Truth be told, there really
is a lot of info on the web.
There are distro-specific forums left and right to help you get started, and some of the lurkers there were using UNIX before many of us were born (myself notably included, and I'm 40). Transitioning for these guys to Linux was a breeze compared to newer computer savvy folks used to using MacOSX or Windows XP+
I jumped into Linux back with Fedora Core 2, and dual booted with XP. I quickly got past the default install and was hungry for more - and when I ran into Con Kalivas' kernel patches
even back then that really showed me the power of supercharging Linux, I got hooked. I quickly learned how to compile my own kernel, and then was told that if I wanted to continue on my path to self-compiled kernels and apps, that Gentoo was the way to go. Back in 2004, this was sound advice.
Nowadays, you'll find a lot more in terms of distros that allow for a much more customized, built-from-scratch approaches - Arch is, Gentoo is, LFS is, and many more distros whose names I do not know. At the same time, if you know what you are doing, and don't mind taking chances to learn (and possibly b0rk your system while doing so) you can make any distro you like as customized as you want, or leave them as vanilla as you want.
One word of caution - vanilla usually leads to a not as noticeable performance increase
on the surface (I know I'm gonna get flamed for this statement, but I can assuredly qualify it). When doing FC2 vs XP, my boot time were within 20 seconds of each other - both took ~1:30 to boot, XP closer to 1:40 and FC2 closer to 1:20. I wasn't really impressed, but I kept seeing folks that had magnificent boot times under 30 seconds flat. So, rather than dismissing them, I took the time to learn and read - a
lot. I read pages and pages of forum posts, blog posts, distro-specific websites and manuals online, learning different commands, etc. I finally figured out that my default kernel in FC2 was doing nothing more than the Windows kernel does - polling the hardware for various devices, and if found, then loading the driver(s) for them. I also learned that I can hand code my kernel to only load drivers that I wanted loaded. And that, right there, made all the difference in the world. Once I took out the bloat, and stopped letting it look for new hardware, it was a snap to get a sub-30 second boot on that very same machine that took 4 times as long to boot into XP.
My rather long-winded post comes down to this - whatever floats your boat. If you want a book to read through, buy a book. However, if you're not into that sort of thing, do realize that you'll always have the Internet at your disposal - and with that you can find all sorts of resources to help answer much more exact and specific questions that you might have.
Coincidentally, when it came time for my first smart phone almost 2 years ago, I did the same thing - I read and read and read and lurked and read some more. I was already a member at Howard Forums, an a couple of other places, and then I found this place - and I obviously like it here
But, I've never, ever
evah bought a book on Android. Online is my cup of tea.
