I never had an IT background and also “just tried” Linux a few years ago.
Now, I’m still not an Linux expert, but relatively proficient with it.
I tried reading “How Linux works” (free e-book), but didn’t have a great time with it.
It’s just too detailed for someone who just wants to use Linux. It might be an absolutely great resource if you plan to work in IT, but other than that, just it’s too much wasted time.
What helped me a lot was to use Linux as an OS for my homeserver.
You don’t need anything fancy for it. Just use an old spare laptop or something similar you have laying around, or buy an used small form factor PC, like those Mini-PCs many businesses use. Those often cost less than 50 bucks and would otherwise land on the trash.
Then, install your server OS of choice. The most popular one is just plain ol’ Debian, and it’s what I used. It’s a great choice!
Servers run without a display or GUI (DE/ WM). You set it up once, and then connect to it remotely via SSH.
With that, you can either install a web interface like CasaOS or Cockpit, or just use the CLI for everything.
For the start, you can choose just Nextcloud AIO and call it a day. It comes with all things needed for a functioning webserver. But, things said, the learning experience ends here pretty quickly. It’s made to be easy and painless.
If you want to learn more, then consider setting up the stuff for yourself. It’s also really not hard (coming from someone who doesn’t IT stuff professionally!), but takes a bit more time, because you have a lot of choices.
For that, you might consider checking out c/Selfhosted and awesome-selfhosted on GitHub.
Theres a lot of really cool things you can discover!
The main reason I recommend that, and not just “Try LFS, Arch, Void, Gentoo, or whatever” is because I find it pretty much useless. Sure, you learn how it works, but for what price?
When you set up your own homelab, then you have actual useful things running, you also learn a lot, and maybe you can add it to your CV when applying for jobs. I for example work in the chemistry sector, where IT stuff like this is pretty useless on the first glance, but I often got invited for a job interview exactly because of that. It’s just a nice skill to have!
For checking out great CLI tools, check out the according video from TheLinuxExperiment or other YouTube/ PeerTube videos.
Try to learn the basic commands, like cd, ls or cat, then look up for more advanced/ alternative tools, like tree (instead of ls), bat (instead of cat), and so on, and then try to learn shell scripting.
I really like using fish instead of bash, because it’s a very friendly and interactive shell ;)