Im new to Unix. Does Ubuntu linux website provide free tutorials?

[nit]

I'm new to linux and I think its best to start off with ubuntu.
I'm currently running ubuntu as a virtial machine in VMware and want to learn more useful stuff and how to write programmes in linux.

Where can I learn?

[Floyd U]

linix is ot unix butsfar as iknow it dosent i had to my mate whohal lvl 8 ict qualifications to shiwmehow to work it but once u get yur head round it is easy

[xenobyte72]

Just to clarify, Linux is a type of Unix, different enough to be distinguished from the main unix flavours and as you are probably aware it has many flavours of its own.

There are many free tutorials for linux on the internet, type "linux tutorial" into a search engine for a long list of resources.

I believe that the best way to learn your way around an operating system is to dive in and try to tackle some basic tasks with it. Like setting up a machine dedicated to a particular job. If you wanted a machine to be a dedicated fileserver or firewall, you would be better off using a very basic version of linux, like puppy linux, as they don't hog resources that something more user friendly like ubuntu would. If you wanted something really challenging, try setting up a machine with no gui (graphical user interface) and configure it from the command prompt.

Writing programmes in any language will take a long time, start with basic scripts; they don't seem like much but they can handle the most tedious tasks.

[Answers Gerbil]

Learn firstly that linux is not unix.
There are many books on linux, try your local bookshop. Programs are typically written in C++, or sometimes something like Python, you may wish to take a course or buy a book on that too.

[jplatt39]

xenobyte72's answer is excellent. I just gave it a thumbs up.

There is a LOT of documentation out there for Ubuntu. Some of the free documentation Ubuntu provides can be found at:

https://help.ubuntu.com/

You can get questions answered any number of other ways such as tech forums and chats: Information here:

http://www.ubuntu.com/support/communitysupport

And, actually, it's a foundation but it's also a business. So you can pay them for support.

Out of the box Ubuntu is a lousy development environment. It's all about providing a cheap, high quality user experience. Install build-essential, and if necessary g++ and gfortran.

Of course I'm over fifty, so I have to praise books. Web sites and chats are fine but one thing people don't seem to get is they are best suited for certain types of knowledge. For developing in a UNIX environment, even old books are great: principles are more important than specific packages, and a book will discuss shell scripts, recompiling the kernel and/or programming in X in relationship to each other, which is a perspective you don't always get on line.

Just like the perspective that Ubuntu's shortcomings out of the box are fixable -- of course Debian is great to learn programming on out of the box -- Knoppix as well as Ubuntu is based on it. But Canonical and the Ubuntu Foundation spend money on security fixes and things to make it a safe environment if you are not up to speed on that sort of thing. Why throw it away for the chance to burn out your own machine? It takes about five minutes to download the right tools onto Ubuntu too.

So get a book. Something copyright after 1990 is better but in this case NOT essential. There are newer packages but you don't need to worry about them. This is all for basic principles, perspectives, and to give you the background to explore specific topics on line. Obviously a library should have one.