best resources and tips for a newbie to linux?

I didn't realize this community existed and posted my other thread about linux distros in another community, so I'll try rectifying that here.

I'm trying to learn as much about linux as a desktop system as I can before I dive in to installing a distro on my computer. I do have a tiny bit of familiarity with the terminal from having servers running Debian, but those I get a lot of help with. the distro I've chosen is Bazzite, which is based(?) on Fedora if I recall right. I liked the stuff it comes with (I love video games) built in and I like the idea of the atomic desktop setup.

so, what are your tips and tricks for a new linux user? what about outside resources? I've been doing as much digging for articles and videos as I can, but I thought asking the community might be a good idea too. I'm trying to compile these resources for myself and my partner, so that we have stuff to learn from and reference.

as a final question, what got you into using linux over windows or mac?

thanks in advance!

poki ,

First of all, if you'll be using Bazzite, then become familiar with its documentation. Other sources may not necessarily translate that well to Bazzite due to Fedora, Atomic, OCI and SELinux (to name a few). Though, some other sources may benefit you as long as it doesn't contradict with Bazzite's own documentation.

so, what are your tips and tricks for a new linux user?

Bazzite is on Fedora Atomic's model, hence you should become familiar with the built-in rollback mechanism. Furthermore, it's possible to keep deployments around. Therefore, if anything, consider utilizing this on your first deployment; just in case.

Pinning said deployment is possible with the sudo ostree admin pin <insert number> command after installation. The number can be deduced through the rpm-ostree status command. The first deployment's corresponding number is 0 and for each deployment found below you just have to increase the number by one to find its corresponding number. So, the 4th deployment corresponds to the number 3. Btw, you can pin multiple deployments. So there's no opportunity cost involved. Finally, you can unpin a deployment with -u. So sudo ostree admin pin -u <insert number>

as a final question, what got you into using linux over windows or mac?

I was never a mac user in the first place. As for Windows, a hardware failure was causing more issue on it than on Linux. So that was the direct cause. But the reason I got interested into Linux initially and what has kept my interest are privacy and freedom respectively.

DreamyRin OP ,
@DreamyRin@beehaw.org avatar

hey, sorry this is coming late! thank you for this. I was already looking at their documentation (I have a few times, as well as read their discourse forum) and joined their discord in preparation.

I think this is a super good tip because I have been trying to parse what all I'd need to get familiar with before I touch anything install wise. I knew about the pinning a deployment thing, but I didn't fully understand how, so thank you for laying it out for me!

poki ,

It has been my pleasure!

and joined their discord in preparation.

That will definitely help out a lot. Well thought!

Welcome on board 😉.

Kory ,
@Kory@lemmy.ml avatar

https://linuxjourney.com/

DreamyRin OP ,
@DreamyRin@beehaw.org avatar

this looks amazing, thank you!

korthrun ,
@korthrun@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Don't follow tutorials, understand them. I'm so tired of seeing useless uses of cat because some asshole writing a tutorial 20 years ago decided to illustrate how pipes work with a good ol cat file | grep string as if grep didn't take a file name as an argument.

The more time I spend being mad about this the more I notice people using horrible practices in tutorials because they're too lazy to setup a legit use case.

A new user sees this and thinks this is how grep works.

Loops are another common one. People going around not knowing you can pass a glob to a shell for loop. Because the tutorial they read was lazily written and they didn't bother to understand the bits of what they were being shown, only how to reproduce/mangle the command until they manage to get close enough to what they want out of it.

DreamyRin OP ,
@DreamyRin@beehaw.org avatar

I'm absolutely going to do my best to understand and not copy/paste without doing that. I don't like doing things to my computer that I don't know what is happening, so that makes sense to me! I already ran into that issue plenty of times with my servers, so I'm trying to go all in now.

thank you!

BlueEther , (edited )
@BlueEther@no.lastname.nz avatar

A little tongue in cheek and showing my age alittle ...

https://no.lastname.nz/pictrs/image/0da44636-fcfe-431a-8282-0bb45d4e8dba.jpeg

but there are some good youtube channels around, then there are resources like Arch's wiki and for the hard liner there is the Gentoo doc's

DreamyRin OP ,
@DreamyRin@beehaw.org avatar

thank you for the resources! I think I have VeronicaExplains noted down already, but the other ones are new to me. I'll give them a look!

recursive_recursion ,
@recursive_recursion@programming.dev avatar

For new Linux users a good start would be YouTube vids

after that I'd personally recommend the Arch Linux Wiki as it's a well regarded and well known encyclopedia for anything you'd need/want to know about most Linux related things

beyond the Arch Linux wiki, you'd probably be looking at the Linux kernel documentation or Gentoo's docs/wiki

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