On 8/10/20 5:50 PM, Mikhail Ramendik wrote:

Hello,

I have a son age 15 who really needs to learn how to understand and administer Linux. The machine he uses runs OpenSUSE (currently Leap 15.1).

I know stuff but I am not sure I'm a good teacher, so I tried to find a tutorial. However, while I saw a few, I don't see any that would use OpenSUSE for examples. Of course the concepts are similar everywhere but I'd rather have him able to follow.

Could anyone please recommend good tutorials for OpenSUSE? English language. Text or video is fine.

Not a tutorial, but an excellent reference book: "Linux in a Nutshell" by Ellen Siever, Stephen Figgins, Robert Love, and Arnold Robbins, published in paperback by O'Reilly. I have the 6th edition, which, as far as I know,  is the latest and last. My copy says "$49.99" but I think I paid less for it some 5 or more years ago. It is tattered and torn, but still the go-to manual for most Linux command questions.

If someone finds a good tutorial, I'd like to hear, but nowadays each distro seems to have a bunch of proprietary algorithms for doing things like updating the system, installing software, etc. Altho I am using OpenSUSE, Ubuntu used to have some excellent tutorial stuff on line. Don't know if they still do. --doug

On 8/10/20 11:50 PM, Mikhail Ramendik wrote:

Hello,

I have a son age 15 who really needs to learn how to understand and administer Linux. The machine he uses runs OpenSUSE (currently Leap 15.1).

I know stuff but I am not sure I'm a good teacher, so I tried to find a tutorial. However, while I saw a few, I don't see any that would use OpenSUSE for examples. Of course the concepts are similar everywhere but I'd rather have him able to follow.

Could anyone please recommend good tutorials for OpenSUSE? English language. Text or video is fine.

There are Getting Started with Linux magazines. The latest edition for Leap 15.2 came out https://www.linux-magazine.com/Resources/Special-Editions/39-Getting-Started...

I also have some issues from Leap 15.1. I could send you a copy. v/r Doug

On 8/10/20 4:50 PM, Mikhail Ramendik wrote:

Hello,

I have a son age 15 who really needs to learn how to understand and administer Linux. The machine he uses runs OpenSUSE (currently Leap 15.1).

I know stuff but I am not sure I'm a good teacher, so I tried to find a tutorial. However, while I saw a few, I don't see any that would use OpenSUSE for examples. Of course the concepts are similar everywhere but I'd rather have him able to follow.

Could anyone please recommend good tutorials for OpenSUSE? English language. Text or video is fine.

Mikhail,

No time like the present to get him started. It is hard to recommend any one good tutorial because so much depends on what your son wants to do with the machine. Does he want to set up his own web-server, e-mail, data base? Does he want to have it function as a file-server for the other windows machines in the house to make backups simpler? Does he want to set it up as a development platform for C/C++, Java, etc... One machine really can do it ALL -- very easily.

Why it is difficult is there is no one resource I have found that (1) is current, and (2) covers it all. The way things are usually learned is either your son has a goal for what he wants to make the machine do that it doesn't do now -- so he needs a tutorial for that one aspect of Linux use, OR something breaks and he has an immediate need for "How do I fix this...?"

The answer is largely the same in both cases. There are many wonderful tutorials out there for just about anything anyone would want to do on a Linux box. Just search "Linux (insert what you want to do here)" and you will find dozens to choose from.

The next great resource are mailing lists like this one and dedicated help sites like the openSuSE wiki that holds good information or the the StackExchange sites like [Super User](http://superuser.com/) or [Unix & Linux](http://unix.stackexchange.com/) (just register, it's free, and just read the "How to ask a question" page first before asking your first question. You will find many people ready to help. That's kind of the way open-source communities work.

For the basics of working with a Linux system, just open an xterm (command line terminal) and find a basic shell commands howto like https://linuxize.com/post/basic-linux-commands/ (just picked at random). The if you find yourself needing to manipulate text in creative ways, look into grep, sed, and awk (cryptic at first, but worth their weight in gold) By far awk is the most capable and truly is the Swiss-Army-Knife of text processing. There are hundreds of small utilities like cat, tac, shuffle, paste, find, tr, sort, uniq, etc... that are there to be used. (the Linux way was to create small applications that do one thing only, but do it very well.

There are also world-class major applications that do just about anything you would buy software on windows to do. Gimp is arguably the best bitmap graphics package ever made, darktable more tailored for photographs, inkscape is arguably the best vector-graphics application, Audacity - a very capable audio editor, LibreOffice one of the best MS Office replacements going, Cinelerra, professional grade video editor that has been used by a number of Hollywood films, Octave a great Matlab type mathematics tool (matrix handling, symbolic differentiation, etc.., gcc (the GNU Compiler Collection) is one of the best Ada,C,C++,FORTRAN,Java compilers ever. The list just goes on and on... Which is why it is hard to recommend one book or tutorial.

If you know of a specific goal your son has in mind, let us know and we are more than happy to locate a good tutorial or two to get him going. (like anything on the internet -- the quality of tutorials does vary...) You and your son have made a good choice to look further into Linux -- the sky is the limit and openSUSE is a fine distribution to help him get there.