LJ, Fount of All Knowledge, I Ask Thee

[neadods]

Three questions:

1) I need to learn LINUX in a hurry. Any good books/online classes/websites to recommend?

2) I also need to learn LaTeX in a hurry. Any good books/online classes/websites/freeware downloads for PC you can recommend?

and, now for something completely different:

3) With my parents and I both scaling back on the amount of stuff in our houses, Christmas is going to be more than just "Unwrap presents. Eat." Any suggestions for other things to do on the day?

Comments

[evil_plotbunny]

I'm mostly self taught, but when I've needed a book, I usually go for anything published by O'Reilly. I haven't done much with LaTeX, but there should be good tutorials out there.

If you need someone to bounce questions off of, I've been using Linux for over 12 years.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Right now I need to get up to speed on the most basic commands ASAP. It's no good to know that I can "man" without knowing what's in the manual to find.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

1. An insanely useful Linux command is "apropos". It will search descriptive text about the various commands on the system and show you all the commands that match. So, for example, you can type "apropos search" and get a list of all commands related to search. You can then use man to get more detail on the commands.

There's a handy Linux cheat-sheet somewhere out there on the 'net that I've pointed coworkers at when they need to get up to speed on the basics fast. I can't seem to lay my hands on the link right now, but I'll see if I can find it.

3. If the weather's nice at Christmas, we all go for a walk together. If the weather's not nice, we watch a movie, or play Trivial Pursuit or another board game.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

[evil_plotbunny]

This might help.

I do recommend the O'Reilly "in a Nutshell" books for reference. Lovely if you've got a rough idea of what command you need and just need the syntax.