due to the fact that people in the class has uses winblows, and "everyone" knows windblows so he covers more advanced topics. If I try to do the same under Linux I would lose them sweatdrop
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Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 6:15 am
lizzah top? vmstat? pine, mutt, lynx? Maybe show off command line versions of IM clients, like pork? For GUI "works just as well as a day-to-day desktop machine as Windows!" land, show off OpenOffice, pidgin, xmms and xine, and maybe show them how to mount/unmount CDs and flash drives? If I do top then free is a must wink I can't really pull of the pine, mutt, lynx, and pork because we will be there forever trying to install them, some of them are running openSuSE 10.2 and they are using Zenworks as their updater app (which is ungodly slow, and I hate Novell for it) I figured I would touch on software management with those people be uninstalling Zenworks and installing zypper and openSuSE updater. Then install something small... maybe lynx its a decent size.
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Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 6:48 am
vendion If I do top then free is a must wink I can't really pull of the pine, mutt, lynx, and pork because we will be there forever trying to install them, some of them are running openSuSE 10.2 and they are using Zenworks as their updater app (which is ungodly slow, and I hate Novell for it) I figured I would touch on software management with those people be uninstalling Zenworks and installing zypper and openSuSE updater. Then install something small... maybe lynx its a decent size. Build it from source!! xp "Welcome to unix! Here, have a ./configure make make install" OK, maybe not the softest intro, but still. But seriously...if you can at least hit lynx, I would. I've seen more "you can do WHAT from the command line?!?!" responses with things like lynx, and that kind of spark of interest is always a good sign. IM just (used to) usually get more interest. "Woah, I can use something other than AOL Instant Messenger...and I can use it on the command line?" Heh, I feel like a *nix pusher..."Hey buddy, want a hit of the new Ubuntu release?" mad d
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Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 10:26 am
Speaking of compiling the OS, here's one for you - why just build from source, when you can cross-build from source and install to another hard drive? surprised
You have the sources for world and the kernel. You need to install it on a SPARC machine that has no CD drive. You've already configured the hard drive, but how do you actually use an i386 to install the SPARC build of the system onto the hard drive of the SPARC system? If you're using FreeBSD, this is (in theory) quite simple.
Assuming the SPARC system's hard drive is connected via USB, mount the drive.
# mount /dev/da0s1a /mnt
# mount /dev/da0s1d /mnt/var
# mount /dev/da0s1e /mnt/tmp
# mount /dev/da0s1f /mnt/usr
Then cross-compile, and cross-install.
# cd /usr/src
# make buildkernel KERNCONF=GENERIC TARGET_ARCH=sparc
# make buildworld TARGET_ARCH=sparc
# make installkernel KERNCONF=GENERIC TARGET_ARCH=sparc DESTDIR=/mnt
# make installworld TARGET_ARCH=sparc DESTDIR=/mnt
Not quite done, yet. If the hard drive is set up exactly the same way as the build system's hard drive, copy /etc/fstab over, then modify it for correctness (if there are differences):
# cp /etc/fstab /mnt/etc/fstab
# edit /mnt/etc/fstab
Now take the SPARC hard drive over to the SPARC system, reconnect it, and boot. You're going to need to install the Ports Collection before installing anything.
# portsnap fetch
# portsnap extract
Then from there, installing software from Ports is done exactly the same way:
# cd /usr/ports/x11/kde3
# make install clean
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Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 7:17 pm
1. Explain the Unix directory structure and permission system (creating and managing groups as part of managing user accounts)
2. Give an overview of the different package management systems and demonstrate adding, upgrading, and removing RPM and Deb packages using standard CLI and GUI tools ('rpm' command & YUM, 'apt-get' and synaptics).
3. Demonstrate compiling Autoconf source packages (./configure, make, make install)
4. Make sure to emphasize the Unix tool-chain philosophy. Show how most CLI utilities are designed to be piped together to perform more complex functions. Explain that the Unix shells are full programming languages, unlike the DOS shell.
5. As part of "creating and moving files and directories" you should also demonstrate linking ('ln' command). It won't hurt to talk about how Linux filesystems are self-defragmenting and that journaled filesystems (ext3/4, jfs, xfs, reiserfs) can repair themselves even after a power-failure with minimal data-loss.
6. grep, regular expressions, find and locate
7. Explain the variety of window-managers available. At the least, show KDE and Gnome. If you can, demonstrate a Blackbox derivative like Fluxbox and a tiled window manager such as ratpoison or wmii.
8. A diskless thin-client demonstration would be perfect for showing how Linux is a true multi-user OS.
9. It might help encourage people to switch if you show them how to use Wine to run Windows apps
10. Maybe the most important, don't forget to preach the FSF's GPL Philosophy. Explain the four kinds of freedom and why they are important. Optionally, you could explain how Free Software is different from Open Source software and why Linus Torvalds prefers Open Source over Free Software. This is also your opportunity to be a pedantic supporter of Richard Stallman and insist that everyone use the name "GNU/Linux" instead of just "Linux".
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Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 8:15 pm
Sitwon 1. Explain the Unix directory structure and permission system (creating and managing groups as part of managing user accounts) 2. Give an overview of the different package management systems and demonstrate adding, upgrading, and removing RPM and Deb packages using standard CLI and GUI tools ('rpm' command & YUM, 'apt-get' and synaptics). 3. Demonstrate compiling Autoconf source packages (./configure, make, make install) 4. Make sure to emphasize the Unix tool-chain philosophy. Show how most CLI utilities are designed to be piped together to perform more complex functions. Explain that the Unix shells are full programming languages, unlike the DOS shell. 5. As part of "creating and moving files and directories" you should also demonstrate linking ('ln' command). It won't hurt to talk about how Linux filesystems are self-defragmenting and that journaled filesystems (ext3/4, jfs, xfs, reiserfs) can repair themselves even after a power-failure with minimal data-loss. 6. grep, regular expressions, find and locate 7. Explain the variety of window-managers available. At the least, show KDE and Gnome. If you can, demonstrate a Blackbox derivative like Fluxbox and a tiled window manager such as ratpoison or wmii. 8. A diskless thin-client demonstration would be perfect for showing how Linux is a true multi-user OS. 9. It might help encourage people to switch if you show them how to use Wine to run Windows apps 10. Maybe the most important, don't forget to preach the FSF's GPL Philosophy. Explain the four kinds of freedom and why they are important. Optionally, you could explain how Free Software is different from Open Source software and why Linus Torvalds prefers Open Source over Free Software. This is also your opportunity to be a pedantic supporter of Richard Stallman and insist that everyone use the name "GNU/Linux" instead of just "Linux". Good suggestions
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Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 5:50 pm
In my experience windows users like Linux Mint because it looks a little like XP and is easy to use. I have now switched 3 people from Vista to Mint and my dad from XP to Ubuntu. Ease of use and pretty graphics seem to be the main thing that get people to switch then after that its the whole not having to worry about viruses that catches their interest.
I am also in a computer class and all our labs are using Windows 95-vista (it's hell) I stayed after class and let my Professor boot off the live CD of Sabayon. He was amazed by everything, I let him sit and play with it for about 30 minutes and then another student came in and was checking it out for about another 30 minutes so yeah. They both said they were going to go home and replace XP. I hope they did too, Sabayon is sweet!
So yeah Mint is a good one to convert people over because the layout feels a little more like XP and its like you have to feed them one thing at a time or they'll go running back to windows and never look back.
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Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 11:04 am
Well this is over, I and I can say it went over well. Have the class was telling me how interesting Linux is compared to Winblows and some even have it installed on at least one of their computers. They ran off with all of the DVDs that I had brought and so I would consider this a success!
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Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 11:13 am
LadySerena Speaking of compiling the OS, here's one for you - why just build from source, when you can cross-build from source and install to another hard drive? surprised
You have the sources for world and the kernel. You need to install it on a SPARC machine that has no CD drive. You've already configured the hard drive, but how do you actually use an i386 to install the SPARC build of the system onto the hard drive of the SPARC system? If you're using FreeBSD, this is (in theory) quite simple.
Assuming the SPARC system's hard drive is connected via USB, mount the drive.
# mount /dev/da0s1a /mnt
# mount /dev/da0s1d /mnt/var
# mount /dev/da0s1e /mnt/tmp
# mount /dev/da0s1f /mnt/usr
Then cross-compile, and cross-install.
# cd /usr/src
# make buildkernel KERNCONF=GENERIC TARGET_ARCH=sparc
# make buildworld TARGET_ARCH=sparc
# make installkernel KERNCONF=GENERIC TARGET_ARCH=sparc DESTDIR=/mnt
# make installworld TARGET_ARCH=sparc DESTDIR=/mnt
Not quite done, yet. If the hard drive is set up exactly the same way as the build system's hard drive, copy /etc/fstab over, then modify it for correctness (if there are differences):
# cp /etc/fstab /mnt/etc/fstab
# edit /mnt/etc/fstab
Now take the SPARC hard drive over to the SPARC system, reconnect it, and boot. You're going to need to install the Ports Collection before installing anything.
# portsnap fetch
# portsnap extract
Then from there, installing software from Ports is done exactly the same way:
# cd /usr/ports/x11/kde3
# make install clean Hey I'm thinking of installing a BSD in a VM, might do freeBSD, I will have to wait until I can get more CDs though I only have 3 blanks.
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Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 6:49 pm
vendion Hey I'm thinking of installing a BSD in a VM, might do freeBSD, I will have to wait until I can get more CDs though I only have 3 blanks. If it's a VM, why do you need blanks? Just mount the ISOs.
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Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 8:33 pm
That way if I like it I already have CDs for it and in not then I can add it to my small collection of installation disks.
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Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 6:29 pm
I find it interesting that your teacher doesn't teach Linux by default. I go to a fairly prominent state university, and that's all that is taught here. Being a completely free operating system, we get to play around with the kernel and do some neat, low-level stuff that we wouldn't be able to do with Windows. I actually find it sort of odd that an OS teacher would teach anything aside from Linux for that reason. Not that it isn't worth discussing Windows; just that it doesn't seem like teaching an operating system aside from Linux would be feasible.
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