I thought that I would second Jim Graham's position that the Linux
community has
been incredibly helpfull and responsive.  I've been using Linux for 11
months now.
When I started off I knew nothing of Linux and little of UNIX.  I knew
NOTHING of
system administration.  Now, generally, I'm able to get things done, do
a bit of
programming, and in general have fun with the beastie.  I periodically post 
requests for help (for instance the mfm/ide thread) and have gotton an enormous
amount of help from more people than I can give sufficent credit to.  In
general I have found that if I wait a week between discovering a
'problem' and posting a
request for help I usually a) figure out the solution myself b) find
that someone
else has had the same problem and send him/her a request for the
solution c) find
that what I thought was the original problem wasn't.  If after a week
I'm still 
hosed, I post a request for help including what I think is going on.  Without
exception, I have gotton useful and prompt replies from more people than I can
give sufficient credit to.  What I really think 'newbies' need more than a 
special forum which alot of people will ignore, are large pink letters saying:
DON'T PANIC.  Be patient.  Read the documentation provided.  Try to isolate 
WHERE things are dying, and *ask* for help, don't demand psychic
software that does everything.  UNIX and subsequently Linux, is big,
MSDOS is simple but for that price, you get a glorified boot loader.

Daniel Supernaw-Issen
email to danielsi@cs.utexas.edu

send all flames to me via email.

All opinions are mine, Linux or Die!