Linux tips?

Question

I'm trying a bit hard to learn the Linux OS, anyway I'm just starting to learn the bash shell commands, and moving on. I actually got NDISwrapper to work on my system (hehe, it took a while, BUT I did get it). Anyway I just wanted to know, since I am planning to switching to Linux as my main OS, or even my only. If I could get some tips from some gurus.

My Linux Distro is SuSe 10.1.

Answer 1

I'm no guru, but here's my advice:

One, be sure to create an ordinary user account for day-to-day use. Use 'su' and 'sudo' only when necessary. Do not use root frivolously.

Two, never use an unfamilair command without first reading its man page, or at least running 'whatis '.

Three, put your /home on a separate partition or disk. This makes life ever-so-much easier if you ever have to reinstall or switch distros as you won't have to backup your personal files; just remount /home when you're done. You may consider doing the same for /usr/local, but at a minimum /home should be detachable.

And four, when compiling a new kernel, for goodness sake DO NOT delete the old kernel until you're positive the new kernel will work. Make two entries in your bootloader (grub or lilo): a Linux-old and a Linux-new. This way, if the first time you boot the new kernel it should crash, your can reboot with the old kernel to fix the problem.