I am a Linux beginner/amateur and I have sort of had enough of copy and pasting commands I find on the internet without having a good understanding of how they actually work.
I guess my end goal is to be able to comfortably install and use arch Linux with my own customization’s and be able to fix it when things go wrong.
What tips/ideas do you have for getting better at navigating the terminal, and getting a better understanding of how the os works. What is a good roadmap to follow? And how did you, advanced Linux user, get to the stage your at now?
Edit: my current distro is bazzite just in case you were interested and thanks for all the replies you are all really helpful.
If you’re not already, use it as your main system. Don’t dual boot. Stop using windows and mac. When you run into something you need to do, figure out how to do it on linux. It will be slow going at first, but after a few months you will pick up more productivity than you had before.
Another commenter recommended the fish shell, but I disagree because fish is not posix compliant. Almost all of the shell script examples that you will find assume posix compatibility and will usually have to be modified to run with fish. Once you get comfortable with a posix-compliant shell, then maybe consider fish or another “modern” shell.
On the topic of shells, read the bash manual. It’s long and informative. You don’t have to memorize it, but be aware of the different concepts there, and refer to it when you need to. It’s pretty horrible as a programming language, but it’s what glues most of Linux together.
I am still dual booting because some games I play just don’t work properly but other than that I am doing everything I can on Linux.
To be honest, this is my recommendation as well. If you kill Windows and can’t play your favorite games, then its more likely to give up Linux.
“I take full responsibility for my Arch system.”
I’d recommend reading man pages. They’re a great way to understand the programs that are on your system. The Arch Wiki and the Gentoo Wiki both provide additional information that may be of use to you.
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duck duck it
I use searx. Ok but seriously very helpful I will look into that.
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The tldr cli (tldr.sh) is a great way to get familiar with options of differ programs.
Very useful, even for someone who has been using Linux for many years. Sometimes you just forget or need that tool you rarely use.
tldrcan be much handier than parsing a man page when you’re in a pinch.I use the tealdeer implementation, but any is fine really.
Switch to rolling distro, it will break so many things with each update you’ll learn stuff by fixing it. Also you can check https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/
I thought rolling releases were still pretty stable to things really break that often?
They can be really stable. I think your milage severely varies on how much you know what you’re doing and how careful you are in respect to certain things.
Personally I’ve been using Arch for 5 years and I haven’t really had any problems with things breaking on updates.
start from
man manand learn to use man pages. Get used to lookup man pages for any topic before checking on the internetLearning to read manpages is honestly the best advice. They are pretty dense in information, so maybe that’s why some people go to great lengths to run circles around them looking for inferior sources of information.
This is it. You’re likely not going to get away from needing help from time to time. Instead of focusing on trying to know everything, focus on knowing where to find what you need. It’ll click from there with time.
This course by the Linux Foundation goes over the basics and I thought it was pretty good. I was a long time user of Linux when I came across this and wanted to see how much I really knew. It’s very easy to follow and well structured
https://training.linuxfoundation.org/training/introduction-to-linux/
Start running servers if you haven’t already. Use an old computer, or an SBC or VPS and setup some Linux servers. There’s lots of different ways to do it, so mess around and break shit over and over. You can’t help but learn that way, though I would highly suggest you take notes/documentation. This is a habit I’m trying to develop after too long :)
I learned a lot by using a less common distro (solus). When I would have a problem, the solutions I could find on forums or arch wiki wouldn’t apply to my distro directly, and I would have to look into the solution for long enough to understand what needed to change in order for the solution to work.
You can probably do this on any distro, just by not using commands you find online until you understand what they’re doing and why that might fix your problem. Arch wiki is a great resource for any distro, even though it won’t always be accurate for the distro you’re on.
Read and do! If it’s just a toy you play with sometimes, you might find learning harder. I find that making it your daily driver will motivate you to improve and fix things and in doing that you’ll learn.
Here is a bunch of random tips to become more comfortable with the terminal.
Do absolutely everything that you can on the terminal.
When you install something, enable the verbose if possible and snoop around the logs to see what is happening.
If an app or an install fails, look at the logs to see what is the issue, and try to fix it by actually resolving the error itself first instead of finding the commands on the internet to fix your issue.
Instead of googling for your command options, use the help menu from the application and try to figure out how to use the command from there.
When you are doing stuff in the terminal write it down somewhere else also, on a piece of real life paper or in a simple text document or whatever works for you.
In general I found taking notes while trying to do things in the terminal helped me learn.
