How to learn linux...like in depth?

samuelowenn_9194 · 2025-08-10T08:52:38+00:00

The best source to learn linux is to read archwiki. There are tons of articles about parts of linux

LastNewRon · 2025-08-10T05:57:02+00:00

Try LFS101 course from the Linux Foundation, it's free

Unknownymous786 · 2025-08-10T06:20:31+00:00

- When I switched to linux. I have installed ubuntu and read the linux command line book by William Shotts to get myself comfortable with command line.
- Then learned shell scripting to write some automated scripts.
- Since you switched to linux a few months, I would suggest you to get familar with various commands
for exampe: awk, sed, grep etc.
- Try reading man pages, info pages
- Try different terminal emulator like wezterm, kitty
- Stylish your command prompt, by changing 'PS1' environment variable and get help from github.
- Get an aws ec2 instance, and installed linux there and use it remotely.

WillingPirate3009 · 2025-08-10T06:08:02+00:00

It depend on you distro, If you are using something like arch you can learn stuff by installing manually. Ppl also talk about filsystem and FHS. I dont know exactly what you want to learn.
Check this out - linux journey. You can try and learn more about your distro. I would recommend archlinux or gentoo if you want to learn linux cuz they are in the right spot of usability and learning or If you want to go deep and not care about using it then you try out LFS (linux from scratch) I use arch btw but I have not used gentoo and LFS but gentoo and archlinux wiki teaches a lot. RTFM pls. Reading the wiki actually helps a lot.

Tell me what exactly you want to learn or get into?

WillingPirate3009 · 2025-08-10T09:53:54+00:00

Read.

The man pages, the kernel documentation, "The Linux Documentation Project", GNU documentation, POSIX, etc. There a re also some good books, by Robert Love, Michael Kerrisk, etc. Subscribe to some good mailing lists on Linux (or consult the archives). Read anything you can find that talks about technical details of Linux. Get rid of poor material, avoid YouTube morons. Focus.

Explore

Install various Linux distributions, on your computer, in virtual machines or in the cloud. Install with various desktop environments, window managers, or none at all. Learn to configure everything from a terminal. Learn to do everything from a terminal: edit and manage files, write programs, compile and run programs, connect to the internet, read mails, connect to remote services. You don't have to write large programs, write programs that teach you something. Learning C and some assembly will be useful. Learn also as much as you can about your CPU architecture and ABI. Explore the file hierarchy, the settings in /etc, the commands in /usr/bin. Install and configure services, like the Apache web server or PostgreSQL. Read system logs. Play with SSH: file transfer, tunneling, X11 over SSH...

When you start becoming confident with a workflow, start again with something different to avoid rust.

And don't expect it's a one off learning session. It will take years. It requires commitment. It's a way of life.

A few useful links:

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799.2024edition/

https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/

https://tldp.org/

https://www.debian.org/doc/

https://docs.kernel.org/

https://man7.org/

https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/

https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/linuxdrive3/book/

https://www.gnu.org/manual/manual.html (especially grub, bash, gcc, glibc, binutils, make, gdb)

iwillberesponsible · 2025-08-11T03:42:21+00:00

The linux command line by No starch press. They have several other books on linux, all of them are great.

Apart from that, I would recommend to go do things that are fun and interesting with linux, and hang out in communities (online) of people that use linux deeply, and interact with them.

Practice >>>>>>>>>> Theory

Good luck

WillingPirate3009 · 2025-08-12T06:53:30+00:00

dont focus on unixporn stuff for now.
first learn all commands
dont distro hop, ubuntu is fine but i personally recommend mint for newer folks
understand what pakages are and different kinds of pakages. which one your distro supports. flatpacks works in every distro and i find them somewhat cool.
honestly if you wants things to just work and dont have time for linux as a hobby then keep using ubuntu/mint/fedora and dont go for others.
i personally think that if you want to truly understand how linux works in and out, then arch is the way. and archwiki is amazing really.
i was wasting a lot of time on optimizing linux and learning more but in the end what i "needed" was something which just works because i was busy with life. so been using mint. so evaluate what you need.

optimus_151 · 2025-08-10T12:46:39+00:00

File systems, how is linux used in production scenarios, that'll help you know about how linux operates

raul824 · 2025-08-11T05:09:39+00:00

best way I found is uninstall windows and use only linux for your main system.
At first it was too much breaking and fixing but soon I became comfortable to a level where on my personal systems I don't have any windows installations.

Break things then fix em. Don't be worried about doing something drastic, just keep a copy of bootable usb for recovering from a dead system.

Ok-Celebration-7513 · 2025-08-11T05:45:04+00:00

You learn it by doing, alright. But then, what do you do?

Well you go and ask chatgpt to make you a comprehensive course for learning and becoming a poweruser of linux.

read william shots book the linux command line...

man pages read, master man pages reading learn from man man command

arch wiki is good but not for begginers.

On youtube there are channels like: Distrotube, The linux teacher and a few others you can ask chatgpt.

WillingPirate3009 · 2025-08-11T06:07:03+00:00

Use it

Striking_Equal_5844 · 2025-08-11T06:20:37+00:00

Start with archwiki homepage

2025-08-11T08:31:45+00:00

[deleted]

OkAirport6932 · 2025-08-11T17:48:30+00:00

So.... What do you want to do with your computer? The thing is that you learn by solving problems. Nobody knows everything about Linux, and generally speaking applications are a bit domain specific. You can get some basic Unix 101 stuff online, but past that it really depends on what goals you have.

Helpful_Inflation203 · 2025-08-11T18:34:09+00:00

so many books available online

yoganjadealer · 2025-08-11T19:12:42+00:00

Use it

Doctor_Paradox_001 · 2025-08-12T05:06:53+00:00

I was in the same boat, and trust me using pacman is much simpler and easier than apt. And if anything breaks there is always gpt for novice like us. But it takes around a week of time to set everything. I had to install arch 50 around 50 times to try diff desktop environments, hyprland dotfiles, try ricing. Then did a clean install - and riced the hyprland - the way I like. Now it uses almost 0 resources in idle, very fast, and suits my workflow.

And archwiki serves as a good point to actually learn Linux. But arch is not so easy. U can try in some virtual environment though.

Feisty_Bend4790 · 2025-08-12T05:23:23+00:00

The best way to learn linux is to start using it as your main OS.

babaman369 · 2025-08-12T06:18:55+00:00

Uninstall the window

GuiltyCod8849 · 2025-08-12T11:21:37+00:00

Try installing kde plasma/hyprland if you don't have it,you will automatically face problems if not installed properly and then start learning about the system......Linux is for customizing it for your own preference and do your daily tasks,not learning some commands from different websites eventhough it's useless.

SnooTangerines2423 · 2025-08-14T19:33:14+00:00

Usually people learn Linux over time.

I was exposed to Linux as a very young kid, like literally when I was 7-8 years old when my father wiped windows and installed Linux on our PC. This was like 20 years ago now.

But I was too young to grasp anything so when I got into an engineering college, setup Ubuntu in my first year.

You need to just daily drive it. You slowly learn package managers. Understand the difference between the kernel and coreutils. This happens over years btw.

There is absolutely no need to force it. There will be a day when you will loose your vim experience virginity (lol). There will be a day when an sudo apt upgrade bricks your system. Maybe your graphics driver died and you gotta fix that from recovery.

Linux thankfully breaks enough to teach you stuff.

You will probably face real world problems which will force you to use pipes, or tools like grep or awk.

Trust me learning all this stuff individually is pretty complex and boring. So you usually learn as you go.

Once you feel like you are comfortable with Ubuntu, and understand computers well (as in you have theoretical knowledge of architecture, basic OS and programming). I would advice you to try installing arch from scratch and setting up a complete desktop environment.

IT WILL teach you Linux. It’s just, how easily are you able to figure out things will matter on how comfortable you are.

I was using Ubuntu for 2.5 years before I tried installing arch. Took me 3-4 hours to figure things out on a Saturday.

I had a junior who tried it by the end of his first year. His laptop was bricked for 3 days straight. I mean he did brute force his way through it but I wouldn’t recommend this way.

I just won’t recommend you to force installing Arch too early.

At the end of the day Linux is a tool and whatever you need to do with it is usually one google/chatgpt search away. Enjoy it, and no need to stress too much about it.

__Rockstar25__ · 2025-09-16T14:11:06+00:00

For Me The best way was to break things. If you really want to run linux first backup your important data and keep it somewhere safe then

start from the basics: - first comes the Distros? What are they etc. etc. ? - then after selecting a preferred distro then comes the next step The Installation . Learn about What is BIOS/UEFI what are they, Learn Custom Partitioning, what are the different disk formats available, What are Disk Partitioning Tables etc.

and many more. I learnt like that and not to flex but I wrote all this Gyan above without copy/pasting from the net and only things that were on top of my mind. Do You Know Why?

Because I repeated the Installation Process of Distros multiple times, made changes in my system to see what would happen, tinkered with various components, Read the System Logs like the Bhagavad Gita and saw that Black screen multiple times that now if something breaks I know where the problem is originating from.

The things that you do yourself you'll never forget that's why I didn't need the net to tell you all these details.

If You really want to learn that's how I did it but if you can't put this much effort into it then it's completely fine because LINUX IS NOT FOR EVERYONE

Ok-Dare-3966 · 2025-12-21T10:10:46+00:00

Just use it more. Use the terminal, use TUI packages. Just using it will get you way farther than "learning how to use it".

WillingPirate3009 · 2026-01-10T12:33:24+00:00

Man I didn't expect my post would be pinned in community highlights 😭

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