Hello everybody,

I am not long member of this board, but but I read much and started to participate some days ago.

First thing I realized was the amount of questions from Linux beginners - which is principal okay - for normal Linux distributions.
Everybody started at some point. So did I.

I started with SuSE Linux back in 1998 but it made me sick. Way to much axiomatization, weird configuration with yast and and and. But I got comfortable with the CLI and where to gather Information. At some point I was stuck so I reached out for something new. Something more challenging so I could learn more about the way Linux works. I my case this was Gentoo-Linux - which was in RC-4 state as I started to use it (when I remember correctly)

I must admit, I man not 100% used to Maemo, I am still trying to get my first package done (well its way more complicated than the "package" system - ebuilds - on Gentoo) and I am still missing some of my standard tools. But if it comes out hard I'll just crosscompile what I need.

I would recommend every Linux beginner the following:
Do yourself a favor. Get your hands on one of the plenty Linux-Distributions, play around, mess up your system, re-install, get comfortable with Linux (Best would be to use plain Debian if you want to mess around with Maemo later).

- Get used to the Command-Line-Interface (CLI) - Most likely Bash
- Get to know how to run programs from CLI
- Gather some knowledge about where to get system messages, debug messages. Linux is so verbose compared to windows. Get to know where to find what Linux is trying to tell you.
- Get comfortable with the "man page"
- Learn to use the parameters of a program (find them via --help or on the man page)
- Learn hot to get extra infos form programs (most likely via a command line prameter)
- Learn how Linux gathers all the information

If you are comfortable with Linux and know what you are doing, start exploring Maemo with the X-Terminal.
You'll quickly notice some differences (Where are the GNU-Utils gone? Nothing in /var/log! - by now, you should know what GNU-Utils are and what's so lovely about /var/log)

There are many things that are rather different on Maemo and makes user mistakes harder to figure out... especially for us who are trying to help you.

Sadly there is nothing like a "crystal ball" so we have to figure out what went wrong based on your description and error diagnostics like "sshd does not start", "I can't become root", "xyz does not what I want" is not much of help.

Okay, in some cases we can make a good guess. Cause there are many pitfalls for beginners and most likely one of those is the cause. If not, we need YOU to provide us information on what you want to archive and what you did. EXACTLY! Sometimes a "." or "," or even a whitespace makes the difference.

And thought Maemo is (Debian) Linux its a somehow embedded system. It's not that verbose like other Distors, so you have to know how to make it verbose! Guiding you through "the process of gathering information" takes a lot of time an a lot of posts, whereas the mistake would most likely have been resolved within one sentence.

So please get comfortable with general Linux before messing around with a "embedded system" ;-)

This helps us helping you and saves you from a lot frustration.

Heads up! Once you are into it, everything is a game

Cheers
Bjoern

What's Linux?

Damn YMMD

Cheers
Bjoern

no seriously, whats linux?





well, when i was studying we had to learn linux, so i have VERY basic linux knowledge. i cant do anything by myself on linux, except ls -a to see whats inside a directory ^^

thats why i'm here, to get helped by people that know what they are doing.

@ blubbi: In all seriousness though, I agree with your post.

But seriously, why start learning on a "embeded system?"

No real keyboard, hacking around SSH access, limited ROOT-FS size, limited logging capabilities, missing every-day-tools.

Go and work with Linux for a few Months, so you'll know how thinks work. I bet you'll have more fun with Debian on your Desktop and a way more steep learning gradient.

Cheers
Bjoern