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

[Guidosaurus-Rex]

On 11/26/2022 at 8:38 PM, ZachTheDoggo said:

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:

1. * What's a Library in Linux? Explain in simple terms please.  I dunno.  Here's the thing.  I've been using linux for 3 years and I've never needed to know in order to use it.  Yes, I have seen/heard this term in passing.  I know it's referring to packages (programs) or languages (programming) available, I think?  However, I'm not sure why you'd need to know this if you're just getting started.  Any context you can provide would be helpful.  
2. * 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?  This is piece of jargon that I've heard on a linux youtube channel.  Man is slang for "manual."  In some forums you might ask a question and the response might be "did you consult the man page?"  Which is another way of saying "read the fxxxxxx manual."  Not exactly helpful but, a lot questions can be answered if the user reads any documentation included  with any piece of software you might install.  In my experience, it's more common to type "--help" after the command I'm launching in the terminal.  For example, I use Pi-hole.  The website listed several commands.  The command "pihole -up" updates the program.  Typing "pihole --help" lists all the commands as well as provide a brief description of what it does or why you'd use it.  In my experience typing "-help" after a command is more common than "man" [command name].  
3. * What's a file manager, If you're coming from Windows, think Explorer. If you're reading this forum on a windows pc, the first icon in the taskbar is usually a manila folder.  Click on it and you see your common Windows directories (Desktop, Downloads, Documents) which contain the files on the system.  This is a "Graphical File Explorer" since you can navigate and manipulate the folders and contents with the mouse and keyboard.  An file explorer in Linux would be Dolphin.  That's a graphical file explorer since you're left/right clicking and double clicking to navigate through the various directories and folders.  You can copy, delete, move, merge files into folders and so on.  Ranger would be an example of text-based file manager.  Instead of seeing "picture" of a folder, all you see a wall of text with the names of the files/folders (directories).  Files are manipulated almost exclusively through the keyboard vs the mouse and having the need to click around.  
4. repo, Shorthand for "repository."  What's a repository?  Place where the software, various packages, etc are stored.   
5. desktop manager,  I dunno.  Maybe you mean "Desktop Environment"  I've never heard desktop manager.  Unless you mean Window Manger.  If we stick with desktop environment, often initialed "DE", the most common would be GNOME or KDE.  There are several others.  The desktop environment defines the look and feel distribution.  A lot of software packaged with the distribution is designed around the look and feel desktop environment.  KDE ships with KTorrent.  Distributions with GNOME often package Gparted.   Of course it does not matter what DE a piece software was designed to visually "match."  I run a Fedora based distribution called Nobara.  Nobara ships with GNOME.  If I wanted I could install KTorrent since it's available on flathub.  
6. display manager.  As I mentioned before, maybe you mean "window manager?"  If yes, then a window manager (WM) is one of those programs that is always there (unless you're working headlessly) but, as a beginner you might not often think about.  On Windows it's called Desktop Window Manager.  On Linux Mint it's called Muffin.  Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition ships with Mutter as it's window manager.  When you start any program, the window manager displays in the size and shape that makes it easily readable.  A calculator program is usually very small and rectangular.  A web browser like Chrome can take up your whole monitor or just 1/2 if you want it to.  A window manager allows you to choose how you want it displayed.  There are several different window managers that can be included or apart from the desktop environment.  There are several WMs that fundamentally change how you interact with the operating system.  I3, Sway, Awesome are all examples.  Many of these utilize keyboard shortcuts to launch applications and organize windows.  Some will "tile" launched applications and display them evenly across the monitor(s).  The common arrangement is the master & stacked.  

Hope these answers help.  I provided links to some applications and definitions if my words fail to adequately explain.  Good luck on your linux journey.  Thus far, I'm enjoying mine.  Yes, there are headaches but, there are headaches with any OS be it Windows, OSX, Linux, etc.  (I got nervous any time I typed "etc".  My fellow linux users know why.  As long I typed etc and not /etc.)  All the best.  
Thank you!

 

[Mansoor Barri]

- Experience, simply playing around with Linux and figuring things out will help you more than anything else, trust me.

 

- Trial and error; don't be afraid to break things, especially at first. I broke my system 5 times, which was a lot considering I had some experience with Linux in VMs.

 

- Read through MAN pages to make less mistakes, but they can be overwhelming, so I recommend TLDR (https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr)  instead, which simply summarises the entire MAN page and extracts the useful information.

[Eviljuche]

Well, apart from reading manuals and just using Linux in general, there are some other ways.

 

The most orthodox one would be to systematically learn Linux with some literature, for the beginning I can highly recommend the Brian Ward's "How Linux works: Everything a Superuser should know" from No Starch Press, and, maybe after that one, "The Unix Programming Environment" by Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike - which is useful in terms of deep understanding of why does the things in Unix and Linux in particular are working as they do.

 

Another option is faster but much more painful - trying to use the most hardcore or old Linux distros possible, learning of which depends on manuals, intuition, and common logic - Arch Linux is often recommended as a starting point distro in that regard (mostly because of its extensive wiki documentation), but there are other wonderful options such as Void or Slackware with their special stuff worthy of examination. And In the end, it all comes down to Gentoo.

[wasab]

If you use linux for a few years, it is quite difficult to not become at least familiar and comfortable with it. Learning the deep nitty gritty isn't really necessary just like you don't need to know about windows domain or the powershell to use a windows computers. For 90% of windows users, most do not even touch these things. Some complex linux stuffs like bash scripting, volume group management, kernel modules, SELinux, and enviorment variables are not really something an everyday user need to worry about. They are more for sys admins and software developers. 

 

For just regular "advance" linux users, I think knowing basic file/dir commands and concepts like pipes+redirects and ownership and permissions like chmod and chown would already be enough. Distros like arch and gentoo in my opinions seriously misinform the general consumers to what linux actually is. It isn't some type of arcane system that needs black magic programming knowledge to be usable.