To things that helps no mater your skill level the tab key is your best friend and man pages are great but if those are overwhelming install the package tldr then you can use the command tldr and the command you are trying to run to give you helpful examples of how to use that command.
Also old users don’t remember long commands if we use a command more than once. You save it to your bash alias file to create your own commands.
Also old users don’t remember long commands if we use a command more than once. You save it to your bash alias file to create your own commands.
A good example for this is docker compose -f when you work alot if compose files ! Having an alias for docker compose -f as
dcfsaves hours a month xDtldr is great, sometimes you can’t remember the exact syntax for a certain command and just need a quick reminder as well.
In my experience repetition helped. Not memorization, but more like muscle memory.
Also, ensuring to never copy and paste commands but to type them in manually yourself. It’s hard to enforce this on yourself, but worth it.
I appreciate that this article started with “ways to reduce risk” because that’s an extremely valid concern and tied to why you shouldn’t ever copy and paste. The one time in my early Linux forays where I copied and pasted I wiped the wrong drive. It definitely taught me to always manually type it in and not get too lazy, because what you copied might not match what you want to do exactly.
Also, ensuring to never copy and paste commands but to type them in manually yourself. It’s hard to enforce this on yourself, but worth it.
“Command: sido not found…”
As a fan of german rap this gave me a good chuckle. Thx.
I have no clue… I grew up on Windows 3.11 and I thought Windows was kinda lame while MS-DOS was the coolest thing ever because you typed things like magic spells 😅
This right here (more or less - first home PC was Win95, but it still relied pretty heavily on DOS, esp for games). I loved the RPGs where you typed in your actions, too.
The need to do it plus the realization that you can script anything based on it.
Drivers. Using recovery mode. Administration. Wanting to describe what to do rather then manually do it. Wild cards are really powerful and so is find and xargs. The text processing commands are useful too.
The other thing is having started computing in the 1970s. Everything was command line back then. GUI systems only become universal in about 1995.
I think just doing it more, and thinking it’s cool to interact more directly. At least that helps me. I do feel bad for dyslexic peiple though, it’s a lot harder for them to use CLI.
Yeah that was it for me. Just keep regular backups and bear in mind that you’ll probably break stuff at first. But once you get the hang of it, it’s like a whole other level of control over your system.
Also I’m not dyslexic but would things like tab completion and aliases help maybe? I sometimes shorten often-used commands with aliases just for convenience (as an example, I use
rsynca lot, particularly the commandrsync --ignore-existing -ravwhich I just shorten torsto save time) so maybe that could also be used to avoid mis-spelling?Thats a good idea, i have not made any aliases yet. Also remembering all of those aliases is another challenge ha. I keep a text file named commands on my desktop with a whole bunch of commands I forget.
I have some mapped to super simple aliases too like
e1to reboot,e2to shutdown etc. I don’t remember why I started doing that, but that way I only have to remember which number does what lol.
if the avg enduser has to temper in a commandline, your program is ass.
tl;dr: Gradual exposure over time.
I got used to it through work, as I had to ssh into a server to run simulations. That mainly involved navigating the file system and text editing (which I used vim for) to make some basic Python and bash scripts, including sed and awk. The latter two I never got comfortable using, and haven’t really touched since.
I was using macOS at the time, and after using that for work, the terminal in macOS got at first less scary and then a preferred way of accomplishing certain tasks. On my work Windows computer I started missing having a proper terminal around, and I eventually found Cygwin and later Git Bash to give me that terminal fix in Windows as well. Especially with the latter I noticed few differences and could use it to a large extent as I would have on my then Macbook.
2-3 years ago I was in need of a new computer, and at that point a laptop with Linux on it was not a very scary prospect. That is by no way saying I went into Linux as an expert, far from it, and I am still very much a newbie - but opening the terminal to work with things is not at all a barrier, which helps a lot if you use Linux and want to be able to do some changes from the defaults. If you don’t want that, I think you can go far these days without opening the terminal, but it is certainly a good skill to have.
Step 1: Use a youtube tutorial for the basic commands. Don’t worry, you’ll forget about them soon enough. But doing them once, helps with muscle memory. Step 2: When in need to do something, copy/paste from Q&A/forums various commands that they suggest for your problem. Your basic knowledge from step1 will come back as you do that.
After a few days, you’ll be understanding what’s going on and how the whole thing works in an abstract level.
I would recommand to never copy paste but retype so you have the commands on your finger memory.
Also don’t be afraid to
--helpeverything. It give more option for commands you know quicker than theman.
Virtual environment? Taking notes of what they did?
Anyway, tell them it’s okay you experiment and mess things up. Show them how to backup their important work. Then walk them through inevitably having to reinstall their distro.
They’ll learn that you can just keep moving forward, fixing and learning as you go.
Stumbled across a game that teaches the command line as you play it. Seems like a good place to share https://gitlab.com/slackermedia/bashcrawl
personally, writing and saving simple scripts - IE project based learning - is how i got time in the saddle.
2 things got me comfortable on command line: 1) A great cheat sheet (one from Ubuntu: https://ubuntu.com/download/server/thank-you); 2) Practice all the commands from the cheat list regularly. Last page is something for Pro version, but first 2 pages are great for a begginer. There is a typo at a command (or it was in a past cheat sheet): “Sudo change <username>” instead of “sudo chage <username>”. It helped me most to get comfortable with terminal. Enjoy!
As someone who started with nothing but command line - Timex Sinclair, Apple IIe, DOS, I can’t even relate to the concept of being scared of command line.
Have someone on Google doing the thing I need to do.
Practice.
Okay, this is not Linux-specific, but it’s about a transferable skill:
What helped me get comfortable and learn a lot of basics was setting up NetBSD. The basic install throws you into a basic command line, with no graphical interface installed and not even the internet configured. But the online guide for setting the system up is incredibly well-written and teaches you all the concepts you need to know.
After doing this, I was familiar with a larger set of terminal commands, knew how to use vi, had a bunch of practice setting up config files in CLI and even finally learned how pipes work. It’s a very enjoyable experience, the guide is so good I didn’t feel overwhelmed once and anything you have to look up is tied to a problem you’re solving (like cursor movement in vi).
It also teaches you how NetBSD is structured. It’s not Linux, but similar enough to understand a lot of how and why things are done in Linux systems
