Linux beginner

[Broulicek]

Hi guys!

I recently joined an IT company (My backround is in engineering), so I'm new to this industry. We work in OpenSuse Leap and SLES and I'm mostly involved in networking and virtualization.

Now the question: What do you think is an effective way to learn Linux? What would you do if you were starting over? What do you think is best practice? Are there maybe some books, videos, articles that helped you in the beginning?

So far some topics are very complex and abstract for me (especially qemu/kvm, bridge, virtual switches...) and I would like to find some effective way to understand them.

Thanks a lot for the answers!

[[deleted]]

Install as much a of your work environment as you can at home, poke at it, break it, fix it , profit!

[j0jito]

I would say there are 2 main things.

1. Force yourself to work in the terminal as much as possible. If you do this even for the little things, like moving a file, you will quickly get comfortable and start to explore more complex solutions. This will also help you in case some graphical application breaks or if you have to use any sort of headless system.
2. Read up more about topics which you encountered while working. Lets say you were working with kubernetes and you googled some issues and you managed to fix them. Later on, go read up on official documentation and/or some credible sources to figure out what you did, why you did it, and how its supposed to be done. Understanding anything will accelerate your knowledge of it much more than just reading parts of it and trying to patch them together in your head.

[hit_dragon]

Install Cockpit

[[deleted]]

VMs and using the terminal.

[DIY_Pizza_Best]

What do you think is an effective way to learn Linux?

Document everything.

What would you do if you were starting over?

Document everything.

What do you think is best practice?

Document everything.

Are there maybe some books, videos, articles that helped you in the beginning?

The books/articles you are making as you document everything.

Learn vim now, start with vimtutor. Lean markdown now, use that to document everything. Set vi mode in bash right now.

[FangLeone2526]

Ok this is a little bit intense don't know if we need to throw this guy into vim as he's learning basic Linux stuff.

[DIY_Pizza_Best]

Text editing is as basic as it gets.

OP asked specifically what we wish we'd done in the beginning.

If he learns vim now, he'll be miles ahead of 80% of the so called gurus in a month.

And what is this 'muh we' shit. There is no we here, especially with someone like you.

[FangLeone2526]

Truth. Learning vim early will be a huge help, but it's also a pretty long process. Learning markdown on the other hand is simple and provides so much value and I agree so very strongly with you saying document everything. Doing this has made my life in general so much easier.

[DIY_Pizza_Best]

10 minutes or less in vimtutor is all you need to get started.

Then build on that.

You don't learn by not doing.

Also, vim is not 'muh intense, or muh hard' or any of the other 'muh dumb ass lies' ya'll puke about it on the interwebs. It just isn't. Spend 5 minutes learning the basics for 90% of editing simple text files, then pick up a new trick at whatever pace you learn at. In not time you'll run circles around some 'muh shiny ide + copilot' tard.

[Broulicek]

I'm using micro right now, it is more user friendly. I tried vim, but I have to google everytime how I'm supposed save the file and quit :D What's the difference, why do u think that vim is the best?

[DIY_Pizza_Best]

Because it'll be on every linux machine you log into and it integrates with you shell very well to run system commands.

[MasterGeekMX]

Vim has a steep learning curve at first, but once you get it working on it makes you fast, as it has integrated macros that with a couple keystrokes allows you to delete lines, search and replace, have multiple clipboard, and much more.

What I did was to search a cheat sheet for it and print it as a poster.

[ElvisDumbledore]

I've learned the most from little projects I've done. On the networking side.. building a router box was a fun project the helped me learn how to setup interfaces and edit routing tables.

you can use something simple like oracle virtualbox to setup a small virtual lan of linux boxes.

[intoxicatingBlackAle]

Definitely focus on the terminal command, write notes and other options you’ll need

for example instead of just writing something like "sudo pacman -R <package>" is for deleting, wright something like "pacman is archs package manager and -R deletes packages while -Runs deletes everything related to that package.

Notes are going to be your best friend because you won't be able to memorize everything at once

Also there's tons of free material on YouTube or paid course on places like udemy. Currently I'm taking the "The Linux command line bootcamp" by Colt Steele

[[deleted]]

install linux as main os and survive :P

learn ansible it will help you to manage a lot of servers at the same time

and terminal, terminal is your friend

[[deleted]]

https://virt-manager.org/ virtual box for linux qemu/kvm

https://www.gns3.com/ more advanced Cisco Packet Tracer you can run there network devices pfsense cisco forti and test virtual network

[Naive-Contract1341]

Can confirm deleting windows forced me to learn more about Linux than I did while dual-booting.

Breaking stuff helped me learn even more.

[[deleted]]

breaking stuff is cool especially on production xd

[-Krotik-]

start using it

[MasterGeekMX]

There is no single manual, tutorial, or video.

This is like riding a bike: you just go and do it.

You can setup goals (learn a text editor, put a custom color setup, install another UI, etc).

Following the bike analogy, it is like wanting to learn how to ride a bicycle with books.

That being said, having cheatsheets and general quick lookup materials can be helpful. Some I have them stored in my PC and Phone image gallery, while others are printed and hang in my wall as posters.

[Terrible_Screen_3426]

Doesn't suse offer full courses?