16Apr2008
Filed under: Linux:General, Linux:Howto
Author: Rami Taibah
 Switching
to Linux can be very daunting, most seasoned Linux users experienced
that first hand. After all, at some point they were also “noobs”.
However, the Linux community has excelled in making the switch for
beginners as easy as possible by providing guides, howtos, tweaks, and
general advocacy articles. When I first made the switch 3 years ago, I
found the community welcoming me with open hands on forums, IRC
channels, and E-mail, I was surprised how helpful these penguins were!
For this, I feel obliged to give back
to the community that has always been there for me. To pass down the
torch to newer Linux generations. Over here I compiled a list of 7
habits that I wish someone told me when I started out. I believe that
getting into these habits will make the Linux experience more secure,
convenient, educational, and ultimately more enjoyable.
1-Never Login Using ‘root’ GUI
If there was one habit that
one should strictly abide by, it’s probably this one. Most of us come
from a Windows background, and we have the notion that more power is
better, so we login using our administrator accounts. Well let me tell
you my friend, that this is a major reason that Windows is plagued with
viruses and insecurities, half the world is currently running ‘root’ accounts!
 With great power comes great responsibility, and with ‘root’ powers you should be aware of the consequences of EVERYTHING you’re doing, and even then, mistakes happen.
I remember my beginnings with SUSE Linux, there were lot of
administrative tasks I needed to do but had no idea how to go about
them without the GUI, so I so innocently log out and login onto the ‘root‘ GUI. The default wallpaper of the ‘root‘
GUI on SUSE were lit fuse bombs tiled beside each other. Back then, the
symbolism totally flew over my head, coming from a Windows background,
I wasn’t really doing anything wrong.
But what are the dangers of logging in as root?
- Well imagine you’re on the trapeze without a safety net,
frightening isn’t it? Well that’s effectively what you are doing when
you login as root, you can inadvertently hose your whole system
- You are at the risk of running malware. Any program that is started under root mode will automatically be given root privileges
- If there is a common security hole that hasn’t been patched yet, you could be totally “pwned”
- It’s common Unix convention, never run anything in root
mode unless absolutely necessary. If a non-admin program asks for root
access, you should be suspicious
Generally, instead of logging onto your root GUI, use any of the following techniques:
- Use “sudo” or “su” , and kill the session when your done
- If you don’t know how to do it in the command line, use “gksu” or “kdesu”. For example, press alt+f2 and type “gksu nautilus“. Close the app as soon as you finish
2-Properly Name Your Files
In a Linux environment, you can name
your files whatever you want except for, 1) the forward slash “/” which
is reserved for the root directory, and 2) a null character. Anything
else is technically acceptable, however there are some best practices
that you should abide by in order to avoid any future complications:
- As a rule of thumb, only use alphanumeric characters, hyphens, periods, and underscores
- Avoid special symbols like dollar signs, brackets, and
percentages. These symbols have special meanings to the shell, and
could cause conflicts
- Avoid using spaces, handling files with spaces in the
terminal is kind of awkward. Replace spaces with either hyphens or
underscores
I personally have grown into this habit, I find myself following these guidelines even in a Windows or Mac environment.
3-Place /home on a Different Partition
Doing this gives you extreme
flexibility, a kind that you never imagined before. Having /home in a
separate partition enables you to reinstall your system or even change
your whole distro without losing your data and personal settings. Just
keep the “/home” partition intact and reinstall whatever you want on your “/”.
Now you can try out distros as much as you want, without worrying about
your data and personal settings, they go with you on the go ;).
If you weren’t lucky enough to know this before installing your system, then do not despair! Carthik from Ubuntu Blog takes you in a step-by-step guide titled “Move /home to it’s own partition“
4-Proper Crash Management
 Linux
is very robust and stable, however every system can come down to it’s
knees every once in a while. Before you head to CTRL-ALT-DEL, the
restart button, or the plug, you should know how to properly handle any
crash. As opposed to another un-named operating system, you should be
able to easily recover your system without actually restarting! I
personally go through different levels, if one doesn’t work I elevate
it to next step:
- I have the “force quit” applet on my taskbar, if any app
starts to act up just click on the “force quit” icon and then kill the
app
- If that doesn’t work, draw up a terminal and type “ps -A” , and take note of the Process ID (PID) of the culprit app, then kill it. “kill PID”
- Use the “killall” command, for example, “killall firefox-bin”
- If your whole GUI is frozen, and drawing up a terminal is
impossible, then press CTRL-ALT-F1, this will take you to another
terminal, and virtually a whole new session. From there kill the
culprit app using step 2 and 3.
- If that doesn’t work, you might want to restart your GUI
using the CTRL-ALT-Backspace combo. Beware, that this will kill all
your GUI apps currently running
- Invoke CTRL-ALT-F1 and do CTRL+ALT+DEL from here. This
will not instantly reset your system, merely perform a standard reboot,
it’s safe. (Assuming you want to restart and CTLR-ALT-F1 works)
- Finally if nothing works, don’t rush to the hard reset button, try to Raise a Skinny Elephant
5-Play The Field
You were probably recruited to your
current distro by a friend, it suited you, and stuck with it. That’s
great, but there is probably something better for you out there. Why
not harness the flexibility and richness of Linux and Open Source?
Don’t be afraid to experiment around with different distros, apps,
window managers, and desktops. Experiment until you find the best fit.
Think of it this way, if you are currently living in the best place on
earth for you, traveling around the world wouldn’t really harm right?
In fact you might find a better place to live in, but if you didn’t,
the time you spent traveling would not have gone to waste, you would
have learned a lot about other countries, other people and traditions,
different ways of thinking, and ultimately had fun!
Every
new thing you try out will contribute to your incremental learning, in
a year’s time you will have a good grasp on Linux and the Open Source
world. I personally tried out at least 10 distros, 4 desktops, and 5
window managers. My recent article Etymology of A Distro
got me interested in a couple more distros such as Zenwalk, Foresight,
and Sabayon. Play the field, my friend, it will do you good.
But before you proceed, pay heed to these few hints:
- Set up your perfect system that you feel comfortable
with, you need a workable system 24/7 right? Then test around using one
of the below points
- Harness the power of virtualization! Install Vmware or Virtualbox. Use them to test out the distros
- Alternatively, if you are not big on virtualization, you
can set up a separate partition to test new distros. A partition that
you couldn’t care less about
- Ultimately, you can have a main PC and a test one. Wreak havoc on the test one
6-Nurture Your CLI Adoption
Now I am not going to advocate learning the command line, there are numerous articles that emphasise on it’s importance.
What I am assuming here is that you already know it’s importance, and
have a rudimentary understanding on how to do some simple
administrative tasks. You are already hacking away, tweaking and
configuring, following the different guides and howtos scattered all
over the tubes, but don’t just copy and paste!! Meaning, instead of
just headlessly executing commands some random guy half way across the
world told you to execute, try to understand what every command does.
Why did the guide ask you to do this, as opposed to something else?
Understand the rationale of the steps you are asked to do. These
commands are highly relevant to you, and will help you gain a better
understanding than any 101 guide.
After a while you will notice that you have amassed a good deal of CLI lore.
At
the end of the day it’s just a pseudo-language! Every command is
probably just an acronym of something, or a cut down version of a real
word. You expect your dog to understand “Spike fetch ball” so why don’t
you expect to understand “sudo mv /file1 /file2″?
7-Always Be Ready to Unleash The Power Within
 Personally,
I had numerous occasions when a friend asked me to do something on
his/her computer, but found myself crippled because of his/her choice
of OS. At other times I wanted to do something urgently but the only
computer had another crippled OS. Spare yourself the agony, have Linux
with you all the time, whether it’s on a USB pendrive, a live CD, or even a live CD business card ! There are dozens of good Linuces out there that are perfect for on-the-go computing. Knoppix, DSL, and Puppy Linux are just a few examples.
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