Looking to learn some scripting/anything else needed to figure this out..

R22000

I want to unzip or unrar some files of pictures and then resize them smaller for my phone then rezip/rerar them. I do not want the scipt to do it directly i want to be lead to the information that will help me make a script to do it. basically skill wise i know a few commands to move around on a command line but not much else. i appreciate any help you could give i also have no programming skills. if this project is going to take time i want to take the time to learn. If it takes a year thats fine by me. I love the idea and concepts of linux, and honestly my biggest hobby is computers. And if anyone has some literature, help me figure out which kind of distro i should use between: arch, gentoo, slackware, debian, red hat, ie the type of package management. i like new software but not beta's, and i am really getting disgusted at the amount of ram windows requires even though i have 4 gigs i just get annoyed at how much it uses by itself.

mfillpot

That is a fair goal and pretty easy to accomplish, here are the steps I recommend.

• You can use the unzip and unrar commands to extract files from an archive
• Loop through the files you wish to convert ( http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/bash-loop-over-file/ )
• Use the imagemagik convert command to resize the files ( http://www.imagemagick.org/script/convert.php )
• Archive the new files using the tools for the chosen format ( http://www.cyberciti.biz/howto/question/general/compress-file-unix-linux-cheat-sheet.php )

As for choosing a distro, any distro will be able to handle this task very easily. If you want a system with good package management, no beta software and a very stable core I recommend looking at debian or centos. If you want more of a do it yourself learning distro you can try arch Linux, however it is a rolling distro with a lot of beta software.