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.

  • Onno (VK6FLAB)
    3•20 days ago

    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.

      • rand_alpha19
        3•20 days ago

        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.

        • Presi300English
          1•20 days ago

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

        • Presi300English
          1•20 days ago

          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…

          • Norah - She/TheyEnglish
            2•20 days ago

            Did you just, not read the OP and come straight to this person’s comment to argue with them based off the least charitable interpretation? The OP already uses Linux Mint Debian Edition. This person mentioned “flavours” of Linux, clearly meaning the various 𝑥-based families of distros (ie Debian, Fedora, Arch etc). Which is pretty solid advice when it comes to learning the CLI in my opinion. I think they were trying to gently nudge OP away from their second EndeavourOS install, as even though ArchWiki is great (sorry KDE but it has better Plasma docs), OP would end up pretty lost on trying to use those skills back on LMDE.

            But to circle back around, Debian, the distro, actually is a good choice for learning the CLI because it can be installed without a desktop environment, potentially using something like Distrobox. That way OP could learn the CLI within their LMDE installation in a sandbox, so they don’t risk messing up their main computer.

            • Presi300English
              0•20 days ago

              Did you just, not read the OP and come straight to this person’s comment to argue with them based off the least charitable interpretation?

              Yeah, kinda

                • Presi300English
                  3•20 days ago

                  It’s kind of a bad habit of mine… yeah, i got no excuses

                  • Norah - She/TheyEnglish
                    2•20 days ago

                    Look, owning that means you’re already doing better than 99% of people who do this :)

      • @doubtingtammy@lemmy.ml
        1•20 days ago

        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

        • Presi300English
          1•20 days ago

          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.