Beginning Adventures with CentOS

I'm a full time freelance consultant, and as such I deal with lots of development teams with varying skill sets. One recurring event I've run into is, senior developers that (for whatever reason) don't want to post their questions on a forum or email list. I suspect its because of... a) laziness (but I don't wanna open another window!) b) stubbornness (I'll fix it myself if it's the last thing i do!) or c) I don't want people "out there" to see me asking such a basic question on the internet, they'll think I don't know anything...which really is ridiculous. We were ALL junior developers at one point. If you search the BACFUG archives you'll find me asking all kinds of introductory questions. Ask any of the C++ programmers I worked with at my first job and you'll hear several of them say "yeah Nolan had about 100 questions about how pointers and linked lists worked". The same is true of any other senior developers. Besides, nobody knows EVERYthing. Having been guilty of all 3 myself, I can definitely relate. So in the interest of a) blogging more (one of my resolutions for 2012), and b) eating my own dog food, I'll just come out and say it: I'm not a Linux guy. As of a year ago, my Linux experience was about like so: * I had installed Ubuntu on a desktop at home, to try and wane myself off Windows, and learn something new. It didn't really work -- I still use that Windows box, though mostly for iTunes and gaming. But I have started using the Ubuntu machine as my "main internet surfing" computer. * I can FTP and Telnet from a Linux terminal and get what I need. * I took an "Intro to Unix" class in college where we went over vi, bash and korn shell, cron jobs, and a few other odds and ends, some of which I've had to revisit since then, but only sporadically. * Though I'm quite comfortable with a DOS command line, I've never had to do THAT much at a Linux command prompt. ...there are probably other points I could add to that list, but basically you get the idea. I'm the first to describe my Linux skills as "just enough to get myself in trouble". :) Over the last 18 months, I've been thrown onto several CentOS projects for clients. And while I'm definitely learning more "Linux stuff", I'd still put myself in that "knows just enough to get in trouble" category. But if I'm in that category, there are probably other people that feel the same way. So why not blog about it?! Starting today, I'm going to blog my "beginning adventures with CentOS". If you're a mid to senior level Linux guy, these will all bore you to tears. If you're like me, and still trying to make Linux stuff "click", then maybe you'll find these posts of interest. And away we go.... -nolan