[OT] But important to me. Appropiate Mailing Lists ??

[jdow]

From: "William Case" <billlinux at rogers.com>

> Hi;
> 
> I am moving into a post newbie stage of my Linux experience and I would
> like to find a friendly mailing list that will happily handle Linux
> kernel, my operating system questions and an occasional 'C' question.
> Some questions would be fairly deep others would reveal me as a newbie.
> 
> For example;
> 
> How does my BIOS at boot time know where other BIOSes like my video BIOS
> are?  
> 
> What in addressing distinguishes a main memory location from a video
> memory location?  How are the various registers in the CPU, my Intel
> Memory Controller Hub, my Intel I/O Controller Hub distinguished by the
> CPU?
> 
> How does BASH work?  (I don't mean how do I use the command line; I mean
> that in the same way that I can read manuals on how gcc analyzes,
> parses, links and assembles binary executables, how does an interpreter
> work (a shell) work?)
> 
> etc. ...
> 
> Please I am not asking for answers to the above example questions here.
> 
> I am asking, has anyone on this Fedora list had a good experience with a
> list that helped newbies move to being a guru?  A newru, or perhaps a
> gubie, list?
> 
> All suggestions of such lists you might have will be tried.

Lists? I fear you have two choices for those sorts of question, newsgroups,
a trip to college for study, or a lot of Googling coupled with a boatload
of reading. The questions above seem to indicate a lack of some very basic
knowledge needed before you can ask somewhat more sensible questions. If
you understand boolean logic, how addresses are parsed, and that there are
standards organizations such as VESA at work the answers to the first
question is obvious as are the answers to the next batch. (The venerable
old 68000 CPU might help understand the answers to the second batch. It's
command set was very "regular". It's manuals were relatively easy to
understand, as well.) And interpreters simply add an execution step and
remove the linkage step.

(Life was easier for bootstrapping yourself in the days of the old Z-80
or 6502. The Amiga, even, was approachable without much base knowledge.
Reading some old texts about these machines in depth might help to give
you a grasp on what is going on inside in some detail.)

{^_^}