
Learn Linux The Hard Way (β version) - 0x1997
http://nixsrv.com/llthw
======
zedshaw
Hey @mwargh could you email me at help@learncodethehardway.org? I got awesome
goodies for you.

I ended up completely redoing the LxTHW base structure and converted all my
books to it, but I haven't got around to updating the repo with the new gear.
If you email me I'll hook you up with the latest.

The new gear uses dexy (<http://dexy.it>) still, but uses all the features of
the newer dexy and switches to rST intead of latex. I also have a converter
that converts from the old latex structure pretty well. The results are much
easier to host and convert to pdf, mobi, epub, html, etc. and easier to write.

So, contact me (or anyone looking to do one of these).

~~~
Surio
+1 for being a sport.

Your convivial reply on this thread also probably puts to rest speculation
around whether it is OK to name open tutorial projects in this way or not.

It's great what you are doing with the "hard way". I wish you well, and hope
you keep doing it for a long time. :-)

The site finally loaded for me, and I think it is great what the author is
doing there.

Good luck, @mwargh!

------
cowboyhero
Love the idea, the context, and the execution. It's a great project. Not a fan
of the name.

Zed Shaw has a well-established series of "Learn $topic the Hard Way" online
books, with Addison Wesley publishing a 3rd edition of his "Learn Python the
Hard Way" this spring. He is building a brand and a business around this name.

I'd be surprised to learn that "Learn ... the Hard Way" isn't trademarked, but
even if it isn't, it strikes me as disingenuous, misleading, and potentially
confusing to name your work after his.

As far as I can tell, Mr Shaw has nothing to do with this project, but then
the "Learn Linux the Hard Way" name might, to some, imply that he does.

Edited to add: I do not have a dog in this fight, just pointing out a
potential conflict.

~~~
zedshaw
Actually, my understanding is you can't really trademark titles of things.
That's why you'll see books and movies with the same titles and nobody getting
sued.

There's also a Perl book that predates my book which I didn't know about, so
there's precedent for people to do this already.

Finally, I really don't care so much about the title, I care more about people
getting the method right. It looks like this was taken down so I can't comment
on how it's written, but my typical beef with these books is they use the
title, then they proceed to write a completely different book that doesn't
follow the method at all. To me that's just obnoxious arrogance on their part
and typical programmer "I can do it better" crap. There's a reason my books
are structured the way they are, and just taking the title to pimp a book that
isn't even close to the same structure just pisses me off.

But, I haven't seen this book yet so I don't know what it's done.

EDIT: Ok found the google cache, and it looks like this one's doing it right.
I officially bless this title in the name of ... like whatever and shit.

~~~
aidenn0
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure you can trademark titles. An example is the "X for
Dummies[1]" series that has at least _threatened_ to sue people[2].

People currently associate "Learn X the Hard Way" where X is computer related
to your lcthw project. If you let other people use it, that distinctiveness
will go away and it will likely not be something you could trademark

[1]
[http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4009:ae...](http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4009:ae8221.3.7)
[2][https://www.chillingeffects.org/protest/notice.cgi?NoticeID=...](https://www.chillingeffects.org/protest/notice.cgi?NoticeID=355)

------
exDM69
I'm not sure it's a good idea to try to stuff vim in there. It's hard enough
to try to learn unix command line skills, throwing vim in to the mix is just a
detour. Nano is good enough for tutorial purposes.

And I'm a hard core Vim user. I have no strong opinions for or against
specific text editors but any hacker worth their salt should know Vim and/or
Emacs to be able to use a powerful text editor when stranded in the console
for one reason or another.

But this kind of superficial introduction to Vim is a big disservice. The last
thing we need is people who hate Vim because they understand it poorly based
on a short tutorial.

~~~
mwargh
I wrote this guide and I'm convinced basic vi usage is essential to learn. I
have to encouter a system without vi yet.

~~~
geophile
The first time I go to a machine for the first time, and I need an editor, I
fire up emacs. If it isn't there, I do [apt-get|yum] install emacs, and then I
fire up emacs.

~~~
mwargh_
Lucky you :) Good luck running emacs on some embedded things.

------
bbrizzi
More like "Learn scaling your web app the hard way" ;)

(Page isn't loading for me)

~~~
mwargh
Ain't no webapp, just a wiki. Fixed already, anyway.

~~~
vog
Did you?

At least for me, the site is still down.

------
mwargh
I wrote this guide, sorry for 502. I wasn't really anticipating this much
interest. I'm doing something about it now.

Also you can blame me for including vim, but I'm conviced that basic vi
knowledge is essential.

~~~
roel_v
"Also you can blame me for including vim, but I'm conviced that basic vi
knowledge is essential."

It is, don't let them get you down. Who would call themselves a Unix
professional without knowing vi? 'Uh yeah I'm a professional driver, except I
don't know how to drive a stick shift'. Sure buddy - NEXT!

------
krenoten
This looks like a great guide. One piece of advice I was given early on was to
start with a minimal distribution like Gentoo. While not as essential for day-
to-day use, knowing about how the various lower-level components interact has
gotten me out of a lot of otherwise catastrophic situations across several
operating systems - FreeBSD especially and occasionally on OSX. Thanks for
writing this guide, it is sure to give a sturdy foundation in *nix usage to
the ambitious beginner who follows it.

~~~
wting
I'm biased in favor or Arch Linux. It's fairly similar in spirit with Gentoo,
but offers binaries rather than forcing users to build everything from
scratch.

AUR packages usually require compiling from source code though.

~~~
krenoten
That is exactly why I switched to Arch linux a few years ago :)

I love Arch's KISS approach and the ease of administration. Gentoo is an
incredibly customizable distro that leaves quite a lot up to the end user, and
because of that it can be a great learning distro for some people. But yes -
at the time I made my switch I was becoming impatient with time time I was
putting into administering it.

------
Surio
Other than occasional 502 errors, the site doesn't work for me. Browsers used:

1\. FF 17x

2\. Maxthon 4x (IE engine)

3\. Seamonkey

Chrome is too memory intensive for my machine and the font rendering is poor,
so stopped using it.

Any others having problems?

~~~
mwargh
Yep, too many people found about my project somehow, I'm sorry for not
anticipating this. Try now.

------
daemon13
404 for me.

Make sure to update your nginx/0.7.67, there was a number of security related
upgrades.

Don't use the one in ports. Compile or if you are on Ubuntu:

    
    
        sudo -s
    
        nginx=stable # use nginx=development for latest development version
    
        add-apt-repository ppa:nginx/$nginx
    
        apt-get update 
    
        apt-get install nginx
    

;-)

~~~
mwargh_
Thanks, I moved my site to another server. It should be ok now.

------
donniezazen
Thanks for doing this. I have gone through a similar course on bash commands
though it was not interactive but just list of basic commands and
explanations. This is very helpful in building Linux knowledge for enthusiasts
like me.

------
nshankar
The guide could be great, but the JavaScript based shell takes a life to open
up and kills the experience. Why not use Linux on a Linux machine than a VM,
JS shell etc? This makes it real hard to learn.

~~~
sejje
Is there some reason you can't do that?

------
snogglethorpe
values of β will give rise to dom?

------
bane
This looks awesome. I've yet to find a really focused and directed guide to
learning Linux basics, this looks like it could be it.

------
pfortuny
502... Bad gateway?

Or I may be missing something deep and hard?

~~~
mwargh
Fixed.

------
jnazario
i learned linux the hard way, eons ago: i broke shit. didn't mean to, i just
did. then you learn how things fit together when you try and fix them.

(it's also why my shell was ksh for eons, my editor was vi for eons, etc. all
stuff you have when /usr won't mount.)

------
ErikAugust
Anyone have a link to the working .ova download?

~~~
mwargh_
FIxed. It's in the guide now.

------
Goranek
Scary, when you see linux loading in browser

~~~
mwargh
That was actually the point.

------
wmat
If you want to learn Linux; use Linux.

It's that simple. It won't be easy, but it will be worth it. There are no
silver bullets. For anything.

------
jpdus
404 not found..!?

------
maeon3
a mirror, a mirror, my republic for a mirror!

