Any suggestions? No seriously, I need them.

YoyoKirby

Now I've been using Linux for about a year now, and I feel that I don't know enough about it or about terminal commands. Could anyone suggest some commands to get comfortable with.

I know apt-get install and aptitude search. I know a few others, but I use those mostly.

Now, I've tried several distributions and found a few that I currently use. Ubuntu on PC, and #!Crunchbang on laptop. I know that #!Crunchbang is an offshoot of Ubuntu, so there's not that many differences to learn. I was just kinda wondering which distribution would get me to learn more, faster. Because the faster I learn, the more I can be useful for this site.

Set_Killer

Try to install Gentoo from Gentoo minimal CD. Read the installation docs from the site. after that you should know howto copy, move, extract, recompile the kernel, install grub, about fstab and much much more. if there is something you cant do - ask in their IRC channel.

YoyoKirby

Does it have to be Gentoo, or is that one you think will be most useful to me?

Set_Killer

are you scared of compiling or you are scared of configurating?

you may try Linux From Scarch, but gentoo have better community and documentation.

also you can read some books about linux administration.

ScHmItCh

I don't think you need to recompile your kernel to get comfortable with terminal commands. I was in the same boat when I started using Linux. I just decided to do day to day things in the terminal instead of through the GUI.

When you have something you want to do and you don't know the command Google it. Some very simple ones for moving around your file structure are cd (change directory), ls (list contents of directory), cp (copy), mkdir (make directory) and rm (remove - be very very careful with this one avoid using it as root until you really know what you are doing).

I can do most of my day to day tasks that don't require a program with a GUI (graphic design, surfing the web). You just have to decide that you are going to do it.

raluxs

Well, there is The Linux Documentation Project .
In your case I would suggest the Guides section, there is a lot of reading material about commands and bash.

Good luck

Naiki

I found Gentoo generally taught me the Gentoo way of doing things. Once i was setup i just repeated the same few commands over and over and got bored snot-less of compiling for the sake of milliseconds of my time. :P

Different people different tastes and different learning routines though i guess Each to their own

YoyoKirby

Set_Killer wrote:

are you scared of compiling or you are scared of configurating?

you may try Linux From Scarch, but gentoo have better community and documentation.

also you can read some books about linux administration.

I'm not scared of Linux. If I mess up, I mess up. Oh well, it's a shitty computer anyways. I'm just not familiar with Gentoo at all, which would hinder me.

GITux

Why don't you try good old Debian. If you like to really dig into linux Debian is one of the most ground up linux distro's.

Rovanion

If you were to learn how to use the terminal in a good and efficent way. I would recommend you installing either Gentoo or Archliux, preferably the latter.
If you as you say have about a year of experience using Linux you are just in the situation that I was in last winter when I got my hands on an 800mhz laptop with 256megabytes of RAM. My mission was to get it running, but not only that but to get it running smoothly.

I had heard that the real hackers of Linux spend their time in Gentoo, atleast my older friends had, so that was my first go. I prepared as well as I could and read the installation documents well and through before I started my installation. Having irssi in one tty and two links sessions open in two other ttys I started the installation, but failed miserably.

I tried to reinstall the system about five or six times before I gave up. It was simply out of my scope, I wouldn't even get the ethernet connection to work properly.

So I remembered someone at the WeGame.com forum saying that the Arch way was the way to go. So I read up and figured that I might give it a try. And man it worked well!

Fallowing the installation guide just as I did for Gentoo I got my system installed. And i pacman -S'ed all the applications I needed. Did the configuration needed to get Xorg working because the hardware didn't work with hotplugging. And after working around on the ArchWiki I got a beautiful Macthemed XFCE running.

Now that laptop works great for surfing the web and social stuff.

So my recommendation to you is to grab the Archlive CD and drop yourself into the console. I promise you. After the first shock of not having any GUI I found the TTY's to be very handy. That is how I learned how to live in a terminal enviroment.

OjM

Try INX (Inx is not X), it's not only about terminal commands, it teaches you to be able to live on command line. It's a command line based distribution for command line newbies! Based on Ubuntu.

http://inx.maincontent.net/

It teaches you to use Screen, show you that it's possible to watch movies without X, browse web with images and a lot more. You can use that environment to learn about the commands too.

YoyoKirby

When I see INX, all I can think about is using it in public and wondering what the people around me are thinking.

I'm gonna give Debian a try, I hear that's a good one. Eventually, I'm gonna get Gentoo.

acosta

Something I do is have some of the major distros running on virtual machines, using VirtualBox so I keep on top of all new developments and have always a Linux distro I can mess up without affecting my main system, where my life is kept.

ruben_linux

the best option is the virtual systems.
i have VirtualBox, and running gentoo, bt3, win..., and other systems

i started with RedHat 7.1, and now after running very OS, running ubuntu and used VirtualBox for play, try and learn.

YoyoKirby

I was just about to say that. I've been using INX on VirtualBox, which has turned out great because you don't need much to run it. Although I think I'm gonna stick with noobuntu for a bit longer. It feels fine for my level.

kryptikos

YoyoKirby wrote:

Now I've been using Linux for about a year now, and I feel that I don't know enough about it or about terminal commands. Could anyone suggest some commands to get comfortable with.

I know apt-get install and aptitude search. I know a few others, but I use those mostly.

Now, I've tried several distributions and found a few that I currently use. Ubuntu on PC, and #!Crunchbang on laptop. I know that #!Crunchbang is an offshoot of Ubuntu, so there's not that many differences to learn. I was just kinda wondering which distribution would get me to learn more, faster. Because the faster I learn, the more I can be useful for this site.

Alot of good suggestions on here, but remember, it's all Linux. The packaging may be Arch, Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo etc etc, but the functionality is the same. What you can do on one distro you can do the same on another. It may differ slightly in package management, install method, use of logical volumes etc, but the kernel is the kernel.

I applaud your desire to want to learn more about how Linux works and command structure. If you wanted to build a Linux box from the very beginning to understand the process and compiling then start with Linux from scratch (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/).

As far as tutorials if you'd like a nitty gritty view of Linux the LPI prep documents are very good to go through:

http://www.ledge.co.za/software/lpinotes/101-letter.pdf

http://www.ledge.co.za/software/lpinotes/102-letter.pdf

This will be an excellent start for learning how to command-line your way through Linux and understand what/how/when the OS does things. Hopefully that will help a bit

Feel free to ask more questions while you are learning!

Good luck!!

ford

There are so many distributions out there, that it really is up to you. I would advise going with one of the "major" distributions though.

Slackware is very unix-like if that is what you are looking for (SuSE used to be similar to Slackware but I am uncertain if it still is).

Arch is different from most in several ways, primarily the init system.

Debian is the most common. Ubuntu and its derivatives are Debian derivatives. Debian derivatives litter the landscape and usually offer nothing new. Learning Debian in-depth would certainly go a long way.

CentOS and Scientific Linux are clones of RHEL, and learning them will take you farthest in the job market.

Gentoo is a rather generic distribution. Most packages are vanilla (like Slackware), but mostly everything is GNU. The install process reminds me of earlier linux distributions.

Despite what one would image, most distributions are very similar to one another. Things to know:
init systems vary. upstart is used on Ubuntu,
BSD-style SysV on Slackware
runit and initng are also popular.
package managers vary. most popular are rpm, dpkg, pkgtool.
hierarchies are different from distro to distro.

Outside of those, I am working on a distribution that aims to help users like yourself. It isn't very innovative, but I am aiming to introduce new comers to the under belly of Linux systems by simplifying all of the scripts that are used in the system. It is a semi cross-compiled linux from scratch embedded - based distro, using a custom package management system and mostly CLI/ncurses applications. Still working on an installer.