recommended Unix only platform for learning command lines
 

title says it all.... well for the most part


first off im not officially a newbie in the definition of the word i have been using debian based systems for about 3 years (i think) and also at the time of this post i have 95 post on these forums only 2 reasons im still in the newbie forum are the facts that 1 i get better replies faster and 2 this is a pretty simple question


but the thing is im a gui person i dont venture far from my kde and gnome.... but i gotta face it sometime there wouldnt be a gui if there wasnt a bash prompt....


i got myself resources (beyond you guys) such as books man pages and google.com/linux to guide me


i just need to know what os to use im thinking since i know allot of Debian i should just do a very minimal shell of that but i want top know if theres a better way???

Why don't you simply use a virtual terminal if you want to avoid the GUI? Just press Ctrl + Alt + F1 (and Alt + F7 to get back to the GUI). That's awfully convenient; you can always get back to Gnome or KDE whenever you need to check something out that is not accessible from the shell.

You want a command line only to work with?

CTRL-ALT-F2 will give you the cherished black screen with white text. CTRL-ALT-F7 is often the way to get back to GUI.

yea well i have an extra 2gb hard drive laying around ill just put a minimal debian on it with out a gui whatsoever

surely you can just bring up a cmd line /xterm from the menus?
I think most (all?) distros have this option...

I tried exactly the same as you - instal without X/Windows - unfortunately it's such a steep learning curve, particularly if you've used KDE and miss some of their applets, that in the end I didn't bother. I found the best way to learn more is by playing with my existing system and trying to answer questions here! I'm now quite happy in a shell but still tend to use Kate to edit config files!

OK, if you do insist on having an X-less OS, you may as well install FreeBSD. Have a look at the online Manual before you jump.