General Unix Learning

[Nikolas Britton]

hide110 wrote:

>Please forgive me if this is not the right place to turn but, I figure you
>all would be able to share your wisdom with me.  
>
>I am a Windows user and I've hated it for the past few years.  The Unix
>experience I have accrued has mainly been working from a shell account;
>nothing really in detail about the actual operating system or installation. 
>I have considered FreeBSD & Linux, but really, for a desktop system do you
>guys think it's viable for a nearly pure unix newbie to tinker around with
>BSD?  Or would it be easier to start with Linux & eventually port over to
>BSD?  
>
>Normally I'd take my own advice (if you want to use BSD, use BSD, if you want
>to use Linux at the end of the day, use that) but I'm just trying to be
>practical with all learning curves taken into consideration.
>
>My deepest apologies if I should not be asking something like this here.  But
>any replies would be terribly appreciated.
>
For a newbie that wants to *learn* UNIX then FreeBSD is really the only 
way to go. FreeBSD is a complete system (FreeBSD Kernel + FreeBSD tools 
and documentation = Operating System) where as Linux is a distribution 
(Linux Kernel + 3rd Party tools and documentation = Distribution, a 
glued together OS)

Sorry my brain doesn't seem to be working at this hour of night, I can't 
come up with coherent sentences so let me cut to the chase...
The documentation on FreeBSD is the best I have ever seen, for a newbie 
this is what matters the most. I have learned more about UNIX in the 
last 2 years from using FreeBSD then the entire time (5 years) I've been 
using Linux.

FreeBSD Handbook:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.html

FreeBSD Documentation Page:
http://www.freebsd.org/docs.html

The Complete FreeBSD, Fourth Edition:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596005164/

Absolute BSD, The Ultimate Guide to FreeBSD:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1886411743/

Learning UNIX Operating System, Fifth Edition
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596002610/