I am a Linux beginner/amateur and I have sort of had enough of copy and pasting commands I find on the internet without having a good understanding of how they actually work.

I guess my end goal is to be able to comfortably install and use arch Linux with my own customization’s and be able to fix it when things go wrong.

What tips/ideas do you have for getting better at navigating the terminal, and getting a better understanding of how the os works. What is a good roadmap to follow? And how did you, advanced Linux user, get to the stage your at now?

Edit: my current distro is bazzite just in case you were interested and thanks for all the replies you are all really helpful.

  • Snot FlickermanEnglish
    7·
    8 days ago

    For one, stop copying and pasting commands and start learning about the basics of the shell.

    Here’s a basic tutorial from UC Berkeley: https://computing.stat.berkeley.edu/tutorial-using-bash/

    Things you’ll want to focus on:

    1. Delimiters
    2. Syntax (Bash by default, but the syntax for whatever your chosen shell is)
    3. Switches
    4. Path (absolute and relative)
    5. Operators (Pipe will become one of your most heavily used)

    Then once you learn to do some basics, I would hammer repetition. Just force yourself to do things you would usually do via GUI by command line. I started with the basics of updating my system way back in the day with sudo apt-get update && upgrade

    Just type type type type all those commands until remembering them is muscle memory.

    • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
      3·
      8 days ago

      Just type type type type all those commands until remembering them is muscle memory.

      For learning purposes, also try not to use aliases. Because using alias would undermine the learning process of knowing what and how its been done. I recommend (as you said) typing it out over and over again and use aliases on a later stage of your Linux learning only (maybe after weeks at least).

      • Snot FlickermanEnglish
        3·
        8 days ago

        Exactly, shortcuts like aliases or tab completion really should be saved for after you’ve familiarized yourself, so you’re less likely to make a mistake or tab complete to the wrong command etc.