in my experience, practice, practice, and more practice. but “just git gud m8” isn’t really helpful advice. if you don’t have half a decade on hand, i can make a few more practical recommendations.
a shell that can do argument autocomplete is your best friend. personally, i use zsh + ohmyzsh + fzf + fzf-tab, but i’m sure there are other configs, and i’ve heard ohmyzsh is a bit of a nightmare, though i haven’t had too many issues.
so let’s say you’re running the one rsync command this month, and you forgot the args, just tab-tab and you can search through the arguments with fzf.
Doing hackthebox or other CTF challenges, Using CLI software, writing bash scripts.
Breaking things.
I’ve done this. It had the opposite effect.
Knowing:
- pwd, ls, cd, cat/less, cp, mv, rm, rmdir, rm -rf, ls -lah
- command --help
- man command | grep thing I care about
- bonus points if you have tldr command installed
Good cushions
I have no clue… I grew up on Windows 3.11 and I thought Windows was kinda lame while MS-DOS was the coolest thing ever because you typed things like magic spells 😅
This right here (more or less - first home PC was Win95, but it still relied pretty heavily on DOS, esp for games). I loved the RPGs where you typed in your actions, too.
When you aren’t in a rush try to do stuff in command instead, looking for a file? , try to find it in command. Need to copy and move a folder? Don’t use your file manager, use the command line instead.
Eventually you will piece together the bits you learn and it starts to make sense, and then you feel like a God. Lol.
I 100% agree. I’m still relatively new but this helped me become much more confident.
For me it was self hosting, aka not having a choice but to learn. I’ll be dead before using remote desktop for that.
Also, self hosting gives you real motivation, because you actually need to do things, carry tasks, not just learning for the sake of it. Your efforts get immediately rewarded with functioning things.
real motivation, because you actually need to do things, carry tasks, not just learning for the sake of it. Your efforts get immediately rewarded with functioning things.
Yes indeed, and that’s true for any challenging skill to hone.
Mastering the command line? A few observations. First, consult and take notes (yes, even seasoned terminal veterans forget syntax.) Secondly, embrace tab completion. It’s your friend, and a surprisingly effective substitute for remembering every single command. Third, the true test: procure a VPS or remote server and exclusively use the command line. No GUI crutches allowed. It’s a digital wilderness, and you’ll learn to navigate it.
Lastly, and this is non-negotiable: keep a terminal window permanently resident on your desktop. Consider it a vital organ, deserving of its space. It’s a constant reminder of the power you wield, and a readily available portal to a world beyond the pretty buttons.
Hehe, I’m doing this all the time now ! 3 years ago when I started my linux/self-hosted server journey with debian: CLI only !
Was difficult at times and had a few breakdowns (most got fixed the next day… Sleep/taking some time off really helps !!!)
One thing I’m still bad at… Is taking notes. Haven’t found a good way take IT notes. And I tried sooo many different approaches…
Breakdowns are inevitable; a good night’s sleep is often the most elegant solution. :) I utilize Zim (for note management) as plain text remains a perfectly serviceable option, imo.
I upvoted this comment multiple times while reading.
On that front: to developers-
Please make sure you include bash completions for your tools
C:[Enter]
##Colors. And a nice, readable font. Make your terminal pretty so you feel good every time you interact with it. Think about window dimensions (I personally always find the standard 80x24 too small), maybe set up some manual tiling so you can have two terminal windows fill your screen. Use the keyboard to move around your desktops.
But mostly, colors.
Colors and ASCII graphics.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. Or fancy.
But breaking things up so it’s readable helps massively.
Or a nice prompt that creates a distinguishable marker across output.
And the message “DON’T PANIC” in big friendly letters.
And make sure you know where your towel is.
In my experience repetition helped. Not memorization, but more like muscle memory.
Also, ensuring to never copy and paste commands but to type them in manually yourself. It’s hard to enforce this on yourself, but worth it.
I appreciate that this article started with “ways to reduce risk” because that’s an extremely valid concern and tied to why you shouldn’t ever copy and paste. The one time in my early Linux forays where I copied and pasted I wiped the wrong drive. It definitely taught me to always manually type it in and not get too lazy, because what you copied might not match what you want to do exactly.
Also, ensuring to never copy and paste commands but to type them in manually yourself. It’s hard to enforce this on yourself, but worth it.
“Command: sido not found…”
As a fan of german rap this gave me a good chuckle. Thx.
Stumbled across a game that teaches the command line as you play it. Seems like a good place to share https://gitlab.com/slackermedia/bashcrawl
personally, writing and saving simple scripts - IE project based learning - is how i got time in the saddle.
Okay, this is not Linux-specific, but it’s about a transferable skill:
What helped me get comfortable and learn a lot of basics was setting up NetBSD. The basic install throws you into a basic command line, with no graphical interface installed and not even the internet configured. But the online guide for setting the system up is incredibly well-written and teaches you all the concepts you need to know.
After doing this, I was familiar with a larger set of terminal commands, knew how to use vi, had a bunch of practice setting up config files in CLI and even finally learned how pipes work. It’s a very enjoyable experience, the guide is so good I didn’t feel overwhelmed once and anything you have to look up is tied to a problem you’re solving (like cursor movement in vi).
It also teaches you how NetBSD is structured. It’s not Linux, but similar enough to understand a lot of how and why things are done in Linux systems
Really specific here, but font control.
Us folks with dyslexia in its various expressions have trouble with command line. If you can’t read a specific command, good luck ever getting comfortable with it. You can’t error check yourself, so until you build up memory, you’re kinda screwed if you can’t use the fonts that are available.
