Author's Notes

Hello and welcome to the Beginner's Guide to Linux. I am the author, Michael Jordan. I am also the webmaster of Linux Online. As was mentioned on the introduction page, I welcome comments, suggestions and well-intentioned criticism. I'd ask you to take a look at what's below before sending off an email about anything to do with the course. You may have found your question answered below and will save us both some typing. (or your wondering why you didn't get a response).

History of the course and rationale

In the spring of 2000, Michael McLagan, owner and General Manager of this website, brought up the idea of doing various Linux courses of different levels to be offered free of charge to the public. Initially, this task was to be handled by one of the web developers. Unfortunately, this person had to be let go. The task then fell to me.

I earned a B.A. in history and teaching certification in 1987 and have been a practicing classroom teacher since then. I have written on-line instructional materials for teaching English as a foreign language as well, so when I got the nod to develop the course, I was swimming in familiar waters.

Our deadline to get the course published was the Linux World Expo of August 2000 in San Francisco. Some 'backend' Perl scripts were put into place about a month before this event to handle both the authoring of the course and the public's access to the material. The developer of the scripts also left Linux Online and the system proved too difficult to work with. Without the developer here anymore, we decided to switch over to basic HTML format. By early 2001, access to the first part of the course was provided by Perl scripts while the remaining part was being offered in static HTML files.

In the fall of 2002, we decided to end this hybrid system and convert everything to the HTML format exclusively. This was completed in January 2003. I also took advantage of the format change to totally re-write some sections and to bring the course up-to-date in general.

Plans for the Future

The course is now being offered from static HTML, but as the content is what matters, we can adapt the text in these files to a future 'dynamic' content management system. This system will make navigation easier and will let us also offer tests and quizzes. Grades on these will be entered into registered users' accounts. Once the system is in place, we can then offer certificates to those who have followed the course.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you have a link to download the course material as one document?

No, we don't at this time.

Why don't you offer the whole course as a PDF file?

Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, it was never planned. The course was written as many separate documents and has never been pieced together as one complete document. This is because we planned and are planning to offer online tests and quizzes to accompany the course. So there's a logical progression when you do it online that would be broken if we offered a PDF of the whole thing. There is also a second reason that is purely economic. We're able to offer the course free of charge because the little advertising we run on the site pays for not only this course, but development of others. And this means offering it in the format it's in. It's still free of charge, - just not as comfortable as downloading a PDF, but we make no apologies.

There are typos in the course. Don't you run a spell checker.

Yes, I ran it through a spell checker, so you'd be hard pressed to find what I call "real" spelling errors. You may find things like this:

... when they sell there products (instead of their products)

Wasn't the course 'proof-read'?

Yes, it was - by me alone. It's really not a good idea for an author to proof-read his/her own work and it shows in my case. I do apologize. At the time, though, several of our staff were not native English speakers and those developers that were didn't have time to be proof-reading my pages. I think there is an acceptable level of errors - about the same that can be found in any published work.

Can I send you mail about the errors?

Yes, and I appreciate it. I must say that you are likely to get a glowing 'thank you' email in return if you preface your remarks with some form of comment about the quality of the course, what you've gotten out of it or any other commentary. Comments may be flattering or flaming so I don't want to give the impression that it's an ego thing. What I do have is a pet peeve for those who send mail with just the error with no comments. Yes, those people help improve the course, but it comes off to me as rude and I dare say, anal retentive. I will of course, fix the error, but those types of mails generally don't get a response.

Is this course GPL'd

This is a question that's been asked a few times. That I know of, documentation such as this would fall under the GNU Free Documentation License and not the GPL (General Public License) which is for software mainly. The answer is that the course is not GPL or under the GNU FDL. It is copyrighted in the 'classic' sense and the owner is Linux Online Inc. This question eventually leads to the next one...

Can I redistribute this course?

Not without permission. We have granted permission to Linux user groups and other non-profit groups to use it for training purposes. Even when doing this, we ask for proper attribution.

Enjoy!

Our aim is for you to have fun and learn a little something about Linux! You can contact the author directly at Michael.Jordan@Linux.org