The 5 Things That Taught Me The Most About Linux

It's a question that I constantly get asked: "What can I do to learn Linux?" I typically respond to such a general question with "Just use Linux." But today, I decided to answer the question in more detail, by listing out the top five things that helped me learn more about Linux.

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[benj]

00:00 Intro
00:52 1) Virtual machines (Virtualbox, VirtManager)
04:35 2) Install Arch and read the Arch Wiki (especially installation guide)
09:02 3) Use a standalone Window Manager (not a Desktop Environment)
11:00 4) Use the terminal as much as possible. For example, for package management and file management
15:15 5) Understand the history of the libre and linux philosophies. You can read "Free as in Freedom" by Richard Stallman

[jesse]

I was showing my Dad some stuff and how to do certain tasks on his computer, and when I was done, he asked "How do you learn all this stuff?" I told him, 'Dad, you need two things to learn how to do anything on a computer. Time and curiousity. You have plenty of time (he's retired); you just need curiousity.' Now, he's smart, and he used to be really into computers about 15 - 20 years ago. But he is way more into watching sports and television than doing anything on his computer, so he doesn't know that much. He agreed with me.

[benj]

I would add:
* Take notes of what you are doing and learning
* Explore minimalism and one-purpose small programs in all of your digital activities (note-taking in plain text, simple image viewers, simple file explorers)
* Look for redundancy in your activities and script them in shell script

[jawuku]

You got the update command on Debian/Ubuntu the wrong way round. It should read:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

[nobyra]

As a huge noob my first arch instalation was a multiple day ordeal. It was frustrating but mastering it is like a superpower.

[poytiolas]

No. 3 was pivotal for me. Thank you for introducing me to tiling WMs and especially Xmonad! My workflow as a software developer got much better. Cheers!

[Cobinja]

When I first installed Linux on a PC from an IT magazine's cover CD in 1998 the first thing I had to learn was how to compile the kernel. The preinstalled version didn't come with the module for my sound chip but gladly the sources on the CD did. And the magazine contained an article about compiling the kernel.

I migrated to Linux about six months ago. It's so exciting to learn Linux and yet so scary at the same time. Most things are rather easy to do, but they can be time consuming to understand. It's terrifying how deep the rabbit hole can go when you start learning about the different kinds of software there are for all the different parts of your system. Not to mention the ideological debacles that come with them. You end up learning to love GNU/Linux but it's a love-hate relationship. You'll start looking at your system with the compulsion to fix and improve all of the things that it could do better; which can be a dangerous (and fun) path. It's so much freedom that sometimes it's overwhelming. It's ironic that no matter how broken my system might be at any particular moment (probably my fault), I wouldn't trade owning my system for anything else in the world. And I'm only 6 months in! Which is both a lot of time in terms of commitment to learning anything and also just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to learning Linux and FOSS. It's incredible how there's always something new to learn and how there' always exciting new projects coming to life!

[YannMetalhead]

As someone learning Linux right now, the best tip is to use the terminal over the GUI, this alone will force you to learn a lot about Linux.

[overclucker]

The great thing about using the command line is that things don't change much. Graphical environments change often because UI/UX designers can't find happiness.

[MFTAQ]

I am over a week from fully moving over to Linux, I went with Linux Mint 20.3 and my pc is completely open source now, things are going good just taking my time learning as I go. DT thank you for your video's.

[jppbkm]

I switched from Windows completely to Linux due to a combination of getting into programming, your channel, and LTT's Linux experiment.

I just want to say thanks for all the content and your channel is the first one I look up for new topics related to Linux.

[Finkelfunk]

The number 1 tip that really helped me learn more about Linux on a much deeper level was reading the LFS guide. Even if you are not building your own system, you start to understand how it functions internally and that just helps understanding the general concept.

[tedhurst]

I know that at 12:04 you meant to say and type "sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade"...

Thanks for all of your good work these years!

[TheWanderey]

I totally agree with all the ways to learn Linux mentioned by DT, but I also found myself learning a lot by reading man for each command I was planning to use. Takes time to remember some of the commands/switches/syntaxes, but once you get it it is so much easier (and faster) to do most of the stuff. I find particulary useful when helping my family abroad. I installed mainly Linux Mint on my family members machines, and if they need some help, instead of using TeamViewer, i just tell them to copy and paste certain commands into terminal and most of the times that's all what I need to do :). I am still learning Linux, but enjoying it a lot, and can't wait to discover what else is Linux capable of. And thanks to people like DT and other Linux YT-ers I have finally ditched Windows about a 1 and a half ago, and so far not planning to go back. Keep up good work Linux community !

[NoName-cmfs]

Great subject & awesome tips, this may be one of my favorite DT videos. Thx!

[truthislam]

... and before I go I need to thank you D for your willingness to share, and to teach what you have come to understand!

[youtube.user.]

As still somewhat of a Linux noob, learning to use the TTYs in case something goes wrong is super important. Like when I tried installing this “howdy” package for Face ID-like unlocking but it didn’t work and I couldn’t log in by entering the password either. So I went into tty (Ctrl+Alt+2) and removed the package, rebooted and it’s working again!

Also you should learn to use the recovery mode in Linux. When u boot up ur boot loader like grub, go into mode options below your Linux distro and select the kernel with (recovery) at the end and select root prompt I think, go into maintenance mode and you can run any command. For another example I was messing around with my /etc/fstab and eventually something went wrong so I used the root prompt method to undo it because it wouldn’t even boot up

[KevinBReynolds]

Another very solid video DT. You really do some good things for the Linux community. Thank you for your contributions.

[JRCSalter]

I completely agree about installing Arch. There is sooo much to learn from just that one task that my knowledge of Linux grew exponentially while doing so.