Nothing annoys me quite like linux and using OSS tools

[Jackalope]

Why use Linux?

First of all, I'll readily admit that my primary desktop OS is Windows 7 at home, and I have both Linux and Windows 7 Enterprise desktops at work (Linux because our production boxes are all Linux, Windows because our corporate stuff is Windows-centric).

However, my personal network infrastructure is all some flavor of free Unix-like OS. Routers are Linux, my NAS / media server runs FreeNAS, which is derived from FreeBSD, and my webserver is likewise Linux, running in a data center in the Netherlands. (Also, bunch of other devices such as my Rokus run it as well.)

Windows on the desktop fits my needs - of which gaming is a large part. But it makes for a shitty embedded OS for routers, and the software stack I want to run on my NAS and webserver favor *nix - not to mention that remote access is much less painful (remote desktop is just awful, and ever try to administer a Windows server using only Power Shell? Just no).

If it weren't for games, I'd run Linux on the desktop as well. I do run it in a VM (for game-centric use cases, it makes more sense to run Linux in a VM on a Windows host than the other way around).

[KevinM1]

So... do you, or anyone else, know of a good linux resource that teaches from the ground up? I'm specifically looking at things that explain permissions and groups. Everything I've seen on that front makes sense when thinking of a human user, but gets fuzzy when I have to deal with giving PHP permission to create directories and create/delete files.

I'd also like a better idea of how the package system works so I can fix borked dependencies if necessary. So far, the extent of my knowledge is using the package manager, but the power seems to be at the command line.

[KevinM1]

I decided to quit my linux bitching and bought a couple books on the command line and structure of linux itself from the kernel out. Knowledge is power, and I'm tired of only having a vague idea of what I'm doing.