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Beginners Guides

Hey everyone, I’m relatively new to linux and was looking for some advice/direction. I have been using Mint Debian Edition for around 6mo or so, and want to learn to use the command line efficiently and proficiently.

I have set up EndeavourOS on a backup laptop I have and have been playing with it, reading the Arch Wiki and such, but I feel like I’m not necessarily learning why I’m doing things, just doing what has worked for others.

So here I am. I guess I’m looking for recommendations for books or articles (physical or online) that can help me to learn and understand the workings on linux, and especially the command line.

Thank you all so much.

averyminya ,

There’s a lot of good suggestions here.

As someone who uses Linux but doesn’t love it, be prepared to restart from scratch a lot. Keep the OS on a blank drive and just point the OS to your storage drives once it’s up and running.

Otherwise you are going to be losing data every time you break something in the OS, and that is really no fun.

CrabAndBroom ,

One of the biggest things that helped me was setting up virtual machines and installing different versions of Linux in them and just playing around. I found it super helpful because it makes you learn different things (for example you mentioned reading the Arch wiki which is a good resource, but not all of it will apply to Mint necessarily) and as an added bonus, it doesn’t matter if you break everything. You can just restore a backup, or better yet, reinstall from scratch so you get used to the process or better yet, keep breaking stuff until you come out the other side and get things working again!

Black616Angel ,

Linux is a tool. And I find that the best way to learn handling a new tool is making a project with it.

A book is (maybe) fine, but a project will help you use your knoweldge while you gain it.

So set up a Lemmy/Minetest/Matrix/Teamspeak server or write a bash script to change your audio output device/volume or program a simple bot in your favorite programming language or mix some music or gather a bunch of PDFs and search through them and concatenate them

And while you do that and create directories, change permissions, move files, create users or “cat” or “grep” or “sed” stuff, find out, what every single line you write in a terminal does. And instead of using a graphical program to move files, shutdown your PC or update all programs, only use the command line.

This will help you in the long run.

sunzu2 ,

Using LLM works great since Linux documentation is extensive and was used to train the models.

Just tell it what you want to do and it will write commands and explain how they work.

Even models that can run on mid grade consumer GPU can do this now.

You can set up a docker container for webui and load models in there.

rand_alpha19 ,

I think, as a Linux beginner also (~10 months), the best way to learn the terminal is to figure out what tools are useful to you and then read the manual pages or [application name] --help (if the application supports that command). Learning how to use grep will also be really helpful for troubleshooting, since sifting through logs is such a pain.

Like if you want to download a YouTube video, install yt-dlp and then type man yt-dlp into your terminal to learn about how that tool works. You can do this for basic utilities too, like cp, dd, mv, etc. and other applications you have installed. You can also use yt-dlp --help but that won't open in the parser, just the terminal. Learn by doing things that are relevant to you and branch out from there.

There are also applications that will let you read the manual pages outside of a terminal, like xman, if you find that useful. After a certain point, you'll be able to write commands with switches/arguments without needing to check what they mean first.

Malgas ,

apropos is also helpful if you want to do something but don’t know what the relevant tools are.

Guenther_Amanita ,

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 ;)

I hope that my comment was helpful! :)

Presi300 ,
@Presi300@lemmy.world avatar

The best advice… Just use Linux more… It’s the only way to get familiar with it

fuckwit_mcbumcrumble ,

Yeah that’s the biggest cure for “learning something and not knowing why”. Instead of just reading to read, try doing things, and when you have a problem or question look it up.

Want to install multiple programs at once? Google it. Want to search for a program, but it spits out 700 versions? Google how to filter outputs in the command line.

Unless you just really like reading dry ass documentation then you kinda just have to do it. And when you run into an issue then figure out the fix.

vk6flab ,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

My first recommendation is to become familiar with one flavour of Linux. Debian is a solid choice and it will give you a good understanding of how a great many derivatives operate.

The command line is a tool to get things done, it’s not an end to itself. Some things are easier to do with a GUI, many things are easier to do with the command line interface or CLI.

Many Linux tools are tiny things that take an input, process it and produce an output. You can string these commands together to achieve things that are complex with a GUI.

Manipulation of text is a big part of this. Converting things, extracting or filtering data, counting words

For example, how many times do you use the words “just” and “simply” in the articles you write?

grep -oiwE “just|simple” *.txt | sort | uniq -c

That checks all the text files in a directory for the occurrence of either word and shows you how many occurred and what capitalisation they used.

In other words, learning to use the CLI is about solving problems, one by one, until you don’t have to look things up before you understand why or how it works.

Presi300 ,
@Presi300@lemmy.world avatar

Debian is a terrible choice for beginners

princessnorah ,
@princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

What would suggest is a better option for beginners than a Debian-base?

Presi300 ,
@Presi300@lemmy.world avatar

There is a difference between Debian and Debian-based. I wouldn’t recommend Debian itself, because it’s got quite a bit of post-install setup (installing sudo, setting up flatpak, installing network manager, that kind of stuff). Linux mint is one of my go-tos when it comes to new users though…

doubtingtammy , (edited )

IDK if thats true in 2024. Debian 12 isn’t much harder to setup than mint or Ubuntu, and the version of gnome it ships with is perfectly fine. I’m not a beginner anymore, so maybe there’s something I glossed over.

Oh wait, I just remembered the thing I glossed over. Needing to install sudo would definitely throw a beginner for a loop. (Iirc, you only need to do that if you give a root password during install). And that’s the problem with trying to learn Linux. Someone will tell you the thing is easy, but they forgot about some arcane step

Presi300 ,
@Presi300@lemmy.world avatar

Not only that, installing flatpak is also a thing. PPAs also work differently on debian, compared to ubuntu… And if the beginner has too new of a hardware setup or wants to game at all, Debian is gonna throw them for a loop.

rand_alpha19 ,

I found it really easy, but I was pretty familiar with the terminal on Windows. I started off with Debian in December and set up LMDE for my wife a few weeks ago and it was dead simple, though I do have to be her tech support since she's not really a computer person.

I thought it would be a pain to install drivers and Steam and all that, but it wasn't. I did give up on trying to set up my printer, but I'll revisit that eventually.

Presi300 ,
@Presi300@lemmy.world avatar

LMDE isn’t Debian. It’s based on it, but removes a lot of the headaches, found in Debian.

just_another_person ,

The only way you’re REALLY going to learn is be actively using things. If everything is just working, GREAT! That’s all you need to know. Just keep enjoying it.

If there something specific you are using this for, let us know and we might be able to help you out.

That being said, one of the easiest to force yourself to learn where everything is, is by using the CLI instead of GUI wherever applicable. Install packages, do updates, change settings…etc.

bionicjoey ,

linuxcommand.org

Kongar ,

I’ve seen this one recommended in the past. I think it’s great for beginners yet still full of useful information.

linuxjourney.com

variants ,

I think you need like a project that will give you a goal and things to look up to do specific things. What got me into Linux was running a minecraft realm, then we hit limitations on the service so opted for a server instead which lead down the road to a VPS and had me using Linux and commands

radswid ,
@radswid@feddit.org avatar

Nice to hear that you have found your way to Linux. What helped me a lot to understand Linux and the command line better was trying to install Arch, following the instructions in the wiki, failing at the first attempt and trying again and finding the error.

NegativeLookBehind ,
@NegativeLookBehind@lemmy.world avatar

There’s a book called “How Linux works” and I think you might find a lot of good info there.

And at a glance, this Bash tutorial looks pretty good: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/shell-scripting-crash-course-how-to-write-bash-scripts-in-linux/

CameronDev ,

Psst, you link has gone missing

NegativeLookBehind ,
@NegativeLookBehind@lemmy.world avatar

Weird, I can still see it

CameronDev , (edited )

https://programming.dev/pictrs/image/ece7da84-1592-45fe-a6c5-cb5c1f7b1e41.jpeg

Very weird. Maybe its the client. Can’t see it in the browser either

Ah, I see whats happened, you didnt put anything in the square brackets:


<span style="color:#323232;">[](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/shell-scripting-crash-course-how-to-write-bash-scripts-in-linux/)
</span>

should be:


<span style="color:#323232;">[Cool Tutorial](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/shell-scripting-crash-course-how-to-write-bash-scripts-in-linux/)
</span>

resulting in:

Cool Tutorial

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