Changes

The talk progressed into textbooks and resource material. Although the textbook used is totally dependent on the type of class, Mike recommends choosing a book that covers the historical, philosophical and technical aspects of using Linux. While [http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_3/raymond/ “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”] can offer a student insight into the theory of Linux it doesn’t go into enough of the practical details. His weapon of choice was [http://www.amazon.com/How-Linux-Works-Brian-Ward/dp/1593270356 “How Linux Works”] by Brian Ward (which I promptly ordered and am now diving into along with the new release of [http://releases.ubuntu.com/7.10/ Ubuntu]) and he found it to be quite adept at covering a bit of history and a lot of the inner workings of Linux. The importance is placed on a student learning how to figure out things in the Linux environment because they understand why it does what it does. Mike then holds up the book “The complete guide to Linux system administration” and reads from the back – it sounds good but when you start to read the software requirements? Windows! You can’t even use the software included with the book on a Linux distribution.

Mike then goes over a list of topics that can be covered in an introductory course. There is not a lot of time in a semester and so he chooses to spend more time with desktop integration because he finds that getting students to use Linux for their needs in playing mp3s and other daily tasks can really make adoption and learning interest much higher. Topics in a course might include the history, open vs. closed, super user vs. regular user, directory structure, boot process, installation, cli vs. gui, user admin, ssh, cron, sotware admin, compiling kernel, backups, adding hardware – and many more options to one’s liking.