4 ms·

As people are mentioning a lack of Linux knowledge; is there a good course on this? two things; - I think it boils down to people not having 'poked around'. I

As people are mentioning a lack of Linux knowledge; is there a good course on this? two things; - I think it boils down to people not having 'poked around'. I grew up on DOS / early windows, when messing about, learning commands, configuration files was needed to install and run games (or new hardware). New game, new challenge. This learning process was part of the use of a computer to me. It gave me enough confidence and knowledge to 'try things' in later Windows or software if things were not working. To most people i'm a 'computer guy', yet when it comes to Linux / unix / mac I have no idea how to get around. - being overwhelmed / debilitating alienness (for lack of a better word), when they dont have adjacent knowledge & confidence. It's not just the transfer of knowledge, but often a çomfort of familiarity that is needed. My wife was a basic computer 'user' who would panic or blank out when she got simple technical instructions or something went wrong. I quickly learned that it was more helpful to show her we can just poke around, and it's ok to not completely understand something. We talked about how to communicate computer problems, and effectively use google. She got over the 'deer in headlights' syndrome, and now actually welcomes any new computer topic - while working in IT service desk!

sanitycheck 4y ago
I'm no Linux guru, one of those may be along shortly. I would say that as a Windows person you should just start using WSL for stuff and write down everything you learn as you come across new information. You'll naturally pick up the basics fairly quickly. At some point it might be worth installing a distro on an old-ish laptop you may have lying around - Pop OS is the least problematic in my recent experience. Then actually use it. You will accidentally irretrievably trash everything numerous times, WSL lets you backup & restore distros easily so do do that. With full installs, just remember to have copies of your config & data.
pas 4y ago
There might be good courses, aaaaand there was a pretty decent hands-on series linked recently here (or on reddit, or ... somewhere! and I can't find it now, sorry :/ ) That said, as the sibling comment by sanitycheck mentioned, start using it. WSL2 is pretty okay. Oracle is heavily promoting its cloud services by offering a pretty beefy free tier (24GB RAM, 4 vCPU aarch64, 200GB SSD, +1 IPv4 address) I'd start with self-hosting a bunch of stuff. Just for fun. Whatever interests you. Try things with and without Docker. Write a Dockerfile, build it, run it. Write a systemd unit file, enable it, start it, stop it, disable it, mask it, etc. Buying a (second hand?) laptop and installing Linux on it instantly provides a ton of interesting challenges. Which distribution? Which version of the distribution? How to partition the disk? Encrypt my files? Only my home dir or full-disk encryption? Try KDE, try Gnome, try Xfce. Try Ubuntu. Try Arch (because it's hype, also it's a rolling distro, also pacman - its package manager - is pretty nice) ... I don't like RedHat-based distros, but ... millions do. Who knows, maybe you'll like it. (Try Fedora.) Okay, you set up your Linux desktop. For you it's definitely the Year of the Linux Desktop. Congratulations! You're irrevocably one of us now. (I'm typing this on a shitty Windows 10 laptop, while a feet away a newer, but even worse Win11 laptop sleeps and ... I've been using Win10/11 on my big "dev" box for years (for playing 5+ year old games, obviously) ... but ! finally got fed up with BSODs and ~6 weeks ago I've installed Linux on it again ... then I moved and it's still in a box in storage :(((( ) Oh, yeah, this reminds me. Try Wine! Definitely try Lutris. (StarCraft II is free now, works great on Wine.) ... also, ask questions! (There's even a guide for asking questions! http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html Oh this reminds me of the howtos. So backin the day there was this https://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html https://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html :) before youtube videos took over.) That's it! Absolutely nothing else. No need to learn shell scripting, no need to open the terminal, no need to know just enough python to be dangerous. No need to know what's DKMS, nvidia drivers will just work. Everything just works! Bluetooth headsets and network printers too! (ps. I lied, sorry!)

sanitycheck 4y ago

I'm no Linux guru, one of those may be along shortly. I would say that as a Windows person you should just start using WSL for stuff and write down everything you learn as you come across new information. You'll naturally pick up the basics fairly quickly. At some point it might be worth installing a distro on an old-ish laptop you may have lying around - Pop OS is the least problematic in my recent experience. Then actually use it. You will accidentally irretrievably trash everything numerous times, WSL lets you backup & restore distros easily so do do that. With full installs, just remember to have copies of your config & data.

pas 4y ago

There might be good courses, aaaaand there was a pretty decent hands-on series linked recently here (or on reddit, or ... somewhere! and I can't find it now, sorry :/ ) That said, as the sibling comment by sanitycheck mentioned, start using it. WSL2 is pretty okay. Oracle is heavily promoting its cloud services by offering a pretty beefy free tier (24GB RAM, 4 vCPU aarch64, 200GB SSD, +1 IPv4 address) I'd start with self-hosting a bunch of stuff. Just for fun. Whatever interests you. Try things with and without Docker. Write a Dockerfile, build it, run it. Write a systemd unit file, enable it, start it, stop it, disable it, mask it, etc. Buying a (second hand?) laptop and installing Linux on it instantly provides a ton of interesting challenges. Which distribution? Which version of the distribution? How to partition the disk? Encrypt my files? Only my home dir or full-disk encryption? Try KDE, try Gnome, try Xfce. Try Ubuntu. Try Arch (because it's hype, also it's a rolling distro, also pacman - its package manager - is pretty nice) ... I don't like RedHat-based distros, but ... millions do. Who knows, maybe you'll like it. (Try Fedora.) Okay, you set up your Linux desktop. For you it's definitely the Year of the Linux Desktop. Congratulations! You're irrevocably one of us now. (I'm typing this on a shitty Windows 10 laptop, while a feet away a newer, but even worse Win11 laptop sleeps and ... I've been using Win10/11 on my big "dev" box for years (for playing 5+ year old games, obviously) ... but ! finally got fed up with BSODs and ~6 weeks ago I've installed Linux on it again ... then I moved and it's still in a box in storage :(((( ) Oh, yeah, this reminds me. Try Wine! Definitely try Lutris. (StarCraft II is free now, works great on Wine.) ... also, ask questions! (There's even a guide for asking questions! http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html Oh this reminds me of the howtos. So backin the day there was this https://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html https://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html :) before youtube videos took over.) That's it! Absolutely nothing else. No need to learn shell scripting, no need to open the terminal, no need to know just enough python to be dangerous. No need to know what's DKMS, nvidia drivers will just work. Everything just works! Bluetooth headsets and network printers too! (ps. I lied, sorry!)