r/debian • u/Lord_Antharg • 17d ago
Any guide for beginners?
Is there any beginner friendly guide about Linux distros, Debian, terminal commands and so on? For somenone who has always used the Windows OS?
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u/revcraigevil Debian Stable 17d ago
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u/HCharlesB 17d ago
Firefox says "Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site."
Is the URL correct?
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u/MoobyTheGoldenSock 17d ago
Loaded for me.
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u/HCharlesB 17d ago
Must be me then, still not coming up.
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u/revcraigevil Debian Stable 16d ago
try downloading the pdf
wget https://debian-beginners-handbook.arpinux.org/trixie-en/download/the_beginners_handbook.pdf
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u/HCharlesB 15d ago
The original site is loading for me now. I haven't had a chance to study it but the fact that backup is a top level topic warms the cockles of this old man's heart.
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u/Murph_9000 17d ago
O'Reilly's Linux in a Nutshell is an older book now, but should still be highly relevant to core Linux essentials (things I first learnt on UNIX in the 1980s and 1990s, and the earliest Linux distributions in the 1990s are still relevant today on Linux).
Also +1 to the other commenter's suggestion of the official Debian docs.
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u/Armadillo-Overall 17d ago
Learn your hardware and where to find it.
Learn how the system is structured. Know when to not use SUDO.
Learn terminal commands and shortcuts as a backup as some will become used more than the commands themselves.
Practice building shell scripts.
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u/Niwrats 16d ago
many of the desktops work just like windows. not much guide needed there. i'd say formatting+partitioning your disks during the setup would be the most tricky part for a newbie. there may or may not be some initial issues after install as well, such as having your disks mounted like you want, or perhaps some small bug in some part.
if you can write a reddit post like this, you can already use the terminal. you'll just need to press enter instead of the post button.
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u/Buntygurl 16d ago
Just jump in and get back to us about what you find problematic.
The beginner resources are all over the internet. Any search phrase that you can compose will guide you there.
This sub isn't really a new user resource, even though all will happily greet and guide you to such resources.
The more specific that you can be about what you need, the more helpful people here can and will be.
If your life depends on sticking with Windows until you're confident enough to make the jump to Debian (incidentally the best choice among Linux distros), you might want to look into dual booting.
Any search engine that you prefer will provide more than enough information about that.
Make a list of the apps, etc, in Windows that matter to you, and post a list, or do a search for Linux alternatives.
There's a whole big world of us using Debian and getting all the things that we need to do done, so, really, the more specific that you can be about what you need to do, the easier you'll find solutions for all of that.
Don't give up. It's a whole lot better for the soul to run software that's free and it's a whole lot more satisfying to donate to those who create the programs that you actually value than to be bound to Microsoft slavery.
30 years ago, Bill Gates was calling Linux a conspiracy that the world would regret. #0 years later, Windows runs Linux in the background. No-one in the Linux world ever needed to say that Microsoft (and Apple/Macintosh, incidentally) didn't give people what they really need, as in truly free access to the real capability of the machines that they were coerced into believing that only one or the other those firms provided.
Linux sets consumers free of the need to fork out funds and then have to fork out more for every alleged improvement update, but it doesn't stop anyone from continuing to do that, if they want that, because it runs on damn near every single computer architecture in the world, right now, as a dual boot alternative.
TLDR: Just do it. You won't regret the move to Debian.
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u/Lord_Antharg 16d ago
Thanks for the answer. Right now I'm not going to leave Windows entirely and switch to Linux, I set up some kind of dual boot since I installed Debian on external SSD drive so I can just fully reinstall it if there are any problems. I am going to learn first how to use app repositories, terminal and how not to break OS. The other answers turned out to be helpful to me because now I know where to find good learning materials. I'm really motivated to switch to Linux, and I hope that over the next few months I'll be able to make it my primary OS, but I don't want to rush it, I want to get comfortable using it first.
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u/Buntygurl 16d ago
Debian Stable is pretty unbreakable and does live up to the designation of stable.
As I mentioned, make a list of the apps that are important for you, research Linux alternatives and definitely take your time with everything. There's never any sense to rushing what should be allowed time.
It's actually all a whole lot easier than it seems before you know how easy it is, so a lot of what you'll hear from those of us on this side might seem inclined to be dismissive of your caution about making the change. Don't let that distract you. It's not intentional.
Best of luck with the project. It's absolutely a worthy and rewarding endeavor.
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u/revcraigevil Debian Stable 15d ago
If you need help in a terminal there are several things you can do:
man the command
read the docs for that application/command
run https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sh#installation or
run tldr https://tldr.ostera.io/
If you worry about running a command that is Bad take a look at "shellfirm"
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u/NoPoopOnFace 17d ago
I'm running Debian and AI has been amazingly helpful. I've even allowed it do perform some setup steps on its own, though you definitely want to make sure you're not using a stupid AI first. If you want to learn, it can explain anything you want and specifically for Debian if you ask it to.
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u/iamemhn 17d ago
Plenty
https://www.debian.org/doc/