Linux Boot Camp

Linux and Open Source Software - a breath of fresh air in an otherwise fiercely-competitive, choose your sides and take no prisoners computer industry - technologies that increase your choices, dramatically lower your costs of computing and integrate with your existing networks. It's in your future and the future is now.

This course is the ideal way to get up to speed on Linux and Open Source Software. You'll learn why Linux is the fastest growing server platform and why popular Open Source Software, such as Apache and BIND, is deployed more often than commercial software.

Course format

This course maximizes the amount of information you learn in only two days. Your instructor will use a live Linux-based network throughout the entire course to show you Linux features. You're welcome to ask questions and the instructor's answer will often include showing you how to do things on a live system. You'll receive a comprehensive course workbook that you'll also use after the course when you continue to learn Linux on your own time and at your own pace.

Materials

You'll receive a course workbook at the class. Additional materials are available from this Web site once you sign up for the course. Click here after you've signed up for the course.

Who should attend?

This course is for anyone who needs to get up to speed on Open Source software generally and Linux specifically.

You DO NOT need prior experience with Linux or Unix.
You DO NOT need to be a programmer or have programming skills to attend. Most people who have attended the course do not have these skills. However, you will be exposed to languages that are popular in the Linux/Unix world such as shell scripting, Perl, and C.
You DO need to have some experience using some computer operating system, such as Microsoft Windows, Macintosh, rtc. and have a basic understanding of files and directories (or folders).
You SHOULD attend if you're looking to improve your computer system performance, reliability and security while dramatically reducing costs.

What People Are Saying

"The most important two days of my career." Mark Weber

"I have never attended a more comprehensive and intuitive class ever. The amount I learned in only two days seems to defy logic" Brian Cameron

"A lot of important information in a small amount of time for a small price." Dennis Bateman

"The course is less costly and more informative than most others I have attended. Gary Voit

"Great class, very knowledgable and professional instructors. No fluff, time well spent. Thanks." Jye Patton

"Perfect course to get your foot in the door."

"The presenter was extremely knowledgable and easy to listen to." Scott Stiers

"Great overview of a highly configurable OS. Thanks!" Joe Sperdut

"A great course for the beginner to intermediate Linux user." Jerry Black

"Everything you need to install, configure & run Linux and associated server processes and actually understand what you are doing." Patrick Rhodes

"Overall a great value." Jorge Henriguez

"A lot of bang for the buck." Kevin Padula

"Great insight." Tim Price

"Excellent course for getting up to speed on Linux"

"Highly recommended." Steve Whayne

Course Outline

Introducing Linux: Major uses of Linux among businesses/individuals; The Kernel; Distributions; Commercial - Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, etc.; Non-commercial - Debian, Slackware, Knoppix, etc.; Custom systems; The X Window System and the GNU components; Linux and OSS version numbers
Core Features of Linux: Stable, secure, fast, Internet-ready; Multiuser, multitasking kernel; Virtual memory and kernel modules; Hardware support: storage, video, etc.; X Window System; Connectivity: TCP/IP, UDP/IP, IPX, PPP, etc.; Integration with Windows, NetWare, UNIX, Mac; ALL Internet-related protocols are supported; Full UNIX command set; Developer tools: compilers, scripting languages, etc.; Office applications; StarOffice, Open Office, KOffice; Accessing Office97 files - Word, Excel, etc.; Oracle8 and other SQL databases
Installing Linux: Hardware requirements; Preparing a hard disk; Installing from a CDROM drive; Using the fdisk tool; Choose the features and packages to install; Setting up initial user accounts; Configuring the graphical X Window System; Boot loaders; Grub and LILO; booting numerous operating systems; disk geometry limitations; EDD support in modern BIOS
The Linux file system: IDE and SCSI drives; Primary & extended disk partitions; Where are the drive letters?; Mount points concepts; The ext2/ext3 file systems; no fragmentation concerns; mount options - ro, nosuid, noexec, etc.; Mirroring, striping, and RAID; Mounting diskettes, CD-ROMs, USB memory drives, tape drives, etc.; Network File System (NFS); Journaling File Systems (ReiserFS, ext3, xfs)
X - the Linux GUI: X servers, window managers, and desktops; XFree86 versus commercial accelerated X servers; Xi Graphics Accelerated-X; KDE and GNOME desktops; Running X applications remotely; Using Linux as an X terminal; The VNC alternative
Installing applications: Installing from CDROM; Installing from source tarballs; Installing from packages - RPMs & DEBs
Configuring Linux: Initial run-level; Automounting filesystems; Choosing services to start; Checking network connectivity; Adding users and groups; Managing basic security; File system permissions and attributes; Implementing shadow passwords; Linux security compared to NetWare and NT; The syslog logging facility; facilities and priorities; logging to local and remote files; logging to consoles and named pipes
Configuring Networking: Setting IP addresses, subnet masks, gateways, etc..; Setting up the DNS resolver
Network Applications Overview: Remote file systems - NFS; SAMBA File and Print Server; Running Windows and Linux apps concurrently; Apache Web Server; Email Servers; Sendmail; qmail, Exim and Postfix; FTP Servers; WuFTP, NcFTP, etc.