Discussion on:

Stay on top of your Linux system by managing processes

My point is simple: the article is great...for very beginners.
I think that techrepublic would gain a lot by targetting more specific knowledge level rather than trying to interrest everybody and give content that is either easily found elsewhere (for beginners) or completely useless (for more expert users).
How can someone be a "admin" and yet need to learn about ps.
that was my humble opinion.

I totally agree with tewfik. But from a newbie like me, learning Linux on the fly, it's an excellent article. But I was surprised to see an article for very beginners in Tech Rep. (sorry for my english grammar)

Here is the scenario. For your whole life, you've been running Windoze machines. You finally decide to go take a look at all of this Linux stuff, so you take your old 300 MHz Pentium II and put linux on it and then start poking at it. What is your first reaction?

Christ! Look at all this software? How do I make sense of it all???

And of course, since it is your machine, you are root. May God have mercy on your soul.

In my mind, TechRepublic is doing the world a service by runningarticles of this caliber. The only change I would make to the article is a series of links to additional documentation on process control. Also, most of the tools mentioned in the article are applicable to all UNIXes with at most some minor changes.


Jeff

TechRepublic was made for everybody which means all types of knowlegde level.
If you feel that you need a more advanced type of article, just research it again. Leave this article to those you needs it. I am a senior network engineer, and I find itteresting that we still go back to this subject (Managing processes) but you know what? I'm using this article to forward it to my assistants and other engineering co-workers, they'll find this article helpful.

I whole heartedly agree fmendez and other's, at one time or another we were all "Newbies". Some of us had the opportunity to get under the wings of someone who was a GURU and patiently guided us through this bottomless well called "Systems" and
some of us, unfortunately, did not. It's up to us who have that knowledge & experience to share it with those who haven't gained it yet. Isn't that what this whole site is about; a Forum for those with knowledge and for those who are still learning?

Hi,

I think people are getting a little bit too excited. We won't attack the pretty article, but we ought to additionally demand more in-depth articles on UNIX and Linux administration. I wouldn't want this place to simply feed me a steady diet of pure Microsoft all the time.

jonnie

For a steady diet of Microsoft, check out the White(wash) Paper links at the bottom of the email message page... Sort of makes me feel like my cat must when he's gakking up hairballs!

This site does an excellent job of keeping my head in Linux. I can scan articles like this in 2 minutes and invariably pick up some minutia.

Whilst having a wide experience of Windows, Linux to me, is Black Magic.

If Linux is to thrive, you need to remove some of that Black Magic, so we can all enjoy the undoubted benefits of Linux.

May we see many more clear well written articles for the likes of me, trying to get to grips with Linux.

Whilst reading this in Windows, I had my Linux experimental machine open to try out the commands, and hey; it worked!!!

Too many books assume a level of knowledge, and present a command with pieces missing (and no example), so you are left wondering what you should fit into the missing pieces.

Even at my VERY BASIC level, I could understand exactly what the author was referring to.

As another contributer said, we all have to start somewhere, and there is no expertise in my organization, so it's down to me to learn!

Excellent stuff!

Very good point fmendez. And Those who think they are above this elementary article don't have to waste their time reading it. I thought it to be a good refresher article for intermediate users.

Hey, I have been in unix administration for several years, have had admin courses from major unix providers and worked with some very sharp Guru's, but I still found the article interesting and learned something new in the process. I had never heardof pstree or seen it used.
Just goes to show you never get too old or too smart to learn something new, or re-learn something you maybe should have known.If you' re too smart to learn something new you really don't need this forum anyway.

Don't get me wrong people. My comment was not a
statment about me being too smart for this
article nor an attack at the author.
Actually if there is something that would make
me happy about techrepublic it's to attract more
people to linux and help them get started
without going through that steep learning curve
some of us had to climb some years back. God
knows we need more people to kill the "beast"
.
Now what i meant can be summerized in two
points:
1- Authors shouldn't be promissing something
they are not giving.
2- For everybody to be happy why not set a kind
of reference scale, something like 0-for
absolute beginners 1-for intermediate and so
on. This way everybody know what they're about
to get. It isn't hard to imagine some
curious/beginner being buffed upbecause the
first thing they read about linux was an
extremely complex article about some obscure nix
thingie.

A place where verybody benefits from the
knowledge of others would be great, but let's
not mix up things together. Or don't you agree?

I think your rating system is a good idea. Has anyone else read an article that wasn't what you thought it would be? I also think they should be organized by subject for easy lookup.

What's a good way to monitor what's going on when I have a compute farm with 200 Linux servers? Running 'top' on each of them in turn is not an attractive approach.

This is a beginner's to intermediate article - it is identified as such in the e-mail newsletter and in the opening section - "The standard Linux commands ps and top are commonly used to look at the current process table. I'm going to show you how to use these and other commands to manage processes on a Linux system. "

The more simple beginner discussions or article the easier it will be to move into "heavier" articles. I agree with some of the other posts - showing M$ users the range of management and administration tools - both GUI and terminal - will convince them to look at Linux at home, on a test system or even as an intranet server.

Keep up the good source.

Not bad, it always helps to revisit the basics, especially from someone elses perspective. As a Linux admin of two years, I found it refreshing...