LinuxBasic.org now offers a free Linux class for people who want to learn what is under the hood of a Linux-System.

Today, most linux-distributions come with a nice installer and a pre-configured Gnome or KDE. While this makes it easy for people with a MS-Windows background to feel at home and be productive from day one, it hides many of the secret pearls that linux and the unix-culture have to offer.

In order to take advantage of the many tools that come with every linux-installation, we will use the RUTE-Book as a study guide. By reading RUTE together as a class we will learn how to configure, tweak and repair a linux-system with the standard-tools available. We will also learn many techniques that will help us doing our daily work.

Check Administrative Messages from mailing list if you are doing this course on your own.

The course started on September, 15th, 2005.
We will read through about one section of the RUTE-Book every week. Since this will be our first trip through the book, we might squeeze two small sections into one week or spread one section out over two weeks.

See the Schedule Page for more information.

Discussion about the “topics of the week” will take place on the regular [LBo] mailing-list and during the weekly IRC-sessions (sundays, 20:00 UTC),

Both, mailing-list and IRC-sessions, are open to any question about linux, so discussion will not be limited to the current sections. But it will be best if the whole class stays together on most topics, while other questions are asked in other threads (on the same list/IRC-channel).

The RUTE-Book assumes you have Linux installed on your PC. With today’s linux-distibutions, this should not be too hard to manage. Check the LinuxBasis.org site for help on installing. If you use the LBox, you can even follow the course without installing Linux on your real PC. Just use our virtual machine.

Of course, you need internet access to read the book and join us on the mailing-list and on IRC. In fact, there is a hardcopy of RUTE available, but if you had no internet, you would not be reading this :)

Also note the downloadable pdf version (link removed - invalid) or alternate link. The pdf file is compressed using BZip2, and as such is difficult to retrieve if you don’t have Linux installed on your computer. Check the workaround for instructions on how to download and decompress using Windows or Linux.

The html version of RUTE is also available for download and local browsing. Follow the instructions on the workaround-page.

Starting with Chapter 25, “Introduction to IP”, it is usefull (not neccessary) to have more that one computer to try things out. In later chapters, there will be topics that you might be scared to try out on your regular PC. For these cases, we have put together three virtual machines.

These machines run under VMware and simulate regular PCs inside your computer. You can run them in Linux or Windows, and you will be able to try out everything without danger for your production machine. You can partition the virtual drives, reconfigure the bootloaders on the virtual MBR’s or do other ‘dangerous’ stuff. And if you completely wrecked the virtual machine, just start over with a new one :)

Here are the details on how to use the LBox.

Everybody keeps his/her own notes, of course. But we plan on publishing class-notes on the LBo-site. These will be useful to point out details that seem important to us, help overcome problems that the class encountered while studying the book, and update material that has changes since RUTE was written.

One feature already planned is a table of linux-commands with short descriptions and links to the appropriate page in RUTE, on the LBo-Wiki or other internet sites.

These class notes will be on the LBo-wiki, so everybody can edit (and thus improve) them.

While there is no real need to officially ‘join’ the class, it would be nice for us to know that we are not alone. We would greatly appreciate if you sent us a short mail, stating that you are with us. Also, participation in the discussion (asking or answering questions) will give us an idea who is in class.