[lugm.org] Fwd: FYI: Cheap, online course in introductory Linux kernel programming

[Avinash Meetoo]

Got this by email...


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Robert P. J. Day <rpjday at crashcourse.ca>
Date: Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 8:24 PM
Subject: FYI:  Cheap, online course in introductory Linux kernel programming
To: "Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday at crashcourse.ca>



 Hi, my name's Rob Day and I apologize for using a form email for
this but there's just no way I could send a personal email to this
large a number of Linux user groups individually.

 To make a long story as short as possible, recently, I started an
admittedly commercial venture that some of your members, colleagues or
friends might be interested in -- an online, multi-lesson course to
introduce people to the basics of Linux kernel programming:

http://crashcourse.ca/introduction-linux-kernel-programming/introduction-linux-kernel-programming

 This is not just explanatory content -- it's an actual *course*,
with real exercises that students are expected to do, as in writing
and loading modules, and eventually writing a simple character device
driver and doing some basic kernel and module debugging.

 As you can see, a number of the lessons are publicly available (and
are, in fact, released under a Creative Commons license) so potential
students are more than welcome to check out the first few lessons and
see what they think at no cost and with no risk.  And if a person
decides to register for the course, the cost is an eminently
reasonable $39 (CAD) per student for the entire course.  Not per
lesson, for the entire course.

 As I've already stated, I openly admit that this is a commercial
undertaking on my part, but at $39 a student, I have no illusions of
retiring off of this.  It's just something I wanted to do, and I'm
hoping enough students register to make it worth it because, if that
happens, I already have plans for similar, followup courses that each
deal with a specific topic such as "How to write a PCI driver" or "How
to write a USB driver," that sort of thing, again at absurdly cheap
prices.

 You can see a fairly complete syllabus for the course here:

http://crashcourse.ca/introduction-linux-kernel-programming/course-overview-and-syllabus

plus the first couple testimonials from satisfied students here:

http://crashcourse.ca/content/testimonials

And each course comes with a mailing list exclusively for registered
students, so that students can ask questions and exchange ideas about
each lesson.

 In any event, that's pretty much the message I wanted to get across.
I've been a professional Linux instructor for many years, and I
finally decided that this was something i wanted to try.  All of my
marketing is simply word-of-mouth from friends and colleagues, so if
you know anyone who would be interested or you think this is a
worthwhile venture, feel free to blog about it or tweet about it or
mention it on your LUG mailing list.  The more registered students I
get, the more likely it is I'll keep writing more courses along the
same lines.

 If you have any questions, drop me a note, and thanks for your time.

rday

--

========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day                               Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

       Top-notch, inexpensive online Linux/OSS/kernel courses
                       http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
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-- 
avinash at noulakaz.net - http://www.noulakaz.net/ - (230) 493-9394

Those who fail to understand C++ are doomed to reimplement it. Better. [Jez]