Hi, I am a Linux newbie. I have been using open suse on one of my desktops for nearly a year now and I am very happy with the quality of this os. I started with 10.3 and I am now using 11.0 and looking forward to 11.1 . I am not comfortable using the console, as I do not have much knowledge on how to use it. I think because of this I have reinstalled suse at least a dozen times in the time since I’ve been using it.( I am good at this now).I don’t expect to be a programmer, but I would like to find a place to learn the basics and be able to find my way around the console. Are there any sites where I could find step by step how to … for newbies ? I want to install suse on my main computer at home, but I’m a little hesitant, because of my lack of knowledge. I browse the open suse site and I have found it helpful at times, but a lot of the stuff I read is over my head at this time. I think that suse is awesome software and I would like to learn more about it. ie, configuring a messenger program to work with msn mssger, or other types of configuring. I use the gui, but sometimes it is not enough. It to me a few days to get the nvidia graphics driver working right and configure my printer.
KEEP UP THE EXCELLENT WORK

Chris Booth

Here are two sites/pages that are devoted to teaching newbies about the power of the $prompt.

http://www.linuxcommand.org/
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Basic-Linux-Commands-33757.shtml

I once heard it said that you never really migrate from Windows to Linux, you just stop using Windows and find solutions for whatever it is you want the penguin to do. I might suggest that you just challenge yourself to do everything you possibly can via command line. Same concept as previously cited, just do it.

Although I’ve been using one flavor of Linux or another for seven years I still refer to cheat sheets and man pages on how to do things on my router/firewall or file-servers. That is more my fault than anything else. About two months ago, my Windows computer died and I started using an older computer, on which I had installed SuSE 10.2 sometime last year, to do e-mail and surf until I could come up with a solution for my main work computer. Since Wine had matured to 1.0+, I decided to give it a go and was pleasantly surprised. Now, I’m completely migrated over to SuSE 11, Windows XP is my secondary dual-boot option. After seven years, I’ve finally given up Windows!

Good luck!