1) High Speed Internet
The reason I gave up on Linux five years ago was that I couldn’t get my dial-up modem to work. I have high-speed now, but I tried to set up the modem just to test how difficult it was. After failing with three different distributions of Linux on four different computers I have to recommend that new Linux users make sure they have high-speed. I’ve never had any trouble getting my Ethernet to work.

2) Double whatever RAM the distro claims you need.
I’m putting Linux on my older computers, and I assume most new converts are going to try to do the same. That usually means we’ll be working with slower computers. One of the selling points I came across when I started reading about Linux was that it works fantastically on older computers. However, I’ve found this isn’t entirely true. I tried Ubuntu, Xbuntu, and Damn Small Linux on an old lappy that had the supposed bare minimum RAM, but nothing worked quite right. I eventually just installed Xbuntu and had it boot into text-only mode (and that’s how I discovered the joy of the command line). Recently, I installed Fedora 9 on a 3 year old desktop which meets Fedora’s minimum requirements for RAM, but I’ve discovered it’s safer to stay in CLI, and I’ve ordered more RAM. Whatever the distribution you’re using says you need, go ahead and double it, and you’ll enjoy yourself a lot more.

3) Terminal Skills
The best way to prepare yourself for the trouble you will have is to learn some basic Unix commands. Most of the on-line help discussions use terminal commands, so you must learn your way around a terminal if plan on fixing any of the problems that come up. (These problems happen on M&M too [that's Microsoft and Macintosh] but I’ve found fixing problems is easier when working in a terminal.)

Don’t stress out about this point; learning these commands won’t take much time. I went to the library and got an old book on Unix that had most of the information I needed. I spent about an hour scanning the book and picked up most of the basics and a couple cool tricks. Every new Linux user must do this. Eventually, you will read something that will use these commands and if you have a basic understanding of them, you’ll be able to follow the discussion more easily. Spend an hour learning these commands now, and it will probably save yourself several hours in the future.

. . . the Chrome icon kind of looks like the old Simon Says game

I’m embarrassed by the broken “Categories” image. I’ll fix it when I can.

I like this wordpress theme, but I’ve had to rewrite almost all the HTML & CSS. I didn’t mess with the left sidebar because the theme author made it pretty complicated, and I didn’t want to dig in there and straighten it out . . .

I don’t usually get excited enough about a computer book that I want to tell others about it, but I just picked up my all-time favorite super-geeky book ever.




Defensive Design for the Web
by 37signals

I’ll call this book an advanced web design book, but you won’t find a line of code in it.

The book focuses on how to make sure people don’t hate you too much when they encounter an error on your site.

I’ve never paid much attention to handling errors because my code is flawless . . . no, that’s not true, I’m just lazy. I just checked my host, and at least a handful of people get a 404 message (that’s computer speak for an error page), so I’m actually excited about reworking the 404 pages on all my sites. If you want too see an error on my site click on this link www.dougroyal.com/stupid-error/, and let me know what you think.

They’re not really boring, just boring to talk about. Since I’m switiching to Linux I’ve flipped through a couple million computer books.

Here’s the key to reading books about coding. . .you don’t actually read them. You just flip through them scanning over things you already know and picking out fun pieces of code that you’ve never tried before.

If yout tried to grab a book on Java or C++ at the library and just work your way through it, I’m pretty sure most people would give up before they finished. I suppose you need to have at least a basic understanding of coding, but I got that in college.