[conspire] Debian/Ubuntu for a Red Hat user

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Breen Mullins (bpm at sdf.org):

> Hi all, and Happy New Year.
> 
> I've started the new year with a new laptop - based on recommendations
> here I picked up one from zareason that came with Ubuntu (10.10)
> preloaded.
> 
> So I need to start learning The Debian Way. I could (and will) spend
> some time with Google, but if anyone has a favored document or website
> with some pointers for the conversion, I'd love to get a pointer.

I've heard this one highly praised in exactly the areas you appear to
have in mind.

_The Debian System: Concepts and Techniques_, by Martin F. Krafft
Open Source Press ISBN 3-937514-07-4 (central Europe only)
No Starch Press ISBN 1-593270-69-0 (available worldwide)
http://debiansystem.info/
Published in 2005.

Unfortunately, I've not gotten off my derriere and acquired a copy.

Personally, I started grappling with grasping The Debian Way some years
ago, but did it the hard way.  At the time, given that books like
Krafft's didn't exist (and the two or three books I saw about Debian 
seemed not very useful), I really probably should have mostly dug into
the Debian New Maintainer's Guide,
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/, which is useful for
'getting' the system design even if you have no intention of being a
package maintainer -- and of course the distro's Installation Guide and
FAQ.

http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/

To be honest, I have not yet _properly_ read any of the three, not even
now.  It's easy, when you tend to approach Linux matters in a tactical,
learn-on-the-fly fashion to just never allocate the time.  I really
should.

Over my first year or so using Debian, I kept a semi-organised set of
'tips' in ASCII format.  You can see it here, painfully outdated but
possibly still useful:  http://linuxmafia.com/debian/tips  That's where
I tended to jot down a note every time I found myself saying 'Wow, the
/etc/alternatives tree and the /usr/sbin/update-* utilities are really
cool.  Why didn't I notice those before?'

More things of interest (and more recent) might be findable via my
knowledgebase:  http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Debian/

For lots of really nice 'Aha!' insights, but in no particular order, I
really like Debian Administration:
http://www.debian-administration.org/

But of course Ubuntu has its own set of differences, with which you'll
also need to grapple.