linux Getting new to Linux, what are some ways to be a Master at using Linux?

[ZachTheDoggo]

Hello LTTForum, I recently decided to start my Linux journey, I've always wanted to try Linux but never knew how to, just recently I have decided to take a passion into learning the operating system as that you can do a lot with it. Do you recommend any videos reguarding the subject?

What are some ways to effectively learn Linux, as well as if you had any tips or tricks I should need to know.

Currently, i'm stuck on the following if you can also answer these it would make my day too:

* What's a Library in Linux? Explain in simple terms please.

* For the man command, is there a command that allows you to view the contents of a particular section, Let's say I want to learn about adding a user account, can I navigate to a particular section or search a description in using Man or info command? 

* What's a file manager, repo, desktop manager, display manager.

Thank you!

[Dutch_Master]

1. A library (lib in Linux-land) is nothing more then a collection of functions the system needs to work. Works pretty much the same way as a Public Library if you want to read a book.
2. The man pages have their own man page, open a terminal and type:

   man man

   Hit the Enter key and give it a go. Scroll with the arrow keys, pressing q exits the man page.

3. A repo is short for repository, a collection of software your system can use. It's normally used via a package manager. Synaptic is a common one for Debian-based distro's.

4. File manager is just what it says on the tin: a tool to manage your files.

5. Desktop and display managers are used in graphical environments. They're responsible you see pretty things on your screen. You don't have to use them, servers usually don't, nor does anything that won't need a GUI to interact with the outside world (i.e. humans).

6. You can find most all answers by using Google, reading books on Linux or even watch YT video's on various subjects. But the best teaching tool is experimenting stuff yourself.

For your entry level knowledge, I recommend using Pop_OS.

[RONOTHAN##]

33 minutes ago, ZachTheDoggo said:

What are some ways to effectively learn Linux, as well as if you had any tips or tricks I should need to know.

Just try to do stuff and figure it out as you go. That's the way I've done it for the most part. I'm not IT level, but I can get around a bash terminal way better than CMD (where I started) just from more experience. If you don't want to break anything, do it in a VM and make frequent snapshots that you can revert back to if you ever screw something up (say you follow an unscrupulous tutorial that tells you how to do the Linux equivalent of delete System32). Just don't be afraid to try things, screw stuff up, and figure out what's going on. Experience is just the best way to learn Linux IMO. 

 

If you want to go the more advanced way to figure it out or you want to go further, read through the Arch Wiki, pretty much every answer to every Linux question you might have is in there. It's not the easiest to figure out, but it's got hyper links to every term that might be a bit hard to understand. For most people though, you probably want to start out with some more Linux focused Youtube channels talking about the basics. 

 

41 minutes ago, ZachTheDoggo said:

* What's a Library in Linux? Explain in simple terms please.

* For the man command, is there a command that allows you to view the contents of a particular section, Let's say I want to learn about adding a user account, can I navigate to a particular section or search a description in using Man or info command? 

* What's a file manager, repo, desktop manager, display manager.

Library - collection of program files that you can't use but are used by a bunch of programs that you do use. It's for a variety of reasons, so developers don't need to write a bunch of code and can just use what's already exist for very common functions and to help save drive space so you don't have a ton of redundant code on your system. 

 

The man command opens up the manual for the command in whatever default text editor you have setup, usually either vi, vim, or nano. All three of those do have commands to be able to search through the files, though it depends on the exact one how to actually do it (vi and vim you type / then whatever you want to find, then press n to go forward in the search and N to go backwards, forget what it is in nano). It is a good idea to learn vim eventually, it is a really powerful text editor, you can do this with the vimtutor command, though it should be low on your priority list. 

 

File manager - the thing that lets you manage files, so this will be the equivalent of Windows Explorer. Popular ones are Nautilus (default in Gnome based distros like Ubuntu) and Dolphin. 

 

repo - repository, collection of programs that your package manager (the program you use to install programs) searches through to download the piece of software you want. 

 

Desktop Manager - I assume you mean Desktop environment with this, and this is just the thing that you use to interact with. It's basically the GUI, it controls the look and feel of the system. 

 

Display Manager - backend of the desktop environment. This is the thing that actually renders the desktop. The two big ones are XOrg and Wayland, each has its pros and cons. 

[RollyShed]

6 hours ago, ZachTheDoggo said:

Hello LTTForum, I recently decided to start my Linux journey,

Maybe the first questions to answer are -

 

1.) Have you used a computer before and what for?

2.) What do you want to do with the computer running Linux, what jobs?

3.) Do you know anything about writing computer code of any sort?

4.) What computer do you have (specifications)?

5.) Have you looked for any books?

 

One I have here on the desk is "Linux Pocket Guide - Essential Commands" by Daniel Barrett.

If you put "linux books" in your Google search a good range will be shown.

 

Personally we only use Linux around here and use it every day. It is the tool / engine to run our computers. This allows web browsing, documents, sound - listening and editing, video editing, accounting, writing and publishing books, etc. etc. It is the reliable alternative to Windows which we have found unreliable.

[wasab]

I will explain by pointing out something you are familiar with on Windows

 

A library on linux are like those .dll you find on windows. 

 

Man command is like those info user guides you find on windows and yes, you can man most command line utilities as well as most commonly used shared library(relevant for software  developers)

Check out the online version of the linux man page. 

 

A file manager is like file explorer you find in Windows.

[ZachTheDoggo]

1 minute ago, wasab said:

I will explain by pointing out something you are familiar with on Windows

 

A library on linux are like those .dll you find on windows. 

 

Man command is like those info user guides you find on windows and yes, you can man most command line utilities as well as most commonly used library(relevant for software  developers)

Check out the online version of the linux man page. 

 

A file manager is like file explorer you find in Windows.

Question for the man part. Can I navigate to sections or search man via descriptions rather than the title of the command, let's say I know the descripton of the command but don't know the name of the command, can I use man to find specific sections or descriptions like a search rather than knowing the full command?

[wasab]

5 minutes ago, ZachTheDoggo said:

Question for the man part. Can I navigate to sections or search man via descriptions rather than the title of the command, let's say I know the descripton of the command but don't know the name of the command, can I use man to find specific sections or descriptions like a search rather than knowing the full command?

Yes but you can easily do that online. Websites are easier to read, google, and search for. no? E.g., here is online version of what you would see if you do man man(man page of the man)

 

https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/man.1.html

[ZachTheDoggo]

Just now, wasab said:

What is in the man page depends on what the authors of the program wrote for the manpage. If they wrote them then yeah but if they didn't, then no. I just uses the online version instead of doing thr terminal. Websites are easier to read and search for no? E.g., here is online version of what you would see if you do man man(man page of the man)

 

https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/man.1.html

So for OS commands would be good to your knowledge? Also, thanks for the reply. When you first started learning linux, did you mainly rely on the info or man commands or internet?

[wasab]

10 minutes ago, ZachTheDoggo said:

So for OS commands would be good to your knowledge? Also, thanks for the reply. When you first started learning linux, did you mainly rely on the info or man commands or internet?

I edited my post. you can do search on the linux manpage yeah but it is far easier to search online. 

 

The documents for all the manpages are usually store in /usr/share/man on your disk. You can search inside like you would on any regular files and dirs but why would you want to do that when you can google the online linux manpage?

 

I used internet and I also learned it in school. My 2nd year CS degree involves me writting and debugging programs for the linux operating system. During that time I googled up section 2 and 3(those involving system calls and libc) of the manpage for the commonly used posix and native linux APIs frequently. 

[ZachTheDoggo]

3 minutes ago, wasab said:

I edited my post. you can do search on the linux manpage yeah but it is far easier to search online. 

 

The documents for all the manpages are usually store in /usr/share/man on your disk. You can search inside like you would on any regular files and dirs but why would you want to do that when you can google the online linux manpage?

 

I used internet and I also learned it in school. My 2nd year CS degree involves me writting and debugging programs for the linux operating system. During that time I googled up section 2 and 3(those involving system calls and libc) of the manpage for the commonly used posix and native linux APIs frequently. 

I'm trying to work in a server environment, and I may not have access to another computer, so that's why I'm trying to do it the old fashion way. Thank you though for recommending me the online resource. I'll try that.

[badlou101]

Even if you don't use arch as your Linux distro the archwiki is a great source of documentation for when you get more experienced. https://wiki.archlinux.org

[Arokan]

They say you don't need the command line for Linux. True, but that's actually half the fun with it

The best way to learn is to get a distro that's as light-weight as they come, I'd recommend Debian right out; Pop does too much for you, and then do everything yourself.

Distro actually doesn't really matter, it just determines the pre-installed programs and environment with which they come. You can change everything afterwards.

 

So, Debian comes with GPU-drivers that old that you don't really wanna use them, so you have to add another repo. KDE doesn't look too fresh from the beginning, so you have to customise it. The next addiction comes with conky, you'll wanna use that now that you've joined the cool kids' club. But that's not enough anymore, you want to design your own conky so you take a template, analyse the code, copy&paste, google what you want to add and bam, completely customised conky that'll make your friends flush when they see it.

 

You'll want to use the command line to do that, have no fear, and then you'll encounter something, that takes a long time and you have to repeat... Automate it! Then you'll learn bash and down the rabbit-hole you go because then turning your script on manually isn't automatically enough anymore and you'll wanna try crontab. You notice that crontab is fine for you backup-routine (which you should do as a beginner), but it starts your scripts several times, so you turn to systemd.

 

And off you go.. You'll buy a raspberry pi, you create a NAS, install nextcloud, integrate its calendar with linux, get a plex-server with the flatpak app, want to convert all your videos to AV1, because it's awesome, and so on... Literally all you do more than 3-4 times will be automated

 

It's hell of a lot of fun, but make a backup regularly; chances are you'll fuck it up here and there, and when you're desperate enough to want to learn awk, you can be considered an advances linux-user and return to this forum to help the other noobies.

 

P.S.: friend of mine with almost no IT-training landed a well paying job just because he's been using linux for the past decade and knew how it works.

[ZachTheDoggo]

Hello LTT, I'm trying to find an effective way to learn how to use the Linux CLI interface. 

I'm trying to practice commands, but I don't know how to get a list of useable commands of of the manual cmd. Does anyone have any suggestions? 

Thank you.

[OhioYJ]

Most of the time I learn by doing things I actually need to do. You can google and find a cheat sheet (random example). However for many of the commands you'll still want to either use the man pages, or look them up on another site. I use computer hope for this many times. Here is say the rsync page from computer hope.

[Nayr438]

What commands are available comes down to what packages are installed.

The GNU Core Utilities should however be present on most if not all Linux Systems, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GNU_Core_Utilities_commands

[ZachTheDoggo]

2 minutes ago, Nayr438 said:

What commands are available comes down to what packages are installed.

The GNU Core Utilities should however be present on most if not all Linux Systems, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GNU_Core_Utilities_commands

Can you read sections in man pages or help commands? Like for ex, if I want to know all of the sys admin cmd pages, how can I navigate to those specific pages?

[ZachTheDoggo]

I sometimes forget the name of the command i'm looking for I was wondering if there was an option to search based off of functionality, description. I was also wondering what the command is if so and if there is also a cmd to view a particular section for cmds ex: system admin commands / utilities. 

[ZachTheDoggo]

19 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

Most of the time I learn by doing things I actually need to do. You can google and find a cheat sheet (random example). However for many of the commands you'll still want to either use the man pages, or look them up on another site. I use computer hope for this many times. Here is say the rsync page from computer hope.

Can you read sections in man pages or help commands? Like for ex, if I want to know all of the sys admin cmd pages, how can I navigate to those specific pages?

[Thomas4]

Maybe not EFFECTIVE but EDUCATIONAL

 

In a terminal

To find out what commands are available on your machine, type the first letter and press the tab key, a line will appear asking if you want to see all of the commands beginning with that letter, on mine there are 162 beginning with the letter "a".

Type man <name of command> to get the information for that particular command. Unfortunately, you'll find that not all commands have a man page.

 

And you can go to:

https://www.man7.org › linux › man-pages where Michael Kerrisk has an up-to-date listing of all the man pages broken down by section, alphabetically, or by project. He also has a curated list of informational pages from other various free software projects .

 

[ZachTheDoggo]

Hello, I'm trying to figure out two commands. 

One command is for searching only the description of the command rather then name and the other is for looking at all available commands in a specific section such as system administration in the man pages. I'm having a rough time finding a good cmd for this.

[Srijan Verma]

compgen -c

this?

[Nayr438]

13 hours ago, ZachTheDoggo said:

Can you read sections in man pages or help commands? Like for ex, if I want to know all of the sys admin cmd pages, how can I navigate to those specific pages?

There is no such thing as sys admin commands. What would define commands for a system administrator would come back to the environment and what packages are currently installed. What I use in a environment could be very different than what you would. As a sys admin you are expected to know your environment.

 

mandb is more of a manual for individual utilities, not a book on how to use your system.

[Kilrah]

Threads merged.

 

Find things you want to do, and search for how to do them. There you'll encounter utilities and slowly build up your awareness/knowledge of them over time with practice.

[nwildner]

Another tip on how to learn commands is to know how to read manpages(old answer before I deleted my U&E account).

 

This is a knowledge/method I use since I've started using Linux almost all to make time searching for things more effective. Some implicit knowledge(like wildcards, substitutions, autocompletion) will also be needed

 

Other resources that are old friends on learning the Bash basics:

• Bash Guide for Beginners
• Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide

 

[ZachTheDoggo]

18 hours ago, Srijan Verma said:

compgen -c

this?

Exactly! Thank you, now is there a way to read a specific section in the man pages for generalized commands. Like for ex: if I want to read about System Admin commands in the man, how can I navigate to that menu?