Knowing Nothing Sucks

[Grim]

As the title says, it pretty much sums up the beginning of my post. Knowledge isn't everything, but it's damn close. And I want knowledge, not to be confused with everything. I've been learning what I can to begin my basics as hacking. I found a few underground sites to help me on my way, but those never stay up long enough for me to read all of their content. I know HTML, some CSS along with it, and I can usually find my way through Javascript, but any other code base has me baffled. I'm not sure what codebase to dive into before I begin the true basics and was hoping someone could give me a direction of where I need to be headed to get where I want to be.

[Cobra]

Well a good start would be to try and move away from studying on a Windows platform. The ONLY! good thing windows is good for is Graphic design and Web Development. If anyone says "but you can use gimp for gfx design" please shoot yourself now. But i will admit that you can do most Web Development on any other Platform.  
So now that we have cleared up that your Windows system is pretty much useless. Let us move on

Get yourself a different OS or even multiple OS's. I used to suggest Linux to new comers, but the new fBSD is straight forward enough for any new comer to install and do a basic configuration of and it is a hell of a lot nicer.

Now i would suggest getting a cheap piece of shit PC to install another OS on. You could partition your windows system drive, but as your relatively new to different OS's and setups, the last thing you want to do is fuck up your only working PC.

So pick up a cheap clanger and partition it and throw maybe BSD 5.2 and Fedora Core 1(most people rant about slackware and the likes, so what linux distro you use is up to you) on it.

From there i would suggest learning those OS's , the commands and tools available from each. Learn your way around each OS and get comfortable with it. Start experimenting with different tools and shit.

From there you will start getting a feel for what you want to learn next and where you want to go. You need to start with a base and then build on that.

As for coding. If you start using Linux or BSD you will probably find Perl or C a lot of fun.

FreeBSD OS: www.freebsd.org
Fedora Core: http://fedora.redhat.com
Fedora Extra: www.fedora.us
C Shit: http://publications.gbdirect.co.uk/c_book/
Perl Shit: www.perl.com

You can probably download alot of E-books for the OS's and programming languages on popular file-sharing networks.

www.google.com will become your best friend.
--------------------------------------------

That should be enough to get you started. If ya want any other info just ask!

[Grim]

Thanks a lot, this should help me get started pretty quickly. Over the next year I will be learning C++ and Java, which I hope should help with all of this. Unfortunately i'm not sure how soon I can get ahold of a cheap PC. Would you be able to have any advice so that I may get started before that?

[Cobra]

Well you could partition your drive and dual boot your Windows and Unix OS's. If you don't want to do that that .. You can get your hands on VMWare .. and that will allow you to run your second OS from within Windows. And that will work pretty much the exact same as a partitioned drive.

So go grab yourself a copy of *cough* file-sharing *cough* VMware.. and you should be set to get yerself going pretty easily man.

I have had a few issues getting FreeBSD to run smoothly with VMware. But i know the other guys have had no issues with it.  

Grab the BSD handbook from the freeBSD.org website. Check out the forums there, and just participate in everything man. Everyone starts somewhere. So don't be afraid to ask questions regardless of how stupid it may come across.

Just remember. No body blasts people for simple questions. But you do get blasted if you have not put in any effort to try and find things out for yourself.

But any questions man... ask away, i'm sure everyone here will be willing to help ya get on yer feet.

[Grim]

Alright I tried looking for the VMWare and went to a site to find out exactly what I needed, and found VMware workstation, ESX server, Virtual SMP, and GSX server. I was a little confused but finally settled for workstation which I found somewhere else and it described exactly what I needed. Now to download the FreeBSD, what platform do I download it for? I checked out the FTP and went to releases and I got confused and lost.

[Cobra]

Yeah VMWare workstation will be sound

As for BSD, I'm pretty much guessing you will be safe with the i386 platform. And i would go with v5.2.. although i have heard there are more bugs in 5.2 over 5.0. But as i have not used 5.0 i couldn't tell ya.  Lucky dip, take yer pick!..

I would recommend 5.2 though.

See how ya get on with that. Just remember to read everything carefully during the install process. And for the likes of partitioning, use the auto allocate feature. Will see ya right for now.

[Uneek]

This post coming to you from a VMWare Workstation 4.5.2 on Win2k Pro installation running FreeBSD 5.2.1 on top of it with zero issues! Just make sure you have tons of RAM... it can be a hog at times... But I love VMWare! Lets me run BSD, SuSE, Java Desktop, Debian, Solaris (sorta), etc...

[Tazinator]

Indeed. VMWare is kick ass indeed.

COmes in handy at work all the time when im testing an app or script to see how it will handle things. If I blow something up, I simply copy the VMWare image over again and keep at it without having to reload.

GSX and ESX versions are bad ass too, though they have insane HW requirements to work well.

[Tazinator]

Oh, getting back to the topic tho, haha, Id tell ya to go with Slackware Linux.

http://www.slackware.org/

A lot of other Linux distros are based off Slackware code so if you can master it, you can pretty much use any Linux flavor. I personally like SuSE, but I know it can be a bitch for newcomers as its startup system and various other things such as YaST and whatnot are a pain in the ass if you dont know. It does have good documentation tho so for more advanced experimental use, its nice. SuSE is based off of Slackware BTW

Many people offer advice about RedHat for new people, but I dont agree there. It may be the "friendlier" face of Linux to most, but its an outright pain in the ass if you try to do something out of the norm with it, plus, support for thier older versioning sux. When they move a version number up, they seem to leave the old one in the dust and people running it are left with little choice but to upgrade because of the lack of updated packages and whatnot.

Check this forum, ive complained about RH quite a bit

[godaigo]

Yeah Suse can be a pain! I just switched from Mandrake (although I'm really thinking seriously about going to BSD). I like it overall, but YAST can really be a pain in the but. So far the documentation hasn't really helped (at least the english stuff) and my german isn't quite up to par but it's worth giving a serious shot huh?

[Tazinator]

Check the SuSE site for docs in english. A lot of the CD has german but also a lot of the configs are commented with a ton of info.

[godaigo]

I did that and found things that should have worked but for some reason didn't. I heard from a Novell guy that some of the suse distro's evaluation CD's have YAST disabled. Have you heard anything like that? It would explain the problem with YAST but not with the command line mods. Maybe the install was just bad, I've had that happen from time to time....