

Ask HN: How would you format a Linux skill sharing session? - derwiki

I work on a team that develops a large C/C++ application on Linux. All of the team members have various levels of Linux expertise; some use it as needed for their job, others use Linux as their OS of choice. I think everyone will agree that as you continue to learn Linux, you learn a lot of tricks that make your life a lot easier (obscure commands, command options, various piped combinations, etc). I think we all have a lot we could learn from each other.<p>The local LUG on campus has sessions like this, but they usually end up being half hour discussions about ls switches. This is a huge waste of time... What's a good way to cover a lot of material quickly? Go around to each team member and ask "what's the most useful command you've learned in the past year"? Have a few self-proclaimed Linux gurus prepare material beforehand to teach?<p>I'm open to suggestions. What have ya'll done?
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stonemetal
The main problem is finding that useful subset that is A) useful to everyone
and B) at a level that most find the distribution of information useful.

Personally I find there are two ways to handle it. The first is to focus on
work flows. As in how to do something a person on your team does regularly
really efficiently.

The second is to take a common tool and go in depth on it. Yes you end up
talking about ls switches for 20 min but it should also focus on how this tool
integrates in to the larger unix system.

The last thing to pay attention to is documenting your sessions. I use find
about once a year, I never remember how to use it and spend a good 20 min
looking at the man page. If I had in depth training on grep and find then I
would be annoyed that I was back at the man page the next time I needed it
because I didn't have a useful reference.

