My pointers: 1) Do all day to day tasks with the CLI. It will force you to challenge yourself. 2) Learn line editing with GNU Readline. What is this? E.g., wh

My pointers: 1) Do all day to day tasks with the CLI. It will force you to challenge yourself. 2) Learn line editing with GNU Readline. What is this? E.g., when you have a bash shell open and you hit Alt+B, your cursor moves back a word. This will make your time in the shell a lot more pleasant. Similarly, the basics of VIM, which will make text editing a lot more pleasant. Less friction means everything comes quicker, and you get tighter learning iteration loops. Don't go overboard on this: it's mostly about navigating around and editing text, not installing plugins or anything beyond an hour or two of study. 3) Don't waste time purposefully memorizing userland tools. You'll forget them in a week, and most of the time they're pointless clutter in your head. There is zero value in memorizing all the options for `tar`. Memory will come naturally with use. 4) Do not waste time building the perfect set of dot files (e.g. `.bashrc`, `.vimrc`). Know where they are, but futzing with them should be <1% of the time you spend learning. 5) Do not waste time building a Linux desktop, configuring a window manager, etc. Linux is, first and foremost, an operating system for servers, and the skills needed to get a polished Linux desktop user experience are entirely separate from (and usually dependent on) the skills needed to get a solid Linux server environment up and running. 6) Man pages are your friend. Before Googling how to do `something`, try `man something`. If you don't even know the man page you're looking for, try `man -k something`. If it's totally new, read the whole man page. If you're just looking for an obscure `tar` option, just skip to that section. 7) Cert book for RHCSA. Honestly pretty much every non-junior developer should have the skill level of a RHCSA. It teaches you how an entire system fits together. Note you don't have to pony up some obscene fee to RedHat to actually take the test and get the cert (though, as far as certs go, it's one of the better ones); the point is the content. And actually do all the labs/exercises in whatever book you get. 8) Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment (APUE). This is less critical and only relevant once you are vaguely at the RHCSA level (and know how to program), but it can give lots of valuable knowledge about the programming system interface.