>>51063967How familiar are you with the command line and Linux in general? I would start with...
- Visit
www.tldp.org, and just casually browse their guides and howto's.
- Read their "Intro to Linux", and "GNU/Linux Command-Line Tools Summary" (excellent resource)
- Casually read their guide on the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy, ie how vanilla Linux arranges the file hierachy
- Learn Ubuntu's package management, and how it differs or changes the above
- Learn the basics of vim
- Extra credit: install Slackware on something, get familiar with it
Get *basic* familiarity with the above items, and you'll be fairly self sufficient to handle your system, and branch off into items of interest. The biggest thing is to start using the command line, and get familiar with how to navigate about and do things without breaking it. Your desktop environment IS NOT your system, it's just a skin/convenience. You can't properly use a computer by only clicking on cartoon icons & check boxes...people that say otherwise have never really used a computer, though marketing and advertising tries to tell them otherwise.
If you don't learn the above, you won't be able to do shit when anything beyond the norm happens. I used Ubuntu for quite a while without learning the command line...then I wanted to update/fix/change something, just started copying and pasting commands from the Ubuntu forums, and of course it led to just more frustration and confusion.
And honestly, in the medium-term I would try to get away from the dual boot thing. Get a virtual machine going, and install Winshits in that. Then you can lock it down, block the spyware bullshit, and when it inevitably shits the bed, just fire up your original backup vm as if nothing happened.
