Tips for getting better at Linux.

1. You can always use man command and just read through it. If you want less text, use curl cheat.sh/command (learn how to use aliases) or the tools tldr and cheat
2. Install the fish shell, it makes using the terminal waaay easier, out of the box.
3. Install Alpaca flatpak, and use tinyllama or bigger LLM models. Tinyllama is already very sufficient at explaining linux commands and more, and runs fine on my reasonably powerful and modern laptop. Other models may be slow as fuck.
4. Use the terminal only. Log out, Ctrl+Alt+F2 and login, then use some tools.

$pwd
cd
echo
ls
cat
nano
less
more
chmod
chown
#your package manager
lsblk
dd #be careful!
udisksctl
lsusb
lspci
curl
wget
...

Note: use the man for these tools and often multiple tools do the same thing

5. There is this online terminal game/quiz but I cant find its name.

Command line cheat sheet (with bonus vim controls):

Just don't copy paste the commands. Really! Just take the time to understand what the command does, read the manual, and rewrite it yourself instead of pasting it. That alone will help a fair bit and can start guessing what it should be.

After a while of doing that it stops being a "paste this command to make the service run" and becomes "ask systemd to enable and start the service". You start associating editing files in /etc with "will probably need to slap a sudo in front of that one", you start mentally replacing nano/vi/vim/emacs/nvim/sed with your preferred way of editing the file, because you absorb the concept of "this command edits a text file".

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?

You learn by doing and by failing. Like we learned to walk, to write, to drive, to kiss, to speak a foreign language, or even to lace our shoes (and, yep, even that was a heavy trial and error process for toddler-us back then).

• Install Arch (in a VM, maybe) and while doing so read the Arch Wiki to understand each step, each action and the role of each app you're asked to install. The Arch Wiki is an impressively well done documentation.
• Be fine knowing that it will take time to learn anything new (not just Arch, anything), you won't get good at it the first time. Don't rush it, take your time.
• Be fine knowing that you will face issues and will most likely fail at some point, be it to instal Arch or in doing whatever new. There is no other way to learn, for all of us, than by failing and then trying again, over and over. Once again like we learned to walk (by falling on our butt), to lace our shoes (by making a mess) or to kiss (by not doing it great at first).

Learning takes time and efforts. Perseverance, and humility. There is no shortcut to learning anything that is worth learning, not just Arch. But the reward is also so much worth it. Einstein had to learn calculus, Da Vinci had to learn how to hold a paint brush, and Tolstoy like Flaubert had to learn to write and I'm willing to bet they all made mistakes while they were learning their respective craft.

Even without referring to geniuses: the first time I tried to install Arch I ran away screaming and swearing I would never touch that thing again. The second time, I had already managed to read a good chunk of the relevant part of the wiki and used it constantly at each step of the process. I still failed at it but at least I understood why I failed and I felt incredibly more... in charge, despite me failing. The third time, I managed to have it running, and to install most the packages I wanted. That was great. There was no fourth time as, as much as I love Arch (which is a lot), I quickly realized using it that constant updates were not what I wanted from my OS and apps (I'm an old-ish user with very basic needs, I'm not even that much of a geek to be honest). So, I switched to the complete opposite of Arch (Debian, another great love of mine I must say). Still, learning and using Arch taught me a lot about Linux in general and about... myself.

Haven't seen anyone mention https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/ yet. It's a Linux shell game where you need to solve problems using shell commands that only requires an ssh client on your machine: you ssh into the first server, solve a problem, and the solution points you to the next server. It starts easy (e.g. read out this file using cat) but gets hard quickly. But you can always look up solutions when you're stuck. It gives a good idea what certain commands are used for and how they can be combined in powerful ways.

• To learn Arch, install it from scratch (without archinstall), it'll force you to read the Wiki and learn a lot of necessary commands in the process. After the installation, just keep using it. Using a Linux distro full-time as the only installed OS is the best way to keep at it and truly learn it over time. There's no magic bullet here. Just keep using it and solving problems or issues as you go, learning more and more stuff as you go. If you need other OSses as well, run those in a VM. I don't recommend dual-boot setups.

• Don't blindly copy/paste commands you don't understand. Always try to understand them first. Some commands can be very disruptive or even destroy your configuration. If you don't understand it or are able to adapt it so that it fits to your particular configuration or system, you can EASILY damage a configuration, or even make your system unusable. Also, some people like trolling other people and deliberately share harmful commands. Generally, test potentially destructive commands or complex commandlines before actually running them.

• Document major config changes that you do. This is useful because you'll be able to undo certain changes or even replicate your current system configuration fast when you change distros or have to reinstall in the future. For example my current Arch-based setup is fully documented in form of an almost-directly executable shell script. It does require some interactions but very little. If I ever have to reinstall this system, or upgrade my hardware, it can be done insanely fast and it'll have the exact same configuration. This goes from basic partitioning and encryption all the way up to dotfiles and individual program configurations.

• Don't feel the need to learn hard/advanced tools like Vim or Emacs unless you really think you're getting an advantage from that and aren't hesitant to put in the time and effort to learn them. Most people don't need to use them. They're amazing tools but you need to be prepared to lose quite a lot of time to learn them before you can become productive with them, and this might not be a tradeoff that's useful for every single user. You can also get away with much simpler tools, like nano (as a console-based editor) or whatever programmer's text editor you want.
• Similarly, whether a pure WM or compositor plus assorted tools compared to a full desktop environment is worth it for you or not, is up to you. There's no wrong or right answer here. I've tried out pretty much everything and these days use KDE Plasma because I like the consistency and integrations and dislike having different, inconsistent stand-alone tools for panels, menus, notifications, wallpaper, file manager and so on. But again, there's no wrong or right answer here. Just what makes more sense for you. It's worth learning how to be able to configure and use a minimalistic setup, for sure. So trying it out doesn't hurt and increases your knowledge overall. In general, in the Linux world it's good to always know enough to not be screwed once some component suddenly doesn't work anymore. For example, a competent Linux user should be able to deal with (temporarily) not having a GUI and fixing his system via commandline.

• A minimalistic, DIY distro like Arch can be amazing to learn everything, if you want to do that at least. If you just want a working desktop system with as little effort as possible, then don't do that. But if you intend to learn every detail, then a distro like Arch is better suited for that goal than a "bloated", fully pre-configured distro like Mint or Ubuntu is. Because Arch is much simpler on a technical level than those are. It's much easier to understand e.g. the relatively simple package building process on Arch than it is on Debian/Ubuntu-based distros. But this "simple" explicitly refers to technical simplicity or minimalism. Most users expect something else when they hear "something is simple". Arch is not simple as in beginner-friendly, but it is simple in terms of technical complexity, which is why many advanced users and tinkerers like it because it doesn't stand in their way. It also means though that you HAVE to learn many things, e.g. how to configure a firewall, because it doesn't come with any preinstalled by default. With Arch, the admin is supposed to know about everything and configure every component himself, at least on a somewhat basic level.

• If you want to go to even more details, you could also try out a source-based distro like Gentoo or Crux, which can also be a great learning experience, but it's even more details regarding compilations of each package, dependencies, compile-time options, etc. you have to deal with than with a minimalistic binary-package-based distro like Arch, so whether that's useful for you or not is up to you of course.
• While we're at it: LFS (Linux from Scratch) is not a distro per se, it's a guide on how to build your own distribution from scratch. It's VERY time intensive and not recommended unless you truly want to learn how to build a complete distribution from scratch, or maybe start your own distro some day which isn't based on another existing distro.

Linux is like kung-fu, mastery comes through practice
Learn the ways of Linux-fu

start from man man and learn to use man pages. Get used to lookup man pages for any topic before checking on the internet

The tldr cli (tldr.sh) is a great way to get familiar with options of differ programs.

Just use it and fix things when they break. There's no magic bullet - just experience.

I have been using Linux since the early 90s. I don't know it all. I read man pages. I use -h or --help. I read the arch wiki. I read docs. I read source files and examples. Lots of reading. You will never know it all. There is too much information.

You need to know how to find information. It can be tricky. Knowing how to ask the right questions often requires you to know a bit of the answer.

Stumbling about trying to find answers is training the skills you need.

I think it helps if you have a programming background and IT support experience. Not just because you will understand more concepts and terms but because you have already developed some of those skills but some people come from other backgrounds and pick things up really quickly because they have well developed research skills.

More than anything, what leveled up my Linux knowledge was switching to Gentoo back while I was in college.

Before that, I used SuSE, and I switched specifically because I felt like I wasn't learning anything really about Linux just by using point-and-click tools like YAST.

I've used Arch for the last... 7-ish years? (Though now I'm basically in the process of switching back to Gentoo. In terms of learning Linux, Arch is... close to as good as Gentoo for that purpose. Not quite as good, but pretty close.)

As for the best approach for learning, though, you know how they say the best way to learn a language is "immersion"? As in, to move to where they speak the language. In the same way, if what you're going for is to learn, just take a dive. Install Arch over top of your current OS and don't look back. Just commit to it.

Also, use the most minimal stuff you can. Skip KDE and use dwm. Skip the login manager and start your GUI from the command line. Don't install a file manager and instead use Bash directly. (It's more than capable.) Don't install anything you can do instead with a Bash one-liner or a small Bash script. If after you've gotten pretty used to minimal stuff you still want something that the heavier alternatives offer, you can of course switch, but if your aim is to learn, avoid using the kind of stuff that tries to be "user friendly" by hiding all the internal implementation details from you. (Instead use the stuff that is user friendly by virtue of having so few moving parts that understanding how it works under-the-hood is trivial.)

And, don't settle for "it's fucked beyond repair." If it's fucked, google your ass off. If that doesn't work, ask on the official Arch forums or here or wherever. (Don't worry, they don't bite.)

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?

Time, I've been using linux since the 90's and I learn things I probably should have known before every day

It sounds a bit nerdy, but dedicate some time just to learning a specific command once in a while. Start with something straightforward like ls. Read through the man pages and try out all the different options for it. After a while, you'll master quite a few commands and will be able to string them together to perform more complex tasks. It's definitely easier learning the system piece by piece like this. I used to learn by just jumping right in to a complex task, but I ended up with just a superficial understanding most of the time. Now days I try to be more deliberate about reading all the documentation and actually learning the tool/command/etc.

Also, Arch has the archinstall script that greatly simplifies the install process if you need it. You'll definitely learn more doing it manually though. I've been using Arch as my daily driver for a year now and I love it.

What tips/ideas do you have for getting better at navigating the terminal, and getting a better understanding of how the os works

Running an OS as a virtual is liberating. Dive in, make mistakes, fix them (or not and have to reinstall or redo from the last save). No real consequences for exploring.

To be honest I've been using Linux for years and I still paste commands all the time. The only difference is that now when I am trouble shooting I know what command I need just not the options and how to use it

Just install Arch, when You follow wiki it's not that hard. if You will make mistakes during the process, You will gain better understanding of how things works while fixing errors.

Explainshell.com is pretty useful for understanding shell commands you might find on forums.

If you are beginner in Linux, try beginner-friendly Arch-based distro: EndeavourOS, CachyOS, Manjaro

You can learn Arch without too much hassle while using one of them

I'm going to go against the grain a bit and suggest studying for a certificate. Find one that looks interesting, and just prepare for it. You don't necessarily have to get the certificate, but training for it will give you a good foundation for running your systems.

https://hackr.io/blog/best-linux-certifications

Read and do! If it's just a toy you play with sometimes, you might find learning harder. I find that making it your daily driver will motivate you to improve and fix things and in doing that you'll learn.

Install harder distros (preferably on bare metal) and use them. If you need to fix something, google it. This helped me a lot.

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.

I can tell you how I learned linux. be prepared to cringe.

1. I installed Linux before going to school, I figured that if I used Linux as my main OS I would be less tempted to dick around and play games

2. I eventually found a coop part time job as a dev. I used my own Linux machine, and being the star eyed young person I was I used arch.

this is the cringe part:

3. I did dev work on arch Linux without fully understanding how it works and ran into multiple issues (none of which was because of arch). for instance my USB wifi driver was the dogshit broadcom ones so the "drivers" for it were kind of messed and I had to hack several things into get it to work.

I learned systemd, Linux kernel modules, dkpg, obviously more familiarity with bash and shell stuff

4. I ran into issues with grub because FUCK grub. so I had to learn about boot loaders, fixing your install with chroot on a live usb, I also wrote step by step guides to untuck my particular problem just in case I run into it again

so moral of the story is.. dive in?

I still find Tealdeer useful even now, it helps me get working with commands I know little about, more so than a manpage

Start running servers if you haven't already. Use an old computer, or an SBC or VPS and setup some Linux servers. There's lots of different ways to do it, so mess around and break shit over and over. You can't help but learn that way, though I would highly suggest you take notes/documentation. This is a habit I'm trying to develop after too long :)

And how did you, advanced Linux user, get to the stage your at now?

Incrementally over time by reading the documentation and/or manuals of the commands I need to run and looking up how others solve the problems that I need to get other ideas about things (even, periodically, for things that I already know how to do to see if anyone has found a better way to do it or if a new tool has come out that helps). And trying things out/experimenting with different ways of doing things to find out what works well or not.

See if your library has "How Linux Works" - https://www.amazon.com.au/How-Linux-Works-Brian-Ward/dp/1718500408

1. Learn FreeBSD.

2. Learn Linux.

/s

Another book rec: https://pragprog.com/titles/bhcldev/small-sharp-software-tools/

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.

One thing you could do is start trying to understand those commands.

Read the man pages or the documentation to figure out what the commands are actually doing. Once you have the "what" , you can dig deeper to get to the "why" if it isn't obvious by that point.

After enough of that, you'll go to copy/paste and already understand what it's doing without needing to look it up again.

Then from there, it's a matter of building the instinct to be able to say "I need to do X, so I'll use commands Y and Z."

When you are doing stuff in the terminal write it down somewhere else also, on a piece of real life paper or in a simple text document or whatever works for you.

In general I found taking notes while trying to do things in the terminal helped me learn.

Work at the tip of your "paygrade" and try to make immersion as fun as possible. Maybe consider using a different disk for Linux, since mistakes are the best way to learn. (Don't reinstall just because something broke).

Here are some fantastic ways to make mistakes:

1. Install a more involved, but typical, CLI-centric, DIY-friendly distro -- from today's order of difficulty, that's EndeavourOS, (install is easy, then you can learn one package at a time), Arch Linux (install is hard iff you have trouble with understanding wiki structure, and you'll want familiarity with what packages you need), and Gentoo (the installation guide is incredible).
2. Try out new CLI software. The terminal is your friend! Are you gonna back up videos with yt-dlp? Perhaps make a shell script for something? Maybe search the AUR for something cool to try out (underrated function of the AUR: test-driving!). With a terminal, who needs file explorer?
3. Play a game. Linux games exist... they're called CTFs ;). Bandit is pretty fun for beginners (try to keep notes! Maybe use Git?): https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/
4. Make unnecessary customizations ("rices"). Your shell can be made sexy (ohmyzsh?). Your lockscreen can be made sexy. Your windows can be made sexy. (And if you break something, don't reinstall :3). Remember: if you build something pretty and see it every day... absolute epic.
5. And of course, flex your hands, get your apron on, have fun popping the engine and fixing! How does one ask questions, put in due diligence, Google, read logs (like journalctl or dmesg or --verbose or whatever)? This is a skill you don't lose -- and we'll be happy to answer a good question.

Of course all of this depends on where you are (the tip of your paygrade). For pasting commands specifically, as you said... do 'em one at a time -- and understand each one.
Like, what is piping |? Why is xargs after it? Why can one stop ping with CTRL+C? What does man curl say about this weird curl command? How does one even read a manpage well, anyway (and is curl cheat.sh/SOME_COMMAND better)? Why is there so much gpg?

And at the end of the day... remember how fun this shit is. The engine is open; we're allowed to look inside. Woohoo!

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.

Why? I have been using Linux for nearly two decades and I am perfectly content with a low-config distro and desktop environment. You don’t have to use Arch but if you insist get a Steam Deck.

https://programming.dev/c/linuxupskillchallenge

If you're in the position to take certificates then that's a another way of learning a lot. At least it has worked for me. I've over the last half year taken RHCSA and RHCE from RedHat - though paid by work. Theses in specific are expensive, but I'm sure there are other ones that are cheaper. This would also allow you to 'show off' your skills in an official way should you need to, for applying for certain jobs etc..

I at least find this way to be helpful as you have to motivate yourself to learn and pass an exam to get the certificate. It might not be for everyone though.

With arch, I'd recommend just jumping in the deep and and installing it, looking things up on the wiki when something goes wrong. Just do it in a virtual machine or on an old laptop or something to start with. I broke my previous distro (mint) by doing some really stupid stuff, and I decided to just go fuck it and install arch. I don't think I've ever learned as much about linux as that weekend.

I suppose that I was already pretty comfortable with the terminal since I was studying computer science at the time so I had a lot of reason to use it. I think the best way to use the terminal is to force yourself to use it, programming is great for this but you can try e.g. sorting your photos or mp3 files or something as practice too.

Switch to rolling distro, it will break so many things with each update you'll learn stuff by fixing it. Also you can check https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/

on the tailend of a convo in in a discord recently I added a command to the "customize chatgpt" section to allow chatgpt to have a custom "man" like command similar to linux, but that works for all code or commands.

This makes chatgpt give me a Linux command or code snippet formated in a table explaining what each piece of the command does.

when a prompt is givin beginning with the word man followed by code or commands please respond with a table following these rules and nothing else: skip title row, No backticks around command components, No unnecessary rows, column 1 should contain the command component, column 2 should contain a brief command description

Here is a bunch of random tips to become more comfortable with the terminal.

Do absolutely everything that you can on the terminal.

When you install something, enable the verbose if possible and snoop around the logs to see what is happening.

If an app or an install fails, look at the logs to see what is the issue, and try to fix it by actually resolving the error itself first instead of finding the commands on the internet to fix your issue.

Instead of googling for your command options, use the help menu from the application and try to figure out how to use the command from there.

Using tldr to learn commands. It gives you the information you are probably looking for in the man page but it's not buried among lines and lines and lines of arcane stuff and it's formatted in a readable way with helpful examples. Saved my sanity more than once.

I'm not saying "don't read the man pages", they are great way to get a deeper understanding of commands. But when you are just wondering what a command does and how it's commonly used, then a two lines summary + example is much more helpful than an essay going in minute details over everything.

Since it takes a lot less time than hunting the same info in the man page, you can run it before every command you are not familiar with, without too much hassle. Then if you want more info you can check the man page.

I will be using your example of Arch as a great stepping off point, because honestly imo the best way to learn is by having a project to work on

1. RTFM - Read The Fucking Manual. Read the docs, read the code comments if need be. In the case of installing an OS, use the installation guide as a starting point; Arch's is on their wiki, and links to several other sections that go more in-depth about what each step does and why it does it.

2. DuckDuck it - if you don't understand what something is or why you're doing it, search it. If you understand it completely, search it anyway and check the docs because no you don't, you just don't know how little you know. If you know why we do something and what function it fulfills, but not how... Then you're a power user.

Using your example of commands from the internet, break the command down into as many parts as you can, and figure out what each part does. If there's punctuation marks, don't assume you know what those are doing. man [command's name] is your friend.

3. Do all of the above as often as possible, no matter how slow it makes progress feel. Learning these things the proper way now will save you from days, weeks and months of troubleshooting in the future. I mean it, literally at every step of the process.

4. secondary sources are invaluable, but for this it might help to get into the best way to self-educate. The only gospel are the docs and/or manual that were written by the code/OS maintainers - primary sources - everything else is opinion.

Here's a source i agree with on the best way to self-educate, but keep in mind even Artem is still just a secondary source.

That being said, here's a few secondary sources that helped me understand how OSes work and why:

nand2tetris: build an operating system starting with logic gates and working your way up from there. It has a offshoot site that's slowly being rolled out, that implements it all in a gamified interface: nandgame

os-tutorial: build an OS from scratch

Linux From Scratch: Learn everything about Linux by building your own distro from the kernel up.

Unfortunately everything that taught about the behind-the-scenes aspects of OSes in general—and Linux in specific—were either projects like the above, or just seeing what came up in a DuckDuckGo, Youtube, forum, or wiki etc. search. Below are just resources that teach you about the "power user" level of knowledge, not "super user" but not your average user either.

Fireships' 100+ Linux Things you Need to Know: it's not particularly good on its own, but it does introduce a lot of concepts and vocab for you to then look up elsewhere

freeCodeCamp.org offers a lot of courses that will go over using Linux. None go too in-depth on the fundamentals of Operating Systems, but they will still introduce most of what you need to know for day-to-day use. I don't want to link them all, but just search for linux freecodecamp on youtube and find one that piques your interest. The longer, the more in-depth—you don't have to watch it all in one sitting.

5. And of course, when all else fails: just ask. Participate in the community, don't be afraid of looking stupid. The only people that get no respect are the ones who refuse to accept others' help because they know better than those they're asking to help them. (ignore the gatekeepers who want to project their own need for an identity onto you)

"I take full responsibility for my Arch system."

Arch Linux Handbook on internet Archive

I learned a lot by using a less common distro (solus). When I would have a problem, the solutions I could find on forums or arch wiki wouldn't apply to my distro directly, and I would have to look into the solution for long enough to understand what needed to change in order for the solution to work.

You can probably do this on any distro, just by not using commands you find online until you understand what they're doing and why that might fix your problem. Arch wiki is a great resource for any distro, even though it won't always be accurate for the distro you're on.

This course by the Linux Foundation goes over the basics and I thought it was pretty good. I was a long time user of Linux when I came across this and wanted to see how much I really knew. It's very easy to follow and well structured

https://training.linuxfoundation.org/training/introduction-to-linux/

I'd recommend reading man pages. They're a great way to understand the programs that are on your system. The Arch Wiki and the Gentoo Wiki both provide additional information that may be of use to you.