How did you learn linux?

by using it!

I switched to linux when i was already a programmer and comfortable with terminal use, so my experience probably wasn't the same. But the most efficient way to "learn" linux is to just start using it (option 2: doing projects and learning on the way). Get comfy installing packages from the terminal (apt, pacman, whatever) and reading man pages, and everything else will fall into place as you try new things and learn how theyre done. these things take time.

The Arch Wiki wiki.archlinux.org is the greatest thing ever created and will be indispensable no matter what OS you use, though all commands and tips assume the reader uses Arch.

There are any number of tutorials you can find on Google or duckduck go or any search engine. 😉 I have heard it said that building an Arch Linux instance "from scratch" using a tutorial is a good learning experience for a moderate skill user.

A few key skills jump out at me as a casual CLI user:

• Package managers (search, install, and uninstall packages, add repositories and refresh package lists)
• Compiling packages as-is from git repositories isn't all that hard with a tutorial
• Editing configuration files from command line using vim/emacs (don't use emacs lol) is a must if you're ever in a situation where the DE won't load
• Grub menu: if you have a problem booting, editing the file your computer uses to set boot flags is a very valuable skill
• Watch some YouTube videos about Linux distros to see their philosophy/usages. For example: Debian is ultra stable with long release window and WIDE hardware support so stuff gets out of date but it runs on a potato, Arch/Manjaro/etc is rolling release with less stability but fastest updates, Fedora made by Red Hat is useful for enterprise, Linux Mint/Ubuntu are very user friendly, Puppy Linux is user friendly and very lightweight, Gentoo is for if you want to compile all the packages yourself (A HUGE PAIN), etc.
• learn what a desktop environment is and how a display server (xorg or wayland) works
• The man (manual) command is your friend! The syntax is "man [any command/program here no brackets]"

It started around 2014/15 for me. Was a big Mac user since OS X, but the increasing walled-garden aspect Apple was beginning to implement was a major deciding factor. I had tried out Ubuntu in a VM sometime around 2007/08, but it never really clicked and was content on Mac at the time.

I started researching Linux and made the jump onto Linux Mint. So many of the roadblocks and issues I felt were becoming very apparent on Mac were suddenly non-existent, and I continued on just self-learning and exploring what's possible. Now getting close to a decade later after jumping from Linux Mint to Debian to now Void, I could never go back to anything else

Started dual booting it with Windows and generally tried to do the same things on Linux that I did on Windows, when I ran into an issue I attacked it for a while and if I couldn't solve it I went to Windows for a while and then went back to Linux to try again. Pretty exponential improvement as a result due to my familiarity with Linux replacing Windows. Also coincided with Proton getting better of course and once every game I played ran on Linux the last reason to boot Windows was gone and I deleted that partition.

Edit: Also, Archwiki is magic, especially if you're on an Arch based distro (not Manjaro, that shit is terrible), I personally use EndeavourOS with the Cinnamon DE cause it's familiar to me being relatively similar to the Win7/Win10 layout.

Wanted to run a website when I was a kid, and Google told me about LAMP

Back when I was starting bookstores had basic references from publishers like Reilly's e.g. Unix in a Nutshell. You want something with a good index that you can find guides for the main utilities.

The good old days used a lot of plain text files so utilities like grep, sed and awk could handle most of the processing. Now I think you'd need more complex tools and their libraries to handle the structured text.

I think I switched from Windows 10 to Linux when I became conscious of online privacy due to things like the Snowden leaks. I tried a few distros and settled on Debian, initially with a GUI, but it wasn't too hard to get used to the CLI for package management. I just looked things up whenever I encountered a problem and gradually learned more about Linux-related topics

I tried with Mandrake back in the 90s. It was Ubuntu that really clicked for me though. Once I understood what "apt" was, it changed my world. It took all the difficulty out of administering my computer. Windows didn't really work all that well in those days. Apt changed everything. I could outsource my administration to the distro maintainers. Windows just became a toy. With Linux I could have pretty much anything the way I wanted, and I didn't have to do anything other than install a package.

BTW, It's perfectly possible to administer your system with just GUIs. It's just easier to use the command line once you're used to it. The Windows command line isn't very powerful, and has fallen to the wayside. But you can do really powerful things there that are difficult to represent or share visually from a *nix system. That tends to make it popular for helping others.

Around 2001 I dual-booted Mandrake Linux, it was great for the time. I dabbled for a few years, then gave up for ease of gaming. Came back last year and lemme tell you, it's much better now.

I just installed linux 2 months ago and fully decided to use it as a daily driver on both my PCs a week ago. It's been sometimes fun and sometimes a bit time consuming. I often struglle to find awsers to my problems in forums or videos, even if those help. I haven't yet had to ask for help on the ubuntu discord I'm in but I find having the option reassuring.

I am not a perefect example because I always dabbled a little in linux, on a second computer. however I started to get mad at windows 10 and when I got my new laptop, windows 11 was not going to happen for me so I decided it was time for me to take the plunge and change my main computer to linux

I find chosing something that looks vaugly windows like helps, (so not gnome) and also disabling the virtual workspaces, though that could also be my personal quarks.

honestly, to pariphrase game changer, the best way to learn is by doing the best way to do is by begining and the only way to begin is by begining, ask arround and try to figure out a distro and desktop you want to try and just try it. as for what I use, my main computer is Fedora XFCE and my second laptop is Open Suse Tumbleweed XFCE because I wanted to try a rolling release

yeah i just full swapped to daily driver about 3 months ago and havent looked back. Youtube is a great resource as well as other linux forums. I'm running fedora 38 and i love it

Mostly just through using it, and via being somewhat passionate/interested in open source stuff at the point I was discovering it, and I continue to learn by just slowly pushing against my comfort zone in certain areas.

My first Linux install was back 2008, Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron", through wubi which meant it easy to bail out if I needed to. I played around with it, got various things working like making sure I could watch YouTube videos (via Flash!), access files on my memory sticks, use OpenOffice, listen to music, torrent stuff etc.

Eventually I swapped out Wubi for a "proper" dual-boot when I was settled and began living in Ubuntu full-time, other than needing to use Windows XP for syncing my iPod with iTunes (I've never really bothered with gaming on PC so it was never a draw to keep Windows). At some point the Windows XP install just seriously borked, no idea why but it ground to a halt. Synced my iPod one last time and wiped it for a full Ubuntu install.

Ever since then I've been a Linux user all through university and into my job. I've just gradually learned more and more about doing things in a UNIXy way, picking up bits of the commandline to the point where I'm much more comfortable with keyboards than I am with using a mouse, learning about various system utilities etc.

I usually think about what problems I have or perhaps what I've seen other people do, and then try to find out different ways to achieve that or solve the problem. Usually that takes me on a nice little journey where I get intimidated for a bit, then I digest it and read around, and then I start trying things, and then it clicks. Eventually it'll get integrated into whatever workflow is appropriate and then it's on to the next thing when I get that itch or have the headspace to learn some more.

Yeah, it's more like "learn allong the way". Not that you can't read books about the OS, but it's a very fast shifing OS, way more than BSD variants. So, if you read a book published, let's say, 10 years ago, some if the things in there might not apply now.

Just learn from forums/reddit, places like that. Ask questions, you will receive answers 😉. Start with something that works out of the box (Ubuntu or any other Ubuntu/Debian based distro). Poke it around, see how it works, try to install this or that, see how the dependency issues are resolved, etc.

If you're a GUI enjoyer, try KDE as the desktop environment. Better yet, try a distro that comes with KDE by default (Kubuntu or KDE Neon).

Probably the first time I used Linux for any period of time, I was about 10 and wasn't able to get a copy of windows for my PC. So I installed Linux on it (probably Ubuntu) and played games on it, not a great time, especially then and at that age. Fast-forward to about 5 years ago, and I started using Linux again for my development work, everything was so much easier to do there.

Since then, I switched to Linux only about 4 years ago and couldn't be happier. It also helped me push more left and here, with Linux, I took interest in FOSS community, which led me to lemmy → lemmygrad. Now I couldn't live without the customizability and ease of use of my desktop, whenever I am forced to use anything else it is a painful experience.

With learning, at least for me, it was just about using it. If you choose some “easy” distribution you will have a pretty easy time, I would say it is no harder than using Windows. For example, with Mint I am pretty sure you can configure basically everything with GUI, so you don't have to use terminal if you don't want to. But if you want to do something more advanced terminal is really great, once you learn to use it, it is much faster and easier than using GUI. But if you really want to tinker and customize I would pick something more involved (probably arch), stuff will break, and you will have to fix it, but that is how you get better.

I would recommend same resources that were already mentioned, mainly ArchWiki and GentooWiki those are probably best sources even if you don't use those distros.

I don't remember well how it was when I started since I was 13.

So I guess by trail and error, reading wikis, wanting to customize and explore the system, finding out how it differed from Windows... Stuff like that, curiosity and the freedom GNU/Linux gave me regarding just about anything on my system definitely helped.

Generally just use it, and you'll stumble upon places like the arch wiki, stackoverflow, ubuntu questions, reddit (ew) and more, hopefully not 4chan but rarely their resources can be handy. Also since the commandline is the universal interface of GNU/Linux you'll definitely stumble upon guides with commands to paste, that'll help you get udjusted to it.

Also definitely try youtube, GNU/Linux content has blown up massively so you won't be stuck with mr. petite bougie innawoods dumbass and /g/ that leads a young mind to have fucked up politics.

I put it on a laptop that could barely run windows like 10 years ago and found it pretty intimidating, but eventually learned how to find the resouces online to fix problems I ran into and learned as I went. It did make using CLI was more approachable for me though, which has benefitted me since.

Today it's much easier, but unfortunately I have to use windows for work as there is no suitable Linux version and running the software in Wine is just not great. My old laptop has Linux on it but I don't really use it anymore. I'd dual boot my desktop but windows just ends up breaking the Linux install eventually and it got annoying to fix. I wish I could just use Linux, it's much better and windows 11 is dog shit.

I've dabbled since the late 90s but didn't switch completely until about 2019. I mainly learned on Mandrake and Ubuntu but Arch made me learn so much more.

Now I have two of them, a daily driver and a plex server. The only thing I use my windows machine for is gaming and editing.

Arch will force you to learn and it's loads of fun!