On Mon, 6 Oct 2008, Nick Scholtes wrote:

> I'm looking for a website or book aimed at beginning hackers for Linux. 
> Something that walks you step by step through fun and useful tweaks to 
> optimize your system. I haven't had much luck thus far. I figure the 
> best way to learn Linux inside and out is to just get in there and take 
> it apart and play around. But I need something that walks me through it.


Not sure, but there are a few different things to get into configuring. 
One would be your desktop experience -- depends on what you are using: 
Gnome, KDE, etc.  Of course choosing a desktop and window manager is 
another aspect of configuration.

Another area is the shell.  Bash is the usual default.  There are a bunch 
of files that configure the shell.  You can create aliases and stuff like 
that.

After that many programs have their "recipe" files or config files and you 
will want to do something with those, e.g., ~/.emacs

Mike