Top 10 List of Week 1
Disclaimer: This list is of no particular ordering, neither of importance nor chronological. It is written in the order in which I remembered them as I was writing this.
- InstallGentoo Wiki
InstallGentoo Wiki is a wiki page on various technology-related topics, though more often than not related very specifically to GNU/Linux. It’s a solid reference for various pastebins and resources for posts and general threads made on /g/, the parent image board of which, 4chan, I grew up with and thus trust quite well on a subject such as this. The reason I included this first and not /g/ itself is because /g/ itself isn’t actually that informative and can be quite threatening to people who simply wish to find information on how to install Linux for the first time on the account of its occasional racism (see 1) as well as autogynephilia, which I will not include nor discuss.
- Mental Outlaw
Mental Outlaw is a YouTube channel focusing on topics of GNU/Linux covering introductory material for said topic as well as other miscellaneous subjects such as torrenting and privacy, including reviews of Linux distributions and occasionally tutorials on cooking good steaks. His channel also fairly popular among posters of /g/, which is why I’ve included him on this list.
- Luke Smith
Luke Smith is another YouTube channel that also focuses on topics around GNU/Linux and is as well fairly popular among posters of /g/, but for a somewhat different reason. Luke’s videos in comparison to Mental Outlaw’s are a step above in terms of the level of opinion that goes into them; in particular, Luke tends to have much more preconceived opinions when introducing his subscribers to subjects that he had been dealing with (in particular this can be seen in his videos concerning the FISH shell and groff, wherein he promotes both over other more mainstream options such as bash/zsh and Latex, respectively). As such Luke’s popularity is not really derived from how educational he is, but from how opinionated he is, which mirrors the average /g/ poster – and, to some extent, the average GNU/Linux user.
- The Gentoomen Library
The Gentoomen Library is a library of around 30 gigabytes of book titles that concern approximately everything one could ever need on computers, compiled by the posters of /g/. This also means that it includes a sizeable wealth of material that concerns almost every topic that one may touch on in the adventures of learning Operating Systems, the whole nine yards! Even if you don’t like to read, the experience of simply sifting through these folders and just looking at how much information is implied to be stored by the titles alone is an enchantingly religious experience, in my humble opinion. The Gentoomen themselves are also still, allegedly, online here.
- Bisqwit
Bisqwit is another generally programming-related channel that, in contrast with every other channel listed so far, isn’t actually centered around GNU/Linux. Bisqwit, the Finnish-Israeli man behind the channel, is moreso interested in exploring C++, emulation, game design, and various other low-level programming topics, particularly parallelism. However, GNU/Linux as well as setting up computers in general does fall under some of Bisqwit’s content, and in true Finnish fashion, he excels in that as well, with one of his exemplary pieces being a tutorial on installing Debian cleverly disguised as a large critique of how slow Windows is.
- Library Genesis
Library Genesis is also not actually a GNU/Linux-oriented website but is one that I’ve come to remember as I was writing the description of Gentoomen Library. While it’s legality is dubious at best, in keeping with the inclusion of the Gentoomen Library and hearkening to the manifesto of the Internet’s own boy, I’ve decided to include it as it also, like the Gentoomen Library, include a wealth of information about computing in general, which of course includes operating systems, especially also the textbook of the subject of which this is a part of, that is up for grabs for anyone who knows the keywords well enough to find them. Note that this is neither an endorsement for nor legal advice concerning piracy. This is purely for documentation purposes only. I do not engage in nor endorse any form of piracy whatsoever. It is simply that I find it interesting given the wealth of information that it has concerning through books that cover same or similar topics covered in W00, W01, and beyond.
- ItsFOSS Tutorials
ItsFOSS is a media outlet mainly covering topics on FOSS alternatives to popular proprietary programs. As all things that cover open source, it also has a catalogue of various introductory material designed explicitly for beginners to open source software under the family of GNU, Linux, BSD, etc. I find it interesting because a fair lot of the material covered in W00 and W01 were covered partially to some extent by the things I’ve read from them when I was being introduced to open source and attempting to install Ubuntu way back when in the first semester of my time on campus.
- Repl.it - Bash
While Repl.it in general I think is quite a gem of a website on its own, the specific rendition they have for bash I believe is interestingly quite useful. In particular I’ve used it on one occasion to test a script that I was writing for a quiz which occurred quite unfortunately while I was jogging near a construction site far from any computer except my phone. Now granted I could’ve used Termux, but it didn’t cross my mind at the time for some bizarre reason. In addition to this, I believe it’s also quite a good introductory sandbox point for learning basic shell commands, particularly for people who are on Windows and are too lazy to fire up VBox and play around in an actual Linux environment (like me! sometimes). This also leads into the next link I believe to be interesting.
- Hackerrank - Linux Shell
Putting aside the degree of animosity some people have for the site, the tutorials provided by Hackerrank for the Linux shell I believe is at least to some degree worth the small amount of time it takes to solve them. Particularly because the way a lot of tutorials are designed is “here’s how you would do X thing” one after another with little interconnectedness. Here, things are organized akin to a constant stream of scripting quizzes, which might be fun if you’re the kind of person who’s into that (like me) but at the very least I personally deem it to be useful for learning.
- Derek Banas
Derek Banas’ channel is also another one of these channels that aren’t entirely constrained to the topic of operating systems or GNU/Linux but his videos are generally useful. For the purposes of learning operating systems, though, there are several links of videos from him of which I would like to note: The C Video Tutorial, as well as Shell Scripting Tutorial. These two are, in my opinion, somewhat useful starting points in learning C and Bash respectively, for people who are more inclined to listen to monotone explanations in the style of a lecture (which is no knock on anyone who does, it’s simply a different style). Another video of his I would like to point out is this, which has less to do with operating systems but I believe to be humorous to include given the majority of discussion on text editors so far has included mostly only Vi(m) and Nano.