Sorry for getting all dramatic, but for me you're asking a red pill/blue pill question. I applaud your curiosity and can only recommend you follow your gut and take the red pill. The truth is by asking the question you already know what to do next. Just keep going. However I'll give you a few ideas because you got me excited.

1. Get in touch with your osx terminal
   
2. Get linux ASAP
   
3. Learn the command line
   
   

   OSX Terminal
   

   
   Underneath the shiny GUI surface of your mac you have an incredible unix style OS just waiting to be played with and mastered. A few tips to get you going.
   
   
   

   Download iTerm 2. Press cmd-return, cmd-d and command-shift-d.
   

   
   Congrats. you now have a hollywood hacker style computer
   
   

   Copy and paste this line into your terminal and say yes to xcode.
   

   
   ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
   
   Awesome you now have homebrew. A linux style package manager.
   
   

   May as well get cask too.
   

   
   brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask
   
   Now you can install programs by typing a couple of words.
   
   try
   
   brew cask install virtualbox
   
   

   Get Linux ASAP
   

   
   Linux is relatively easy to get up and running and awesome fun. try any of these options
   
   

• Download virtual box and install a 'virtual machine' to run linux on your mac (see above).
  
• Buy a Raspberry Pi.
  
• Create a bootable usb and install refind on your mac.
  
• Take a friends old laptop and install linux on it from your live usb distro.
  
  If any of the above seems slightly daunting don't sweat it. Be confident and you may just surprise yourself at how much you can learn in such a short amount of time.
  
  

  Learn the command line
  

  
  The command line opens up the wonderfully powerful and creative world of unix. Push on.
  
  

• Get the basics down with codecademy
  
• Play with some books (this or this for eg)
  
• Watch some youtube videos (this guy's good for webdev)
  
• Learn a text editor (Try Vim. You already have it. Type 'vimtutor' in your terminal to get started)
  
  

  Play, Play, Play
  

  
  Do what gets you excited.
  
  I got a big kick out of learning ssh and then pranking my friends with commands like
  
  say hello friend, i am your computer. i think your friend two-gun is very handsome. Is he single?
  
  or
  
  open -a "Google Chrome" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0uYvQ_aXKw
  
  Do what you find fun. Oh and check out Richard Stallman. He's a good egg.
  
  Enjoy.
  
  

  edit-0
  

  forgot iTerm link
  

  edit-1
  

  Wow! Gold! Ha! Thank you. This is so unexpected! I'd like to thank the academy, my agent, my mom...

> do need a wireless network adapter.

Choosing a wireless adapter with Linux that functions well entirely relies on driver support for the wireless chipset more than the brand or model on the box.

Atheros chipset based wireless adapters are more often than not the best option available. Locating one can be challenging but they are available. the most modern atheros wireless driver for Linux is the ath10k Linux driver. Researching this module should reveal many options.

The wireless adapters available may not all be new but there are options for wireless cards that use that driver specifically

>Do I need amd hardware?

No

>Would intel be the way to go?

That has been mine and many others experience.

As mentioned previously Ryzen cpu's having severe hardware faults that can only be fixed by replacing the cpu.

This more recent issue with Ryzen based motherboards not yet being fully supported also solidifies Intel as the best available choice between brands.

Someone I helped this past weekend couldn't get thermal management drivers for his Ryzen motherboard to function properly. While some of the challenges are entirely as a result of experience anyone with similar amounts of experience could expeirence similar results from new amd based pc hardware.


>Forgive me for my lack of understanding, but why two harddrives? What does the sata SSD drive do?

SSD hard disks use NAND flash memory instead of spinning mechanical platters to store data and ssd's as a result are quite a bit faster with data throughout and responsiveness. Latency response times are significantly lower for SSD's to respond to data read and write requests however the total available storage space is also significantly lower as a result.

With the reduced storage space having a second mechanical disk with good performance and storage space is still beneficial.

Typically if your careful about where you install software having a 512 GB ssd you should never fill it to capacity running an OS install.

>Does the motherboard support an extra harddrive?

Yes absolutely. That motherboard has support for several hard disks and dual M.2 SSD drive expansion slots. M.2 SSD disks are the newest SSD form factor and the data transfer speeds they can offer are astounding however the cost per gigabyte is also significantly more.

>I'd like to hook up some sort of webcam and microphone. Do you have any thoughts on the best way of acquiring such? I've only ever used inbuilt systems in laptops.

I have an older model Microsoft Lifecam Cinema webcam that does have a microphone and also has working native open source Linux drivers. Newer webcams may be nicer and easier to locate such as a Logitech C930 but i'm unaware if native Linux driver support is available.

>It'd be really cool to have two monitors for my computer. Woud that motherboard support such?

That Asus motherboard can run up to three monitors using different display connectors with just the onboard video provided by the Intel CPU.

The EVGA videocard supports running four displays with proper connectors. I have three monitors on my pc with an nvidia evga 1070 graphics card using displayport to HDMI adapters easily located from amazon

The monitors I use are Acer H236HL models that offer very nice slim bezels and IPS LCD panels and support HDMI connections. These monitors are an older model acer however for the cost they are a fantastic economical option of you only require 1080p resolution. Here's a couple Linus Tech Tips reviews on these monitors.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXX0cCWWDsU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODGn3I9BIAo

Internet is a very complex global network of networks. Internet security is a bit vague term, what you really are looking for is network security, but even before you go for understanding security you first need to understand how network communication works. First understand the basics.

Network communication is made possible by hardware and software stack. Electrical/telecom engineers take care of the hardware part, i-e how the data has to be multiplexed into signals (see Frequency division multiplexing, Time Division Multiplexing) and transmitted over through some medium and de-multiplexed again at the receiver end.

Software stack is an implementation of set of protocols/standards through which communication between processes, devices and networks is made possible, the famous one is TCP/IP stack. There is another conceptual networking model OSI model as well but TCP/IP is the most well known and widely implemented protocol stack. Make yourself familiar with the TCP/IP stack, you should grasp basics like how different layers of stack communicate with each other and how different protocols work together to make the magic of internet possible.

You should learn the HTTP request/response flow and then relate it to what you have learned so far.

When you are done with these, move towards more advance stuff. Network security involves understanding about cryptographic algorithms that includes symmetric (eg AES) and public key cryptography (RSA) and hashing algorithms (SHA, MD5 etc). Get an overview about these systems, how and why they are used. These cryptographic algorithms/concepts Cryptography is based on mathematics especially number theory but you don't need to worry about that at the moment. Abstract understanding is important before you get into more details.

Learn about how SSL works. Exploits work at almost all levels of protocol stack, starting from exploits in HTTP and TCP to lower level packet sniffing and Man in the middle attacks. Learn a front end web language i-e javascript and at least know about one server side scripting language, PHP is one of the easiest to learn.

I recommend Computer Networking: A top down Approach by Kurose, this book explains the complex concepts in a very intuitive language and is used as a text for undergraduate networks course throughout the world.

Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach

Cryptography and Network Security: Principles and Practice

There is another very good book TCP/IP Protocol Suite by Behroz Forouzan but the text is very dense and detailed, and usually is taught at advanced undergraduate or graduate level networking courses.

Read good and famous security blogs and Keep learning with a lot of patience. Cheers!

Ugh...afraid I am not that much of a help there...too old ;) Lots of this actually comes from DOS (you know, the OS of microsoft before windows) programming books and books about the linux kernel in version 2.0 ;) So really old and probably not available anymore. And both had nothing to do with virtualization...just, well DOS was no multitasking system. Direct hardware access and even manipulating the memory mapping registers were common back then for normal programs (as only one program could run at a time...you could do whatever you wanted, nothing else could get in your way). All this is pretty useless knowledge nowadays...but it helped a lot to know the basics to somewhat understand "modern" stuff like virtualization...it's more just learning how it was done as the basics are still in large parts the same.

But afraid that means I have no clue about a modern book that would teach these topics nicely. (not to mention that my first books about that hardware stuff were still in German...only two years learning English at school were not enough back then to understand English programming books ;))

I heard some good about Linux kernel development but afraid didn't read it...so take with a grain of salt (And this is really more if you are interested how the kernel does things and how hardware access is really done, it's not a book that will help you much with "ordinary" daily work on a linux system.

Afraid I am not aware of any general purpose book for linux at all...there must be some for sure but afraid I always just looked into kind of specialized books...so can't help there at all.

A slightly higher level book that helped me a lot to deal with linux was linux application development (although I read it in the first edition..and german translation back then. In this case I have no excuse for that...by that time I should have been good enough in English to read the original..so probably just some teenager laziness). But this one is really good, leads you through the whole process of writing your own shell...requires basic C knowledge though.

What brings up something interesting...even if not linux related directly...any book about learning the basics of C will also help a lot with linux. I see that a bit different than learning a language like python for example..while learning python will of course also help you understanding linux better in some cases learning C gets you really dirty. It forces you to learn some basics about hardware...most other languages "shield" you there (exception c++ which is also very lowlevel and if you ask me the more interesting language to learn...but if you ask Torvalds he probably would have some strong words of disagreement there. So for the linux kernel learning C is better)

But overall...really better make a new question about this and ask a wider audience...afraid I am just the wrong person to give any good suggestions there.

What is big?

What are you planning on printing in? PLA like normal people or ABS which needs a heated bed and to be much better ventilated?

Anycubic i3 Mega is 8.3 x 8.3 x 8.1 inches

If you're literally just looking for the cheapest way into 3D printing Microcenter has PowerSpec Duplicator i3 Mini for $150.

Its build area is 5.9" x 5.9" x 4.5" and it uses 1.75mm PLA

You'll probably be printing a lot more things smaller if you're experimenting around since double the length, width, and height cubes the volume (though there's a lot more filament in the shell than infill).

Also, Cura or any other slicer that works on Linux is going to take .stl files and output gcode files to an SD Card and you can then print from the SD card in the printer without the computer attached.

Anycubic boasts 10 microns, but the layer height 100-400 is going to be your main source of "quality" in my opinion and it can match that. What you're giving up is mostly the ability to print ABS, potentially the ability to print Glow-in-the-dark PLA (you need a hardened steel rather than brass tip for this), and heated bed.

Obviously, the Creality C10 and Tevo Tornado and if it's me, and I have $350 in my hand, I'm going to grab a Tevo Tornado.

And of course: Monoprice's Budget Model is small, but gives you the heated bed and hot-end temperatures to do ABS, etc. if you wanted to.

I'm pretty sure that they can all just print GCODE from your SD Cards.

I'd be remiss if I didn't plug Octo-print

Here's one I have that has always worked in any Linux machine I've tried it in.

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B003MTTJOY

The downside is it only supports 2.4GHz, so interference could be a problem if you're in an apartment or other place with lots of WiFi congestion. Also, it's 802.11n (previous gen) instead of 802.11ac (current gen) so it's theoretically slower, but it might still be faster than your Internet connection and should be fast enough for use in a crypto mining rig (as opposed to say, a box for streaming 4K video).

Again, the benefit of that adapter is that it works in Ubuntu (including 16.04) out of the box with absolutely no setup or drivers/firmware required. You just just plug it in, pick your network, put in the password, and you're done.

For dual-band (2.4GHz/5GHz) and 802.11ac that similarly works out of the box in Ubuntu, my Intel 8260 has been great, but that's a mini-PCIe card rather than USB.

There may well be other, better options than these, but I'm just giving you the ones I have personal experience with. The key factor in Linux compatibility for Wi-Fi adapters is the chipset it uses. The same chipset can be used in a wide variety of Wi-Fi adapters from different brands. If given adapter supports Linux out of the box, then any other adapter using the same chipset will also work out of the box.

The Linux Documentation Project is a great free resource:
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/

A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming (4th Edition)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0134774604/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_bh7QAb518JBC8

The first two are for learning Bash; this is an awesome resource for learning how to administer RHEL/CentOS7:

RHCSA/RHCE Red Hat Linux Certification Study Guide, Seventh Edition (Exams EX200 & EX300)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071841962/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_wj7QAbX8M0DG5

Online tutorials can answer any questions you might ever have, but when learning something new I like the condensed nature of a well written book on a subject. For shells, I thought this book was excellent, and still reference it from time to time:
http://www.amazon.com/Bash-Shell-Conquering-Command-Line/dp/1590593766/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290060461&sr=8-1

also.... ZSH FOR LIFE!

Typically if your USB wireless adapter functions and your network sucks... It's not a safe bet to assume correlation causation with drivers and updates. It's typically your home network.

Consider looking into Ubiquiti's line of UNIFI products. Or you can find your own brand you may prefer which sell "Access Points". Then I would wire all access points to a central area.

You haven't told us how large your house may be or what physical barriers you may have..



If you really believe it's your USB wireless hardware that may be the source of the issue, I would heavily recommend something like this ALFA NETWORKS RT2800 USB Iteration.It should be natively supported across most distributions.

Good luck. Reply if you have any questions.

I am a beginner too and just finished this book TLCL.Another one i would recommend is shell scripting bible.For most part use google to learn about commands and man page is your friend. I am more of a book kind of guy so never used video resources. Most important you should know where to look for help when stuck.

Considering that the best book about Linux, Kerrisk’s The Linux Programming
Interface was published in
2010, the answer is a determined yes. Just make sure to read a good
book. Most of the knowledge, even if technically obsolete by now, should be
transferable in a way to the state of the art.

I'd recommend this book. It's very good.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Linux-Programming-Interface-Handbook/dp/1593272200

I use the Edimax Wireless N adapter if I need one with guaranteed Linux support -- can confirm it's worked without issue on at least 5 different physical systems, varying between Linux and Windows.

I also have a ZyDas ZD1211 adapter that we used in my networking class for packet injection/wireless sniffing, so that's also got good compatibility.

This is the book I normally point folks to. It has, in my opinion, some of the best explanation for regular expressions that I've run across, and hits on basically all the behind the scenes stuff you'd want to know.

Edit: Unfucked my formatting.

I had a similar issue that turned out to be a kernel bug: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=195303

​

I got one of these and all is well: https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-External-Adapter-Headphone-Microphone/dp/B01HPMHOY0/ref=sr_1_18?crid=3J2Q1R1HVQ2IW&keywords=usb+audio+adapter&qid=1554078757&s=gateway&sprefix=usb+audo%2Caps%2C159&sr=8-18

​

Not ideal, but I'll gladly switch back to onboard once the issue is fixed.

​

Yes, there are multiple USB WiFi adapters that will work with Linux. I just received a EDIMAX AC600 for a small work project that came with the Linux drivers on CD.

A co-worker also purchased an [Alpha Long-Range AC1200] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VEEBOPG/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_4tklDbRERW39Y) and has it working with Kali.

By no means is this an extensive list, but just a couple that I've seen success with in the past few days alone.

For cash-in-pocket noobs who like to have a book in hand I'd recommend any of these books by Mark G. Sobell.

A Practical Guide to Linux
Old (1997) but takes you from the basics to intermediate.

A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming, 4th. Ed.
Also covers the basics but it's more focused on those subjects included in the title.

A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux, 4th. Ed
I have no experience with this book but I'm including it for completeness.

A Practical Guide to Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, 7th. Ed.
Same. No experience.

It is four years old now but "Linux Kernel Development" http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Kernel-Development-3rd-Edition/dp/0672329468
despite the name, the book is also nice even for people not doing kernel development.

Hi I bought a USB adapter but couldnt really get it to work, the box said it was linux friendly but that was bullshit.

I think I will try to swap out the network card for this one https://www.amazon.de/Intel-7260-HMWWB-R-Wireless-AC-7260-PCIe-Mini-PCI-Karten/dp/B00N7474CS/ref=pd_cp_147_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=XRA19XDZPMBDNZ64HJTC

Would this be possible? I know how to solder and it has good reviews with the version of ubuntu that I am using.
http://www.linux-hardware-guide.com/2016-09-06-intel-ac-7260-wifi-mini-pci-express-dual-band

Read Books: I recommend this, this and this.

You got your URL and link-text swapped, should go like this:

This is the book I normally point folks to

I have been a Unix admin for 5+ years and I am always finding cool tricks with commands I have been using for years. Or built in shell commands even, such as:

http://www.amazon.com/Bash-Shell-Conquering-Command-Line/dp/1590593766/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319107875&sr=8-1

Is one of the books I have been going back over.

1. Learn linux - https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Commands-Editors-Programming/dp/0134774604/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1540917384&sr=1-3&keywords=A+Practical+Guide+to+Linux+Commands&dpID=51mIubCikPL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch
   
   
2. Learn your distro - IE find a good book on debian, ubuntu, fedora, or the arch wiki
   
   
3. Interact with their forums
   
   
4. Remember that no one knows everything; but most people will expect that you at least do a google search to find more information about your poblem.

http://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7811Un-150Mbps-Raspberry-Supports/dp/B003MTTJOY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458262126&sr=8-1&keywords=wifi+adapter+for+raspberry+pi

Alfa Long-Range Dual-Band AC1200
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VEEBOPG/ref=cm_sw_r_em_apa_vR8OBbQ4FQYPE

Works in monitor mode too.

seen this one recommended. but not tried it personally, and it's not a tiny dongle.

Alfa Long-Range Dual-Band AC1200 Wireless USB 3.0 Wi-Fi Adapter w/2x 5dBi External Antennas – 2.4GHz 300Mbps/5GHz 867Mbps – 802.11ac & A, B, G, N
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VEEBOPG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_vDJTBbX9DP7GH

So does your wifi work on other Linux distro's?

If so then your wifi will work in any Linux distro. You just have to use the exact package/libraries and drivers of the Linux distro that your wifi work in.

Give me your wifi info and I can find the right drivers for you to use in Ubuntu.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/333424/how-can-i-check-the-information-of-currently-installed-wifi-drivers

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WiFiHowTo

And if your wifi isn't working right in any Linux distro. Then just use a USB nano wifi adaptor that works in Linux. http://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7811Un-150Mbps-Raspberry-Supports/dp/B003MTTJOY

Most books are still made out of paper.

Try these : UTLK
and Linux Programming Interface

A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming (4th Edition) by Mark Sobell.