How to learn linux?

Hey everyone, I don’t even know if this section is right for this type of question but it seems most suitable,

I’m new to Linux community Manjaro is my first ever Linux distro and I like it very much,
Since I’m noob and don’t know much about Linux itself or commands that I can run in Konsole, I wanted to ask you guys where to start my journey, which books or online resources or even videos do you recommend for studying… sorry if my question is out of place once again, but out of every section I decided that this was the right place to ask it… thanks guys :blush:

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Hello,

Same sort of topic was created some time ago and some answers got posted here, if you want to read trough

Specific questions, like i want to do that so how i do it in linux?, are most likely to receive specific answers instead some generic pointers …

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Hi @ikkako,

  1. Experience. Set out to do something, and do it. Search the internet for answers if you become stuck. Break stuff. More importantly, fix stuff.
  2. Don’t give yourself an easy-out, like a second boot to Windows. If something is Windows-only, try Windows on a VM. Or try using it with Wine.

Hope this helps!

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There are some Linux books available in the internet.
A good book is the Freebsd handbook: apart from the kernel and the filesystem, all other is valid.

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Where to start learning what many people have been learning already for over 20 years?

Well you’re already there - install, use, and work out how to make it do what you need.

Oh, and get used to not being able to do everything you thought you might whilst learning some new ways to do them.

Many threads, and so many questions and answers all over the place - more than you could ever read.

More interesting questions:

  1. I like Podcasts, what are the best ways to get podcasts?
    Answer - using KDE, Kasts works well, but Vocal is better - and it handles video (for something like TedTalks). Though maybe use Kasts to synchronise, then export to Vocal which has a different sync (Internet Archive).

  2. How hard is it to set up Overseerr, Jackett, Sonarr, and Plex to make a great HTPC?

  3. What’s the best way to rename a folder filled with files with varying length filenames, and remove a unique code preceding the extension in every filename? - like TedTalks - the way to do this [xlkglkjj].mp4

  4. Does anyone really understand ‘man’ pages, or am I just stupid?

and so on…

Just collect bookmarks - sites like Linuxlinks - but realise that when you’re reading them (even though the date is probably saying 'last update July-2022) they’re probably well out of date, often ten years out of date (I recently read that Banshee is one of the top three music player apps… and that’s been dead longer than my great grandmother).

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Thanks :heart:

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Thanks! :heart:

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Hardest thing to get used to is how far astray ‘best linux podcast apps’ can lead you… they don’t have Kasts, and generally they were trying to sell Vocal when it was practically useless about a year ago.

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Learn by understanding your system - there is only one way - learn by doing - repetition, repetition - like when you learned to ride a bike - you fell off - you got back up and repeated your failures until you were able to ride the bike …

Install a system from scratch - not saying your production system - but a test system

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Thanks :heart:

Appreciate all your replies and insights guys :blush:

Read how to maintain your system, read how boot process works, learn pacman, read about PKGBUILDs, makepkg, etc etc etc. All of this is in archwiki.

And most importantly: set up a VM and practice there.

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Super solid advice and pretty much exactly the path I’ve followed (following to be more exact).

Cheers to that man

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Depwnding on your current knowledge, you could try Linux Guide - Wikibooks, open books for an open world
I haven’t had a closer look at it, but at least the part about using the shell seems good and explains some basic and important commands

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i learned the most simply by playing around. at first it was intimidating but if it interests you - you will learn everything soon enough just from browsing around and being curious. I used to go through every single hidden folder in my home directory just to see what everything was and then the root folders and go through every single setting and then i tried to start doing everything in the terminal. it just takes time ad curiosity, thats all.
edit: also remember that manjaro is NOT arch linux

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i love my man pages…they are my best friend…

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Sure, but sometimes tealdeer, and also tldr++ which I just looked at hits the mark with easier examples:

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i did not know about tldr. very nice. i am installing it now. I also happened to browse my manjaro-zsh-config and realized “autocd” is a thing. What a great day!!

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Kind of late to this thread. But the question is interesting.
How I learned, long, long ago.

  1. Forgot 99% of what I learned about how the OS I used before I linux ran. Odds are it isnt applicable.
  2. Deleted Windows and decided never to go back.
  3. I would break something unintentionally, especially on a new system. You can always reinstall and most people I know learned more trying to fix something.
  4. I lost the fear of changing, editing, adding, and removing files. If it breaks, its a learning experience. If I cant fix it, I can always reinstall.

Granted these methods are likely out of date, some may even say stupid. There wasnt a lot to help when I started out. I remember fondly trying to get 32bit Firefox running on a 64bit operating system because 64bit flash didnt exist, when multiarch file setups didnt exist, I learned a ton.
The most important thing to remember now is Google is your friend! If you have another search engine, fine. Just remember that the answer is out there, you just have to find it.

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Ok, but go with tldr++ because that’s cooler - and interactive…

Haha another favourite of mine is ‘mkcd’ which makes and puts you into a new folder… add this to .zshrc

# Make and Enter directory
mkcd(){ mkdir "$1" && cd "$1" ; }

try ‘mkcd test’
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