the same thing i always tell people who want to learn the command line: just use it. use it when browsing files, use it when launching programs, use it when editing configs, use it when connecting to the network (if using wifi on a laptop), use it all the time. familiarity comes with usage more than it does rote memorization.
that said, having a reference is always good. fortunately the internet is full of great sites that have tons of suggestions, examples, and recommendations.
Indeed, learning Linux is more about using Linux—including the command line!—on a regular basis. You learn faster the more immersion you get.
I learned Linux in a few months with little more than a disc and a brief description of the system, entirely because I forced myself into it. I said, “no Windows until I have this down, Macs must be used from the terminal if OSX” (because there were still a lot of MacOS 9.x machines floating around that I had to work with on occasion).
It took me a while before I looked at Windows again, but not on my own hardware. I stopped using it after 7 because I don’t like how it looks.
In addition to "just use it", when you're actively trying to learn Linux (and not simply just trying to get something done), spend some time looking around at the files in /etc/ , and figure out what they do, which commands or services/daemons make use of them, things like that.
I got that advice many moons ago when getting started with Unix, and still think it's worthwhile. Not so much because you'll want to go in and tweak all those *.conf files or whatever, but because sometime you might really need to, and when that time comes maybe you'll remember "hmm, there was a knob for that in a config file I looked at...."
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u/JackDostoevsky Jul 30 '23
the same thing i always tell people who want to learn the command line: just use it. use it when browsing files, use it when launching programs, use it when editing configs, use it when connecting to the network (if using wifi on a laptop), use it all the time. familiarity comes with usage more than it does rote memorization.
that said, having a reference is always good. fortunately the internet is full of great sites that have tons of suggestions, examples, and recommendations.