learning linux

[TheBean]

I am going to learn CS in college. I know that linux knowledge is not required yet, but it would be really cool to get started. However, I use windows and linux seems extremely complex. Where/how should I start. I mean, just looking at the file system and its a confusing MESS. 

[SenioRR]

A couple of months back, I was getting really annoyed by Windows. Whether it was the constant updates that took forever or general instability, I wanted to get away from Microsoft and switch over to Linux. The first days, just like you say, are intimidating but eventually Linux will feel like home and your Windows habits will disperse.

When I was getting started, and by no means am I an expert now, I watched pretty much all of Wendell's videos on Level1Tech and Level1Linux channels.

Here are two videos which I would recommend to anyone new to Linux:

Linux might be confusing right now, but you will eventually realize that it does many things better than Windows.

When you are having problems with something, there is a good chance someone out there did too.

There lots of answers and guides available to help you troubleshoot issues you might encounter.

Don't get discouraged when things go wrong!

[xAcid9]

1 hour ago, Saksham said:

However, I use windows and linux seems extremely complex. Where/how should I start. I mean, just looking at the file system and its a confusing MESS. 

You mean the root directory? 

[TheBean]

13 hours ago, xAcid9 said:

You mean the root directory? 

yes. windows file system (the folders and etc) are easy to navigate and its very easy to find stuff. in linux, I dont know where anything is. 

[SenioRR]

9 hours ago, Saksham said:

yes. windows file system (the folders and etc) are easy to navigate and its very easy to find stuff. in linux, I dont know where anything is. 

Here, this will help:

 

[wasab]

On 7/19/2019 at 1:42 AM, Saksham said:

I am going to learn CS in college. I know that linux knowledge is not required yet, but it would be really cool to get started. However, I use windows and linux seems extremely complex. Where/how should I start. I mean, just looking at the file system and its a confusing MESS. 

What??? Linux has the most organize file system ever. 

 

 

[xAcid9]

On 7/20/2019 at 5:56 AM, Saksham said:

yes. windows file system (the folders and etc) are easy to navigate and its very easy to find stuff. in linux, I dont know where anything is. 

You're simply used to using Windows, if i ask my mom or any teenage girl that rarely use computer other than doing homework, they can't find shit in Windows either. 

 

Take your time to learn Linux.

[TheBean]

2 hours ago, wasab said:

What??? Linux has the most organize file system ever. 

 

 

I actually watched that already. I still thought that windows is so much more simple. but i get why linux has what it does

[wasab]

On 7/21/2019 at 1:05 AM, Saksham said:

I actually watched that already. I still thought that windows is so much more simple. but i get why linux has what it does

I just use the locate command. Finds everything quick. If I need to narrow the search results then i will pipe it to grep and pass in a regex for matching. 

 

 

[pizapower]

Some people just can't learn Linux, like me. Windows forever!

[Guest]

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[DeaconFrost]

As someone who's also learning, my best advice is to pick a common one, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, then install it and use it.  I say to stick with a common one because you have much better results when Googling a "how to do x" type of thing.  Linux runs very well in a VM, so you don't necessarily need to have it on a dedicated machine.

[TheBean]

6 hours ago, DeaconFrost said:

As someone who's also learning, my best advice is to pick a common one, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, then install it and use it.  I say to stick with a common one because you have much better results when Googling a "how to do x" type of thing.  Linux runs very well in a VM, so you don't necessarily need to have it on a dedicated machine.

running ubuntu in vbox. 

Edited July 25, 2019 by Saksham

[Guest]

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[Koeshi]

10 hours ago, Saksham said:

running ubuntu in vbox. 

If you want to get comfortable with it quickly using it on actual hardware will be much better.  Yes VMs are great, but you will rarely want to do much in them and there is always the performance overhead to deal with.

[shuri]

1 hour ago, Koeshi said:

Yes VMs are great, but you will rarely want to do much in them and there is always the performance overhead to deal with.

The whole web and 95% of on-premise servers run virtualized nowadays

[Guest]

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[TommyTwoPockets]

I did this on a laptop I have, I just wanted a fun project to work on so I installed Ubuntu which I got to play around with very little in college. It's been fun so far to learn all aspects of Linux. 

[DeaconFrost]

4 hours ago, shuri said:

The whole web and 95% of on-premise servers run virtualized nowadays

I have 400 servers around the world.  3 are physical and the rest are virtual, either cloud-hosted in AWS or running on a vBlock.  No idea why there's still so much misinformation about virtualization.  It's 2019.

[Nettly_]

You need to know a few simple commands:

"sudo <pm> install" - Where pm is your distros package manager | Installs things
"mkdir <dir>" - Where dir is the directory you wanna make | Makes directories from terminal
"nano <file>" - Where file is the file you want to edit (leave blank for a new file where you are at) (Vim SUCKS) | File editing from terminal
"sudo rm -r <dir>" - Where dir is the directory you want to remove | Remove directories
"ssh <ip>" - Where ip is the address of where you wanna ssh into

Those I use on a daily basis so use them well. There is more to Linux but those commands save lives.

[Yummychickenblue]

On 7/25/2019 at 3:19 PM, SafyreLyons-5LT said:

You need to know a few simple commands:

"sudo <pm> install" - Where pm is your distros package manager | Installs things
"mkdir <dir>" - Where dir is the directory you wanna make | Makes directories from terminal
"nano <file>" - Where file is the file you want to edit (leave blank for a new file where you are at) (Vim SUCKS) | File editing from terminal
"sudo rm -r <dir>" - Where dir is the directory you want to remove | Remove directories
"ssh <ip>" - Where ip is the address of where you wanna ssh into

Those I use on a daily basis so use them well. There is more to Linux but those commands save lives.

Let me break this down further:

• sudo means "Super User DO" and is equivalent to selecting "run as administrator" on Windows, it allows executing programs as privileged user with the ability to modify anything on the system.. Be careful when any using it as you can do some serious damage to your machine sudo'ing things willy nilly
• <pm> install. On linux, you don't (typically) install software by hunting down programs from the bowels of the internet. Instead, you'll use a package manager, which handles dependency resolution, downloading, and installing software (called packages). Of course just like on Windows, installing software is a privileged action, so using sudo is required. Another note, not all package managers will use "install": pacman, the arch linux package manger, uses pacman -S (for Sync) to install a package. Common package managers are apt (Ubuntu, and derivatives like Mint, Pop!_OS), dnf (Red Hat family of distributions like RHEL, Fedora, and CentOS).
• rm removes files and directories. Be careful when combining with sudo as you can delete critical system files.
• ssh stands for Secure SHell,
  • really quick lesson the shell: When you open up a terminal in Linux, you're interacting with the shell, it's essentially a "glue" that takes your input and finds the associated program.
  • ssh allows for starting a shell on a remote system, so any commands you type in will be run on that box instead.
• ls - LiSt - lists files and directories in a directory.
  • This comand also accepts a path, so if you want to see the files in a directory other than the one you're working you would do

    ls /path/to/directory

     

• cd - Change Directory - change the directory to a specified path.
  • this command accepts relative paths, or paths based on the directory the shell is working in at the moment. For example, if you're in the home directory (/home/user) and  you want to change to your pictures folder you could do

    cd Pictures

    or

  • cd /home/user/Pictures

    from an entirely separate directory.

• man <command> - MANual - presents the manual page on a command or topic if it exists. Unfortunately, documentation on Linux is not a strong point compared to other unix (like)s, and, while they may be technically comprehensive,are often too impractical for quickly finding information on specific practical uses.

A "directory" is the same thing as a folder, a folder merely makes a good analogy for browsing them graphically. If you want brief information on a command, many respond to the -h or --help switch. for example:

 

ls --help

brings up information on how to use ls and available switches.

[Koeshi]

On 7/25/2019 at 2:46 PM, shuri said:

The whole web and 95% of on-premise servers run virtualized nowadays 

I was under the impression we were discussing desktop not server here.

 

[Pedantic side note] not the whole web is virtualised and splitting on-prem servers into a separate category isn't really needed.[/pedantic side note]

[ViscountStyx]

On 7/31/2019 at 1:49 PM, Koeshi said:

I was under the impression we were discussing desktop not server here.

 

 

  Hide contents

[Pedantic side note] not the whole web is virtualised and splitting on-prem servers into a separate category isn't really needed.[/pedantic side note]

 

See that's the thing, because of the flexibility, the lines are more blurred in terms of what's a Desktop and server.  You can install any server side software on the desktop, and a desktop on the server.  The difference here from Windows is that it's restricted based on licensing terms.

 

I use an Ubuntu 18.04 laptop for work (with a Win10 Ent Virtualbox guest).

[AthrunZ]

On 8/2/2019 at 3:49 PM, Johnson_McBig said:

Don't dual-boot, only use Linux.

Dump gaming if you need to, you're going to college.

Use PopOS(aka Ubuntu++).

Don't bloat your shit.

Thicken up your skin, honey, you're diving into a world full of "google it, idiot" people. Some are pretty nice though.

I can get on board with this sentiment - I've been using Linux for over 20 years, and for the most part people online are good about answering questions, or at least saying "you need to learn to look around, I found the answer with a 2 second search - here's the link".

 

If you think anyone is done learning about any OS, your kidding yourself - I still struggle with linux occasionally, but it's always worth it, and has gotten a lot easier recently (remember the days of NDIS wrappers to get external wireless because internal wireless support was trash?!)

 

I recently helped my coworker switch to linux - though it wasn't necessarily his goal to switch, he did want to learn it.

 

The way I taught my coworker linux was to help him set up his own plex media server on a little raspberry pi.

Entry cost is super small (like $30), and the rewards for getting it up are great - you can set it up as an image backup service for your android device, stream your music from anywhere, and when I initially set it up I made sure it was primarily headless, so it forced him to learn the beauty of command line. 

 

Over time, through basic maintenance, learning how to move files from his local PC to his server and then having to diagnose why files weren't readable by plex if he transferred as root (then learning chmod...), he became comfortable enough to switch his primary PC to linux.

 

 

[muhwyndham]

Don't be overwhelmed, especially the file system. for beginner, just focus on the HOME directory first, all you need (except when installing packages, even then you'll usually only reserved on using 'sudo' and command) is inside the HOME directory in terminal it's usually marked as tilde '~'. or 'Home' in file explorer. Try to get familiar with the terminal, it's your best friends when you need troubleshooting, etc, but using GUI is not a bad thing either.