Linux - NewbieThis Linux forum is for members that are new to Linux.
Just starting out and have a question?
If it is not in the man pages or the how-to's this is the place!
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
Hmm. The best practice is to use it daily for your tasks. If you are just getting started then you might try to learn your way around the shell, too, while you are at it. Bash is ubiquitous but you will also find Zsh and some others increasingly popular. The main thing to learn there is the tab completion and how to use it. Then find an overview of the differences between Bash and some of the other shells.
As for tasks here is a short list in no particular order:
update the OS
install a package
remove a package
reboot now
reboot at a scheduled time
suspend the desktop
read the manual page for a specific utility
find which text file contains a specific string
edit a text file
check permissions on a file
change permissions on a file
list the files in a directory
list the files oldest first, newest last
change to the previous directory (by shortcut)
pull from Git
run a script
restart a service
view a text file in a pager
stop a service
start a service
delete a file
generate some SSH keys with a comment and a specific file name
check the SHA256 fingerprint of a local SSH key
set up SSH key-based authentication for an account
remove a bunch of files at once
make symbolic links
That's maybe a start.
What are you interested in doing and what kind of things have the tutorials focused on? Again, just using it to solve regular tasks is about the best experience.
This is perfect. If you can send more task like this (for beginners) and more complex tasks, I would be very thankful. In this way I can try things and learn something new, because I had no idea that something like SHA256 exists
There are some good resources named in the other posts too, especially the Shotts book. The whole book is good but section four is especially important.
Here are a few more for the interactive shell:
configure sudoers to run a script as another, but non-root, account
run a script as another non-root account using sudo
configure doas to allow starting, stopping, restarting, and reloading a service
start, stop, restart a service using doas
edit a service's configuration
reload that service using doas
fetch an ISO image using wget
verify the integrity of the ISO using sha512sum
verify the authenticity of the ISO using sq or gpg
list nftables rules
add a (temporary) rule to nftables
add a (permanent) rule to nftables
start a tmux session
detach the tmux session
reattach the same tmux session
make an new window in tmux
view a log file with a pager
track the log file as it grows using tail
pipe tail into grep or awk to select only specific log entries
switch windows in tmux
check the local date and the UTC date
check a remote service with netcat
use openssl to view the valid period of an x509 certificate
use SSH keys to log into a remote host (-i)
set up a while loop to re-log into the remote host automatically on an intermittent network
use zenity to pop up a notice at a specific time or upon script completion (hint DISPLAY=:0.0)
find out which accounts are logged in and active with w
find process ids with a certain name using pgrep (-d)
find details for said process ids using ps (-p, -o)
YMMV.
Some of those are common tasks in general others might be common for some people in some activities but not others. Be sure to at least skim the manual pages for each utility. It'll be very useful to be comfortable doing that and learning how to look up the details easily when you need them. So it is more important to learn to find and skim manual pages than to try to remember any specific utilities. That'll come automatically with repetition anyway. Though if you are interested in servers, I would recommend finding your way around tmux, ssh, sudo or doas, and some basic shell scripting.
Again, see posts #6 and #10 among the others above.
There are a bunch of good beginner tutorials in youtube. Look for the complete courses that follow some sort of line, otherwise you can get lost learning a gazillion different things here and there. Here are a few good starting points for begginers, follow their playlists:
Thank you everyone. Community on this forum is very helpful.
I didn't expect so many replies. Every reply is important for me and
reach me something new. Have a nice day everyone
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.