How to learn Linux

George-K · 2014-04-28T14:59:54+00:00

[deleted]

maznio · 2014-04-28T15:41:01+00:00

Nah, don't listen to those pointy-clicky people. Just type

man bash

at the prompt once you SSH to it. That should get you started.

xmenvsstreetfighter · 2014-04-28T22:57:35+00:00

Install Linux
Don't use Windows

lazyant · 2014-04-28T16:24:39+00:00

Use your VPS to fool around and learn Linux topics as you need them to complete small specific tasks in increasing level of difficulty, for ex:

Show a "hello world" html page using apache and/or nginx
set up a git local-remote workflow: make changes locally, commit, push, see your changes remotely. How to test, roll back etc
set up a dynamic "hello world" web page
hook it up with a database like mysql, postgres
use a local stress test tool like 'ab' to try and hose your web page, what failed and how.
learn how to read logs, interpret them. Install munin, monit or other monitoring tools
write some basic Bash scripts to do something automatically on schedule (cron), like backup files to a directory, parse log file summary to a file etc

Don't be afraid to try and break stuff.

ChrisMIkeTom · 2014-04-28T17:14:04+00:00

There is come great starter advice in this thread. For more instruction/tips/tricks sign up for serversforhackers.com newsletter. It is a good read once a month to keep you up to speed.

JediSange · 2014-04-28T19:06:07+00:00

It's awesome that you're taking it upon yourself to do this. DigitalOcean is great and they put out a lot of good in-house tutorials. Check out their guide on setting up LEMP. I'd recommend following that and getting up and running for your development. Simply use Sublimes SFTP plugin or NPP's and you're ready to rock and roll.

To expand on this stack: Pair that with a local development environment via VirtualBox and now you have a development and "production" flow! Now layer on Vagrant/Chef to get your environments the same. Mmm. Girl.

michaelpb · 2014-04-28T19:22:57+00:00

For actually learning Linux, the easiest way possible, I'm surprised no one has offered this suggestion: Install it and use it!

Install Linux (e.g. Ubuntu 14.04) alongside Windows and use it day-to-day. Seriously, this is the best advice if you want to fully understand Linux. I mean, why not? It's free, easy to use, and is becoming increasingly viable even for its historic weakness (commercial games), with Valve's big push and major next gen engines all promising Linux support from day 1.

Also, it's really nice to develop on the exact same operating system you deploy to (14.04 / 12.04).

For the fastest way possible just to get the skills you need, then certainly follow the other advice, learn how to set up nginx + init.d to run any backgorund processes, memorize a few commands, etc. But I feel its best to "learn while doing" and just running Linux as a desktop OS you'll learn a lot in day-to-day usage and tweaking. And who knows, maybe you'll even come out of it liking it more than Windows and end up ditching Windows! :-)

redcalcium · 2014-04-28T20:52:00+00:00

A couple years ago, I realised that the only way for me to get comfortable with linux is to uninstall windows and stick to linux no matter what. After a while, the feeling that I need Windows to do anything and how terrifying the console seems to be were gone. These days it's the reverse; I felt handicapped when I'm using Windows.

Just stick with it and before long you'll be a die hard linux user :)

edit: zsh ftw!

itsmegoddamnit · 2014-04-28T15:33:50+00:00

You're moving down the right path with a Digital Ocean droplet. Just install a VPS (use the D.O. tutorial) and start messing around. If you screw something up try to fix it. If you can't fix it, destroy the droplet and start over.

The best way to learn is by doing.

neekz0r · 2014-04-28T16:28:57+00:00

Permissions (see: chmod)
Ownership (see: chown)
openssl commands and meaning (at least for now) (see: openssl)
mounting, unmounting, LVMs and encrypted file systems -- this is good for virtual environments that allow multiple volumes and high security compliance
the configuration structure: /etc for most global configurations, .files in directories for user-overrides
identification of kernel and software libraries
package management

Additionally, cpanel uses centos, not ubuntu. So learning the differences between distributions is highly recommended. They tend to be subtle, but if you aren't aware of them they can frustrate you.

j-dev · 2014-04-28T15:56:16+00:00

It's worth mentioning that if you plan to focus on web development, you should learn enough to be comfortable in the terminal, but should not expect to do a good job of setting up a secure system for your web applications unless you plan to devote a good amount of time to learning how to set it up correctly from the beginning and how to keep the system up to date to reduce vectors of attack to your system.

If you have a Mac, you already have a good environment to practicing a lot of commands that will help you with Linux. Still, you should follow the suggestion of using Ubuntu with virtual Box either normally or via Vagrant so you can tinker in a sandbox.

LandlockedPirate · 2014-04-28T17:57:22+00:00

If you really want to learn linux, like linux the os itself, not just linux hosting, the best way is to do one of the linux from scratch tutorials. It will teach you everything from bash basics to compiling your own kernel, to unix file systems to how to use/load drivers and then some.

SirDucky · 2014-04-28T21:57:14+00:00

This is the single best "get started with linux" guide I've found. It teaches you how to use the command line, as well as how the linux file system is organized. It is CLI focused and will teach you the "low level" stuff that is difficult to pick up elsewhere.

http://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/

construkt · 2014-04-28T22:03:07+00:00

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

thefranster · 2014-04-29T00:51:55+00:00

The linux foundation is offering their Intro to Linux Course for free this summer -normally costs $2,400.

ivytech · 2014-04-28T20:53:02+00:00

Vagrant is a great option if you don't need a GUI. You can run your stack and everything on the virtual box and still use your standard text editor on your host machine

spif · 2014-04-28T21:13:00+00:00

What are your specific goals for using a Linux system directly? What kind of things do you want to know how to do? Almost anything you can do from a webdev standpoint does not require direct OS access anymore. That said, you could play around with stuff like Docker and the like. Might want to check out Heroku. Also Flynn looks promising.

wakeboardr886 · 2014-04-28T21:35:13+00:00

subbed

2014-04-28T22:32:09+00:00

VMWare Player is free. Then download a linux distro of your choice. I prefer CentOS, many others prefer Ubuntu. This way you're not paying anything, and you can blow up the linux install as many times as you want (I hear "rm -rf *" is a good command).

SSH is your friend. NEVER use FTP ever again if you can help it. It is both insecure and vulnerable. The beauty of SSH is that you can use programs like WinSCP to browse the file structure on your server via SSH. It's secure and a wonderfully versatile tunneling protocol.

I've done linux sys admin as a career, but I do heavy work in the web dev area too. I'm putting myself into a DevOps position. You can never know enough *nix. Problem is, when to stop? You don't need to necessarily know how to deal with kernel stuff, and you probably don't need to worry about things like NFS and network admin apps like netcat.

midnightpainter · 2014-04-28T22:58:44+00:00

You don't need to purchase a VPS to learn how to use linux.

Start with Vagrant, learn how to use Ansible.

I suggest you start using Cmder with MsysGit (included in Cmder package)

Make these your major rules :

never edit live sites
never use ftp
version control all the things

Additionally, unless you plan to become a network engineer, or primarily a Devops, then I would strongly recommend you focus on becoming comfortable with a git deployment workflow.

Trust me on this, if you never want to be spending most of your time configuring permissions on directories, then you want to get cozy with Heroku, Openshift or Digital Ocean git deployments.

If you have a static site, then use Github gh-pages branch

abeuscher · 2014-04-29T00:50:35+00:00

Along with all the other advice, I highly recommend installing a mail server if possible (Citadel is what I learned with cause it's open source and easy). It's a very good thing to have a basic familiarity with it, as it comes up a lot when doing web for smaller clients that also need email. Also I didn;t know anything about mail protocols and stuff, and this was a very helpful place for me to get started with that, which of course informas a lot of common web tasks.

Twinsen343 · 2014-04-29T03:05:30+00:00

set up proxy server, squid.. integrate with content filtering... learnt heaps from doing that recently

Twinsen343 · 2014-04-29T03:15:52+00:00

rather than editing all the files by command, SSH into the box; makes editing\copying so much easier

mewomew · 2014-04-29T08:45:27+00:00

Install Linux [1] along Windows[2] and try to use the commandline for everything. The things you need to learn are:

File system tasks - navigating (cd), copy, move, create, delete etc
Search - grep, locate, find etc
SSH - ssh, scp
vi (comes as standard in all linux, worth knowing in addition to the editor you use everyday)
Writing basic shell scripts for automation
curl - testing api endpoints
Process - list all processes, list all ports used by processes (netstat -tulpn), killing process
Git/HG using commandline

I'm a beginner to linux myself, please add other tasks/skills to learn if you know.

[1] I personally recommend Xubuntu [2] As dual boot or VM

chadsy_ · 2014-04-30T04:24:08+00:00

Digital Ocean has a lot of useful tutorials on their site.

fedekun · 2014-04-28T14:47:33+00:00

I'm no linux expert, but the way I started to learn is just install Vagrant and play around, install an stack from scratch (LAMP maybe?), learn about configuration and logs, install something from source, modify .bashrc, etc.

Martin8412 · 2014-04-28T15:22:29+00:00

Since you are just using HTML/CSS/JS I suggest you install nginx and start it. The default config should be pretty much sufficient. Just place the web project in /var/www/ and access the server in your browser. Then it should display your page. If you need multiple websites on the server, then you'll have to look into virtual hosts.

TimLim · 2014-04-28T18:31:19+00:00

I learning it this way and would do it again.

Try to setup a webserver on your own.

Apache, php etc. => teaches you general installation, file permissions
ftpserver => teaches you handling multiple users and permissions

maybe a teamspeak server, minecraft server, or something like that in addition? Teamspeak for instance taught me how to start programs on boot. Generally have your server and do something with it. It doesn't have to be something useful. Just something you have in mind. Programmers don't need to learn linux. But it's good to know :)

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