Ubuntu Live CD Experiences

Not long ago I burned a Debian image file on CD. If I recall correctly, at that time I downloaded the image file in binary mode. So initially I tried downloading the Ubuntu file in binary mode. This did not seem to go well. The file was downloading very slowly, and it occurred to me the generally user-friendly instructions did not prompt me switch to binary mode. So I cancelled that process, followed the instructions downloading the file in text mode and all went well. At first the Ubuntu Desktop CD would not boot. So I went into the BIOS and changed the boot order, and that did the trick.

Initially I went through the tutorials in the order they were presented. The CBT videos were a good introduction to the Linux file systems, especially because I could see demonstrations of the commands. The sections of Learning the Shell which list the contents of the Linux directories was useful as a reference to which I frequently returned. I frequently referred to the 15 commands in An Introduction to the Linux Command Line Interface. But I would include the halt command, since I needed it properly shut down the virtual server. Conveniently, being a virtual server, it was running within Windows, so I was able exit the Linux window to look up the halt command.

Generally the topics covered made sense to me. I expect it will be a process of increasing familiarity with them. Typical directories in a Linux file system and basic commands were introduced. I expect I will be referring back to the Learning the Shell tutorial pages about the various directories until I gain a greater familiarity. There are other details I need to review in the not-to-distant future, such as octal numbers for assigning permissions, details of find and grep This should be just a matter of consulting the man pages. Learning the Vi editor looks like it is going to be somewhat of a project. Vi is on the virtual server, so I can practice using Vi while still running Windows. Vi Help is not on the Ubuntu CDs. But it is on the Web at http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/help.html#help.txt.