Windows admins should learn about Linux
Scott Lowe
Published: 08 May 2002 16:08 BST
1. X marks the spot
First, Linux is capable of being administered via either an X windows system such as Gnome or KDE or via the command-line interface, which is what I prefer for most administration tasks. For Windows administrators new to Linux, often the choice is one of the graphical interfaces. I prefer KDE over Gnome because of KDE's tighter component integration and ease of use. In addition, KDE is capable of a more Windows-like look and feel, which will help Windows folks make the transition. While I will be the first to admit that I'm not a master Linux system administrator, having to change the screen resolution via text files for Gnome is an annoyance to me. For that and other reasons, I have chosen to use KDE for my systems.
While all of your end-user Linux desktops will mostly likely need a graphical environment, for some of my systems, I only run it when I need to. For example, when installing a Web server, I generally start and run Apache from the command line and then log out. This allows the system to use the resources that would normally be used by the X services to serve up more Web pages.
2.To vi or not to vi
Regardless of the graphical interface you chose, at some point you will have to use the command line; there is no way to avoid it in Linux. While the vi utility is not the only choice, it is ubiquitous among the UNIX variants and available on every Linux distribution that I am aware of. If you are used to Notepad or Edit under Windows, you'll find that there is a learning curve associated with vi, because it doesn't work like the editors that you are familiar with. However, it is extremely powerful.
Instead of putting the user into an edit mode where he or she starts typing upon loading the file to be modified, vi starts out with the user being placed into command mode. In command mode, vi does nothing but take commands, such as 'i' to insert a new line at the current insertion point of the file or 'w!' to forcefully save the current file. It's not very intuitive.
And the vi utility has a cult following. The Vi Lovers Home Page offers a huge amount of information about this utility. You can also check out Mike Hayes' articles, "Use our VI cheat sheets to edit text more effectively in UNIX," and "UNIX command line editing made easy," for more vi tips and tricks.
In addition to vi, there are a number of other popular editors available for Linux including Pico and Emacs. Available on many Linux distributions, Pico is an excellent editor for quickly editing configuration files and is very easy to learn. It's my editor of choice as it is very intuitive. Emacs is another very popular editor available for Linux. It includes online documentation, a number of extensions, and support for many languages.
3. Storing files
Between Windows and Linux, there are some variations to get used to when using files in Linux. First, filenames are case-sensitive in Linux. This means that a file named "readme" is different than a file named "README". This is not the case in Windows. In addition, Linux uses a slash (/) character to traverse directories, while Windows uses the backslash (\). For example, the hosts file in Windows NT/2000/XP is located in C:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc, while in Linux is resides in /etc. Note the lack of a drive letter in the second path. Linux doesn't work on the concept of drives; instead it uses the concept of partitions. For my test lab, I have only one partition named /. However, a common configuration option is to place users' home directories in their own partition named /home.
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