The 5 Things That Taught Me The Most About Linux

one of the most often asked questions that i get from new to linux users is how do i learn linux how do i learn more about linux how do i become a better linux user and typically when people ask me these kinds of very general questions how do i learn linux i tell them well use linux right use linux and naturally the more you use it the more you'll learn but that's kind of a cop-out kind of answer today i wanted to actually dive a little deeper and actually give you my top five ways to learn linux now know this everyone is wired differently the way i learned so much about linux you know the way i gained a lot of knowledge about linux is not the way that you necessarily have to go about it but i'm gonna give you what i found were the five things that made me progress faster as far as learning more about linux number one virtual machines virtual machines are an invaluable resource virtual machines allow you to install an operating system inside a virtual machine right it's not actually installed on physical hardware it won't ever touch your existing operating system windows for example so you can install linux on windows inside a virtual machine and take it for a test spin see how you like it you know check things out and it does absolutely no harm to your computer it doesn't actually overwrite anything on your existing drives right because everything technically is in a virtual machine and if you're switching to linux here in 2022 you have it so much easier than i had it when i switched from windows to linux in 2008 because of virtual machines virtual machines they were around in 2008 but virtual machine technology was nowhere near as advanced as it is now back then you know a virtual machine you could tell it was a virtual machine the performance wasn't good things were broken where these days you can install an operating system inside a virtual machine most of the time unless you know for sure that it's running inside a virtual machine you really can't tell a difference between the vm the virtual machine and that operating system running on bare metal so what virtual machine program do you need to install on your system well if you're new to virtual machines the one i recommend because it's the easiest to get up and working and its cross platform is virtualbox and by cross platform i mean virtualbox works on windows mac and linux and and i'm talking about host machines meaning your physical computer it can be running windows mac linux it doesn't matter virtualbox has additions for all of those operating systems and you can see inside virtualbox here i have several different things installed i have a windows 10 virtual machine and several linux virtual machines let me start one of the linux vms here and this is a lubuntu virtual machine i don't know how old this vm is it's probably very old i don't use virtualbox that much these days let me log in yeah and this is luboontu so i could take luboontu for a test men try it out you know i i could actually make it full screen to where it takes up the entire monitor and i would never even know i'm in a virtual machine if i wanted to do that and you know live in it you know pretend like it's my real machine and i could do that for a little while until i'm comfortable with it and actually want to install it on physical hardware or maybe i don't like ubuntu and then i go grab another linux distribution and install that inside virtualbox and give it a spin let me go ahead and shut down this vm now i mentioned i don't use virtualbox that much these days i keep it installed but these days i use a program called vert manager for my vms you can see i've got a lot of vms installed using vert manager verb manager is not cross platform vert manager uses a technology called kvm which is kernel of virtual machines kernel meaning the linux kernel so this is strictly for linux hosts you have to be running a linux operating system to install vert manager on it but you can install any virtual machines and you can install a windows vm or a mac vm of course various linux vms that doesn't matter but the host machine for verb manager needs to be linux invert manager offers some performance uh increases over virtualbox if you're running linux because again it uses the kvm the kernel virtualization modules so you gain a little bit of performance because it's actually accessing the kernel and some of your physical hardware now number two on my list of top ways to learn linux is doing a arch installation and reading the archwiki and so it's really two things but they kind of go together i think by far the best resource for learning anything you want to learn about linux is the arch linux wiki let me go to archlinux.org click on the wiki tab and if you go to the wiki page you can read all kinds of things i would start with the arch installation guide and i would actually install arch linux inside a virtual machine reading the installation guide and following along with the wiki i think that is one of the best ways to quickly gain a lot of knowledge about linux that otherwise you wouldn't learn because there's several things that you're going to learn when you installed arch you're not going to learn by running standard distributions you know like ubuntu or mint or even things like fedora even things like debian which is a more minimalistic distribution they do a lot of heavy lifting for you where arch really makes you learn about partitioning your drives creating users you know creating users and groups uh adding yourself to a sudoers file setting up a locale setting up language on your system and all kinds of things like that that normally is just done for you out of the box an arch installation really doesn't take that long either now if it's your very first arch installation it might take an hour or two because you're going to have to read the wiki and try to understand what the wiki's saying before doing these simple steps but after a while you know once you've installed it a few times an arch installation seriously the base install takes like 10 minutes like there's not much to it and that's why i recommend the arch installation as a good way to learn linux rather than more lengthy installations like gen 2 or linux from scratch things like that they're going to take many many hours and compile times and things like that where the arch installation is very quick and it still teaches you everything that you need to know as far as building a system from the base up now keep in mind even though i'm saying one of the best ways to learn linux is to install arch linux i'm not actually telling you that you need to use arch linux as your distribution i'm telling you at least a few times it would be great if you ran through the arch installation process reading the wiki right you can still run ubuntu or mint or mx or manjaro or whatever linux distribution you want to run that's fine but again if you're wanting to dive a little deeper and learn a little more run through an arch installation even if you're not going to run it for many many years before i started this youtube channel i would not run a rolling release distribution on my main machine because i wanted stable distributions i loved debian stable i loved ubuntu lts because they didn't change that much and that's what i wanted again before doing the youtube channel and experimenting with so much different software now i need a rolling release but back then i wanted stability i used to install arch in vms i'd play with arch i'd even put it on my main machine sometimes and play with it for a few weeks or whatever but i always came back to these other more stable distributions you know static model distributions but i still think arch really helped me even though i didn't run arch it still made me a better linux user having gone through that installation process and read a little bit of that wiki another one of my top ways for you to learn more about linux is number three use a standalone window manager by standalone window manager i mean don't use a complete desktop environment a complete desktop environment includes a window manager but it also includes panels and all the background services your volume manager and your clipboard and system tray and and all of that stuff right you get this complete user interface where a standalone window manager is just the window manager part of that equation meaning it's a frame that draws a window on your screen may or may not come with a panel or menu system or assist tray or volume manager clipboard manager you know a keyboard layout little applets and things like that it's not going to come with any of that stuff because it's just a window manager and why would this make you learn more about linux well because a standalone window manager you have to build a desktop environment around it right you have to install a panel if you want a panel menu system system trays and various system tray applets and and background services background demons that are running in the background listening for various things you make your desktop environment that makes you learn much more about what's going on under the hood where if you just simply run gnome or kde plasma or xfce or any of the big desktop environments you don't really know about those things right you're presented with this complete user interface but you don't really know all the components that are a part of that if you're looking for a good standalone window manager to try out if you want a floating window manager you know a traditional floating window manager i would suggest trying out open box it's extremely minimal right when you log in all you get is like a a brown screen or a gray screen it doesn't even draw a wallpaper there's no panels nothing like that is very minimal out of the box but i've done some videos in the past about setting up a complete open box desktop environment and you can go check out those older videos they still apply today it's not that hard for those of you that want to experiment with tiling window managers i've done a lot of tiling window manager videos this is my desktop environment that i had to create using xmo nod here so obviously when i log into xmonet for the first time after installing it it's not configured it's a black screen it doesn't have a panel doesn't come with a panel doesn't come with a system tray it doesn't draw a wallpaper it doesn't come with anything i have to make the desktop environment happen by installing and configuring a lot of extra stuff and again it's not i i do this because it was a learning experience but also beyond the learning experience at the end of the day when you do something like create your own desktop environment you really tailor it to your needs and in many cases it's much more satisfying and rewarding than just being served a complete desktop environment like gnome or kde plasma another way to learn much more about linux is number four use the command line as much as possible just open a terminal and use the command line most things most basic stuff that you do on your computer can all be done at the command line in many cases it's faster and of course you're going to learn much more about how things work under the hood by doing this and i will give you two examples of where i think everyone should be using a terminal like if you're a complete noob a complete beginner i don't care what distribution you're running do not ever open a graphical software center graphical package manager learn the package manager on your system so if you're on debian or ubuntu or any debian or ubuntu based system of course you're going to use the apt package manager learn how to update your system using the package manager app so you would do sudo apt upgrade and and sudo apt update that is the command to update your system on any debian based or ubuntu based system learn to do that right and this is not a difficult command right and then if you want to install software sudo apt install name of package for example g edit or if i want to remove something sudo apt remove you know name of package maybe i want to remove firefox if it was installed you know that's how you would do this on a debian or in a boontube based system on arch of course you use the pacman package manager sudo pacman dash capital s lowercase y lowercase u to update the system to install software just sudo pacman dash capital s name of package for example get annex a program i did a video about the other day if i want to remove software dash capital r name of package maybe i want to remove g edit from the system and of course fedora will have its own package manager dnl if you have to learn the commands for that but these are really simple things to do and it's great to learn this stuff for emergency reasons because sometimes what happens in a situation where you do an update and bad things happen maybe the graphical server x you know it crashes right you can't even log into your desktop environment or window manager so you have to drop to a command line well now what do you need to do well i need to roll back a package maybe i need to uninstall something i just installed because that's what broke things or i need to install a different video drive or whatever it happens to be if you don't know how to use your package manager at the command line you're completely hosed at that point so that's why i say this is the very first thing you need to do on any desktop linux distribution learn to use the command line every time you do anything with package management and i would also suggest open a terminal every time you need to do something with file management file management means anytime you need to move around the directory structure move files copy files make files delete files so i'm in my home directory right now pwd print working directory you can see that's home maybe i want to make a quick edit to a config file somewhere well i could cd into dot config we'll assume i'm going to do a quick edit in my qtile config so i'll cd into dot config slash q-tone do an ls config dot pi is the file i would typically edit so i could open that with vm or nano or whatever it happens to be that i want to edit this file with you know i could get in here make a quick edit and then get out of it now if i want to copy this file maybe i want to copy config.pi to i don't know my downloads directory so i could you know just copy that over and you know of course i could do all of this using just a standard graphical file manager but again just like the package management part what happens if you're forced to use the command line because something bad happened on your system you're gonna have to do some file management stuff right because many times when your computer crashes it's because you made a mistake especially some system config file somewhere well now you need to actually go to the command line navigate to the directory that config file is at open that config file make the edit right and you need to know how to do that stuff and if you all you ever do is use a graphical file manager again when you're in this situation you'd be completely hosed and number five on my list of top five ways to learn linux is understand the history and the philosophy behind linux as our operating system and behind the free software movement and the open source so we're moving right you need to understand how all of this got started because there is a serious ideological difference between free and open source software and proprietary software and without the history the creation of the free software movement the ideology there wouldn't be a linux kernel it would have never gotten created there would not be a linux kernel today if they moved away from those ideas because people would just stop working on it right if if the linux kernel became proprietary tomorrow literally no one would contribute to it anymore right so you have to understand what makes linux linux right it's all about free and open source software understand again the history of it for those of you that want a really good book to read it's not a very lengthy book but it will give you a great insight into the beginnings of everything check out this book here free as in freedom uh this is richard stallman's crusade for free software this book was written by sam williams and this is a great book for those of you that want to see how you know back in his college days richard stallman began thinking about free software versus proprietary software and how he eventually founded the new project and the free software foundation and how eventually linus torvalds and eric raymond came around and created the open source movement how those movements are a little bit at odds but in many ways how they're also they share a lot of ideas as well and i really think learning the history and learning a little bit of the philosophy behind the free software movement and the open source software movement will greatly improve your learning about linux as an operating system becoming a better linux user better linux system administrator for those of you that actually work with linux computers but i just think also it just will improve your understanding of the linux community as a whole so that was my list again it's a personal list because um that's my way that i learned linux right what i consider the biggest things that helped improve me once again just a quick recap of my top five ways to learn linux was virtual machines arch linux plus the arch wiki use a standalone window manager use the command line as much as possible and understand the history and the philosophy now before i go i need to thank a few special people i need to thank the producers of this episode devon gabe james maxim matt michael mitchell paul scott west allen armor dragon chuck commander angry day yo guy dylan george lee linux ninja mike aryan i messed all of this up alexander he's watching doorbell i take red prophet stephen and willie wow i probably should re-record that no i'm not going to we're just going to leave it as is but these guys they're my highest tiered patrons over on patreon without these guys this episode would not have been possible the show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen all these names you're seeing on the screen these are all my supporters over on patreon because it's just me and you guys the community if you like my work want to see more videos about linux free and open source software subscribe to distro tube over on patreon alright guys peace are you surprised i didn't mention vim or emacs

Channel: DistroTube

Views: 79,343

Keywords: linux tutorial, open source, linux distro, reasons to use linux, windows vs linux, linux help, linux, gnu linux, free software, open source software, learn linux, learning linux, become a linux power user, become a linux master, switch to linux, linux commands, linux terminal, command line, linux operating system, linux tips and tricks, linux for beginners, linux is, linux is better than windows, linux is too hard, ubuntu, arch linux, virtual machines, distrotube

Id: bdr_RvmOpkQ

Length: 18min 41sec (1121 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 10 2022