r/linux4noobs • u/tripping_on_phonics • Jul 21 '26
migrating to Linux How did YOU learn to use the terminal?
Did you learn it out of necessity, i.e. learning to fix things? Did you learn it deliberately for ease of use in navigating file directories? Did you use any terminal spinoffs that give menus of commands, perform autocomplete, or check for mistakes? Did you read documentation published by your distro?
Terminal is clearly very useful, but I find that I don’t do any single command regularly enough to really memorize it, except for things like fastfetch or lsblk. I’m curious how so many in the Linux community seem to have mastered it so well.
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u/sk999 Jul 21 '26
The first "terminal" I used was an IBM selectric typewriter connected to a GE 645 mainframe running Multics. Multics is an ancestor of Linux, and several of the basic commands (e.g., cp, ls, ln, pwd) are common to both.
For a time I was proficient at entering machine code using toggle switches and blinking lights.
The early CRT terminals with 80x24 character displays were a breath of fresh air.
The first computer I used with a GUI, the main interface involved creating multiple terminal windows.
My first home computer was a Mac. Go figure.
These days I log in to a supercomputer across the country to monitor ongoing data collection, and a terminal is infinitely more efficient that trying to use a GUI. The main data directory has over 6000 files and subdirectories - so yes, I do use it for navigation.
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u/FinGamer678Nikoboi Jul 22 '26
For a time I was proficient at entering machine code using toggle switches and blinking lights.
I imagine you jumping around like the Doctor steering the TARDIS xD
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u/NDCyber Jul 21 '26
I honestly just used the OS. Slowly started to realize how fast it can be to use the terminal instead of GUI apps and now have a middle ground in a way that I like. Now i rarely even bother to see if a program is available on my distros repo using a GUI, most of the time I just search using the terminal
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u/PocketStationMonk win 11 made me do this 🫠 Jul 21 '26
Ran into an issue > searched for an answer > found new knowledge > proceed > ran into a new issue > search for an answer > found new knowledge and so forth and loop until I’m a perfect human terminalator.
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u/Leather-Security8097 Jul 21 '26
I learned to use it first for fixing things, and then later to automate tasks using shell scripts. That said, I grew up using MS-DOS and later using net send in Windows 2000 to message other kids in the computer lab, so I've never been averse to CLI in the way younger people seem to be.
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u/orthadoxtesla Jul 21 '26
Does net send still work?
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u/Leather-Security8097 Jul 21 '26
No. They disabled it by default in Windows XP SP2, and removed it in Windows Vista.
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u/EmergencyDinner777 Jul 21 '26
it was patched out a decade ago because it was a security hole
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u/orthadoxtesla Jul 21 '26
Huh. Any fun terminal things that do the same type of thing. I’d love to just send stuff to my friend across my lab
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u/tomscharbach Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
How did YOU learn to use the terminal?
I learned to use the terminal by using commands to do specific tasks, such as loading an application, or updating/upgrading, and so on.
I didn't start using Linux until I retired in 2004. I had a leg up, having used both DOS and Unix, and the Windows terminal, before I started using Linux.
Did you read documentation published by your distro?
I don't remember, but probably not much. I used man pages to learn specific commands and related variables, and I recommend that method.
Terminal is clearly very useful, but I find that I don’t do any single command regularly enough to really memorize it, except for things like fastfetch or lsblk.
Just learn what you need to know from time to time but don't try to master the command line beyond learning how to do what you need/want to do. What would be the point?
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u/-malcolm-tucker Jul 22 '26
Wait. You've been retired for over two decades?
I'd love to hear your origin story as an IT user / enthusiast.
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u/magusNotMagnus Jul 21 '26
I got a MacBook Air because all of my artist and UI dev friends talked me into it and couldn't figure out how to do anything with it. I was taking a networking class at the time and we were required to get a book on BASH and the UNIX systems administrator handbook (yes, I said UNIX, but I cheated and got the Linux book) I used terminal to add a user and then configure my wifi and then just about everything else. I still can't figure out how to use the MAC UI to do anything. It drives people crazy when they try to use my laptop and the first thing they see is a terminal window. (I changed my desktop to look like a terminal window because I'm THAT kind of dork)
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u/prthorsenjr Jul 21 '26
Back in the day, we didn't have a desktop environment. That terminal (aka. console) was all we had. If you read enough on Usenet, you could learn new things and save code and compile it. Curses was nice. From that programming came the "screen" program.
Those were the days.
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u/Prestigious_Wall529 Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
First used a VT100 in 1985.
When backwards in 1987 to the obsolete VT 52, Dec teletype, and a personal Brother EP-44.
At the time ed (and edlin on DOS) were used, and Teco, a precursor of Vi on the various terminals on a Dec PDP-11 running RSTS/E.
A few years later I was used to sitting at strange terminals, reviewing the termcap database, and configuring my terminal environment appropriately.
Later block mode Memorex 3270 terminals for an IBM mainframe. Still have an IRMA board around somewhere.
In different companies seen Lotus 123 running on a mainframe and MS Word 5.5 running on a Dec Minicomputer running Unix. Worse, had to support it.
Linux/Unix/Embedded CLI environments are generally unforgiving of typos. Getting jumbled unwanted control characters...
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u/chuggerguy Linux Mint 22.3 Zena | MATÉ Jul 21 '26
Dean Davis, LinuxCBT videos, sometime around 2005?
I think the first was a Debian net install? Or maybe it was CentOS?
I liked that he didn't hide his mistakes, but instead demonstrated debugging his numerous syntax errors, etc. by debugging in real time.
Just a hobby for me though. Just wanted to kill time and learn something new. Now I can't imagine using anything else. (I don't hate Windows, just don't like using it)
Have fun with it.
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u/F_DOG_93 Jul 21 '26
I honestly don't fully remember. Maybe when I started a job one day years ago and decided to just start using it more. I think it's like learning to drive. People that have driven for a while don't really remember the day driving became second nature
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u/Gloomy-Can1394 Jul 21 '26
Well I built an SSH terminal with an AI assistant built into it, so that helped me pick up some new tips and tricks here and there, but I *really* learned it when my job depended on it. It’s kind of like learning to drive a stick. You can practice it all you want but until it’s YOUR car and you have to drive it everyday, everywhere, you’ll only sort of kind of know it
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u/SudoSilv3r Jul 21 '26
i learned how to use the terminal for the convinience and speed of it and it paid off massively. I just learned some basic commands and over time more and more but there are not many you really need to be able to use the terminal effectively its just a matter of how efficient you want to be.
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u/HollowSalmon Jul 22 '26
I used to host Minecraft servers on an old laptop, had to use the terminal on a server distro since I had no desktop environment
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u/laminarflowca Jul 22 '26
Because thats all there was… same comment as a mullion other oldies like me!
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u/Altruistic-Rice-5567 Jul 22 '26
My first computers didn't have graphics. Some where just terminals (not "the" terminal, literal hardware terminals).
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u/JB231102 Jul 22 '26
Watching youtubers, trial and error, as I go
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u/Select-Bullfrog-5939 Jul 22 '26
The only time I ever use the terminal is for simple commands like flatpak update and/or whenever a person smarter than me says “this command in particular will solve your problems”. Seriously, you guys are wizards with that thing.
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u/throwmeawh3y Jul 22 '26
Uninstall Windows, only use Linux, for everythink id open in word or notepad or system file edit ask how I can do it in the cli. Make notes. Overtime the stuff you do a lot you'll remember.
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u/EqualCrew9900 Jul 22 '26
In the late 1980s, had taught myself 'C' programming on a RadioShack CoCoIII running OS-9, Level II. Using the terminal to generate the build sequence: makefile (2-pass compile, and link), and save logs, and copy or move the executable to a test node involved concatenating half a dozen steps at a time.
So, when I got to Linux ten years later (RedHat 5.x at first), the command line was a natural for building the kernels - pick the hdd driver, the graphic driver, the audio driver, the mouse and keyboard drivers, whichever features and utilities one wanted and kicking off a build that took several hours. A bit like what Arch does now, though back then it was smaller scale. Like on a 486 with 2 MB of RAM on a 20 MB hdd. We didn't know differently, so we just did it. There was nothing like Reddit since there was no Internet worth the name.
But it was all good! We could take a case and power supply, add some cards and cables, hook up the 9600 modem (don't recall if they were duplex), download files for hours listening to the squealing and squawking, get the makefile and kick off the build and hope and hope and hope. It was fun. It was instructive and we were instructable.
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u/r_keel_esq Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
I've never not used a CLI.
I cut my teeth on DOS, I was first introduced to Linux when learning C/C++ at university, and I use PowerShell professionally.
With my renewed forays into Linux, CLI is a pretty natural/comfortable environment for me
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u/IlIlIlIIlMIlIIlIlIlI Jul 22 '26
ive only been using linux for two years, and i only learned the veeerry basics in terminal usage (cd, ls, fastfetch, apt) in this time.
But when i started my homeserver hobby 2 months ago, i was forced to do everything via terminal through ssh, and very quickly memorized more useful commands (inxi, df, du, journalctl, udisksctl, mount, rsync, grep, find, lsblk, blkid etc. and now i use it every day for basic tasks, looking up info, mounting drives, checking logs, slowly learning linux on a deeper level! i feel faster and more efficient not needing the mouse for everything, and its better on my wrists too!
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u/JaZoray Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
by not treating commands as a property of the terminal, but as completely independent contact points to getting stuff done. It's all different programs in their own little worlds that have their unique expectations about reality expressed in their argument syntax.
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u/Capable-Historian392 Jul 22 '26
GUIs didn't exist when I started using computers.
Oddly enough they worked just fine, too.
I miss the simplicity.
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u/Same_Level_3599 Jul 22 '26
I was left to figure it out myself. All my dad gave me was one debian iso, burned to a DVD, an old laptop, and no internet. My dad told me to "figure it out"
Now he asks me for help when it comes to some linux-related stuff, lol
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u/Clever_Angel_PL Jul 22 '26
Physics student there, in first semester we were very encouraged to work with terminal, it was my first touch with linux too. But didn't really click with me.
Then I tried linux on my pc, and somehow naturally I started enjoying doing simple actions in terminal, then it just slowly evolved to me now often opening apps via it.
Typing "code Coding/XX" to instantly open VC Code, right onto my project XX is such a timesave compared to gui
Also, I take pride in looking like a hackerman to people around me
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u/zrice03 Jul 22 '26
As someone who DIDN'T grow up with computers without a GUI, I'm still not super familiar with the terminal, and mostly do just copy-paste commands when I need to, whether from some website, or AI generated. HOWEVER, I do look at them and try to understand what they're doing first. Like, I couldn't generate a call to "apt" or "cat" myself, but I can read it and know what it's (probably) going to do.
And mostly it's because I don't see a real pressing need to use the terminal. I'm not connecting to a bunch of random remote servers to admin them, or sifting through error logs, or anything. It's just my normal daily driver desktop, where the GUI does 99% of what I need already without too much fuss or time.
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u/AnnieBruce Jul 22 '26
I started on MS DOS. So I had no choice but to use a command line early on.
The Linux terminal does more, but it was a useful starting point.
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u/rindthirty Jul 22 '26
I learned some readline bindings, learned to make tab expansion a habit, learned to read and understand input and output. I didn't have to memorise everything after learning to navigate internal help efficiently. Oh, and I learned some vim too (run vimtutor or :Tutor from within vim). The most important skill though was learning to touch type, and some reading comprehension.
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u/mykepagan Jul 22 '26
“Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch. I was there when it was written.”
I started learning how to use computers when there was no GUI; the only way to interact was with the terminal. Except for a few machines I used that only had a hex keypad and a two-digit hex display.
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u/Thesaurius Jul 22 '26
My first exposure to the terminal was when as a child I accidentally activated DOS mode in Windows 95. I asked my dad about it and he showed me some basics (or dare I say ... BASICs?) and handed me a command reference.
But I really only started to use the terminal more when I started scripting, mostly through the Python interpreter. And then, piece by piece learning more.
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Jul 22 '26
Repetition is the key, but also quirky mnemonics help as well. There's this YouTuber called the Linux Mench who uses the terminal a lot, and when he does the ls command, he says "ls it" or "give it an ls." Now I've started doing the say thing when I need to see the contents of a folder I "ls it".
I've also found out how to push the changes to my website in the terminal using git commands. I do that quite often. But the problem is when I do git commit -m I wind up typing "git comment -m" because I'm making a comment. And the terminal quickly tells me that I'm making a mistake.
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u/PoppinGummies Jul 22 '26
I daily linux and use it in my homelab daily as well. I also look up the same commands frequently. It's just how it is. You will eventually learn them in time. Don't be afraid to look it up.
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u/iena2003 Jul 22 '26
school, university, ROS2, containers, job, compiling and now daily driver...
once you get the hang of it, it's gonna be the best thing ever (not for everything, but most things for sure)
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u/ezodochi Jul 22 '26
habit. You leadn the basics and if yoj don't know how to do something you google. If you want to learn kind of how to get into the mindset of doing stuff try the Bandit wargame on OverTheWire. They link you to man pages and try to get you to figure out how to do stuff and it kind helped me learn how to not just navigate the terminal but also how to research and learn stuff wrt commands and whatnot.
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u/SassyFlyffball Jul 22 '26
By not being afraid to try, and then used it despite it not being a GUI. Here some of the enlightening things I learned that helped me immensely with learning to use terminal:
- Almost all commands follow GNU guidelines and have a help option eg.
[command] --help. - Almost all commands have their manuals right there on your computer and you can access them with
man [command]or if you are not sure what the command even is and want to search by keywords, you can search withapropos [keyword]. For file hierarchy information checkman hier. There is even a introduction to basics withman intro. - The shell program or terminal has its own set of manual and info, which you can read through when ever you wish. Typically the short information is printed simply by writing
help, but you can also read the docs with man.
You don't need to memorize all of the commands. Just the ones that matter like the ones that help you. Other commands you will memorize as you use them and most you will have to keep looking up because you rarely use them. You will learn only by effort and effort is when you try to connect the dots yourself. Use the fact that most programs on Linux do one thing and you can chain those programs. Seriously though, learn how to get information when you are offline because the information is already there and more can be downloaded.
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u/TerminalPhile Jul 22 '26
I'm not from the old school so I grew up with GUIs, and the way I learned to embrace the terminal is by first feeding my curiosity concerning it. Asking questions about what happens behind the scenes of said GUI applications has lead me to learn a lot. Additionally, I started incorporating more CLI/TUI applications into my flow, starting from nvim then vim.
The best way to learn navigating the terminal and not being afraid of it is to come in contact with it. And keep in mind we all forget syntax and some key commands.
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u/TarsTarkas_Thark Jul 22 '26
Like some other responders, I used a terminal because it was the only interface to the computer other than punched cards, paper tape and the like. I was really happy when CRT terminals began to replace teletypes.
But I think that you are really asking, "How did you learn to use Linux commands in the terminal".
I did have a learning curve there, because I had never used Linux commands, only MPE, PCDOS, CP/M, VMS, TSO, and the like.
The man, man -k, and apropos commands will be your friends. If you have a question like "How do I copy multiple files at once, "man -k copy" will tell you to use the cp command, and "man cp" will tell you about all the options to the copy command. That's how I learned thirty-some years ago.
Or, just be lazy and ask an AI.
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u/Abe_Bazouie Jul 23 '26
Honestly, it was mostly out of necessity.
Every time I wanted to do something, I’d Google the command, copy it, run it, and eventually I’d start remembering the ones I used over and over.
I never sat down and tried to memorize commands. I just kept solving real problems, and the commands became muscle memory.
I still use man, --help, and Google almost every day. Nobody remembers every flag or option.
My advice is to pick a small project, like setting up a web server, automating backups, or organizing files, and let that project teach you the commands naturally. I think that’s much easier than trying to study a cheat sheet front to back.
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u/DifferentSavings2711 Jul 24 '26
Way back when the screen came in 2 colors - green or amber, and you tried hard to keep mice away from your computer. Command line was the only option.
Now I work alot with grad students, and they learn the command line when I introduce them to the power of shell scripts and linux pipeline. Still some of the best tools around if you are doing data analysis and other science stuff.
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u/Four_in_binary Jul 25 '26
Shell. The word you're looking for is shell. The Unix(and all of its derivatives) shell commands give a knowledgeable user the power to hurl planets into their local stars, remake life in the universe as they see fit, and screw over or save a billion dollar company entirely upon a whim, using a series of cleverly chained together commands and scripts.
You access the shell through a terminal (virtually emulated these days....but it was a physical piece of hardware in the old days).
The old VT100, VT220 and VT320(340?) I remember quite well.
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u/Eastern_Locksmith_24 Jul 26 '26
I took the darwinian approach of failing over and over again until I learnt.
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u/MsJamie33 Jul 27 '26
My first direct exposure was playing on a minicomputer (not a micro) at my best friend's dad's business. I learned to program on a TRS-80, back before it was renamed to the "Model I".
Then I moved to MS-DOS, and eventually Linux, specifically the Softlanding Linux System. Good luck getting XWindows running on that...
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u/Sea-Promotion8205 Jul 21 '26
I started with package management and moved on to root required config changes. That's the gross majority of my terminal work anyway. I have a few on and off programming projects that i use the terminal for, so i just learn as i go when needed.
I started with linux in 2010, so most of the terminal stuff had been replaced with gui by that time. The whole "linux requires the terminal for everything" platitude is not only inaccurate, it has been for a very very long time.
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u/GodBearWasTaken Jul 21 '26
Git with gui is awful, so I got used to it in terminal. My terminal usage prior to that was very occasional. Now I have vim as my most used text editor, probably ever.
Seeing others able to do stuff quickly and cleanly due to knowing how the terminal works pushed me further in this direction, and now I guess I use terminal less if anything, because I now have scripts to do repetive tasks for the most part.
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u/Delta_G_Robotics Jul 21 '26
When I started the terminal was all there was. I hated Windows when it first came out. I couldn't figure out how to do anything with it.
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u/smackjack Jul 21 '26
Installing Arch the old fashioned way taught me more about the terminal than anything else. I didn't even know that pressing tab to auto-complete was a thing until I started watching installation tutorials.
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u/rcentros Jul 21 '26
I just learned it by using it. I was predisposed to use the terminal because I started using computers in the early 80s when you had to use a terminal. When I moved to DOS and even Windows, I spent a lot of time using the CLI and writing short .bat files. The only difference in Linux is that I had to use new commands and write shell scripts instead of batch files.
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u/silentknight111 Jul 21 '26
I learned to use the terminal by needing to do things in it. That's pretty much how I learn everything.
I have a reason to use it so I learn it. If I don't have a need to learn something I usually don't even if I try to.
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u/msabeln Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
ls cat rm mv pwd cd uptime top df rmdir chmod env cp grep mkdir ssh kill ps shutdown who more less sudo vi ed telnet ping date time ip iw tail su traceroute nslookup man apt
These are the commands that I use the most often, and I usually don’t need to look at the manual pages for basic use.
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u/dwasifar Jul 22 '26
edlin on Linux? I learn something new every day.
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u/crimsonyoteeeeeee Kubuntu Jul 21 '26
Have to admit, I am still quite reliant on the GUI for almost any task where it's applicable. However I learnt to use the terminal when trying to theme KDE as well as set up drivers.
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u/Fast_Ad_4936 Jul 22 '26
I was all about the terminal at first, then I stopped caring. Now I almost never use it.
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u/doc_willis Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Books by O'reilly and numerous other books.
But I 'started' with using CP/M and DOS, and MINIX and my AMIGA and C64
I learned UNIX on good old "green bar printer" terminals..
Imagine a Typewriter that printed on an endless ream of paper. There was no Monitor. You typed, it printed what you typed, you hit return, it ran the command then printed the output.
And Yes a room full of the things was VERY noisy. But Back in the day, I could use them to typeset decent docs and books and other 'real work' just fine.
But I guess i am 'lucky' and grew up with the ever changing computer tech. I had to explain to my grandsons how to use a 'rotary phone' I found at a rummage sale. :)
I learned as I grew up, and the tech grew up. The terminal has always been a foundation level tool for all the OS I have ever used, Including Windows. MS may try to hide it, but its still there underneath.
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u/Ybenax nix-pilled Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
I moved from Windows 10 to Ubuntu in 2020. I remember following some guides to fix things, copy-pasting commands without knowing what on Earth I was casting upon my computer (please, don’t do that), then finding some YouTube tutorial on bash basics like `cd`, `cat`, `ls`, etc. because I was fed up with not knowing crap.
Six months later I gave a manual Arch install a shot (following the official installation guide from the wiki), and that’s when I got actually comfortable with the terminal. I screwed the installation many times, so I naturally ended up repeating the same handful of commands a lot until they became muscle memory.
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u/asgjmlsswjtamtbamtb Jul 22 '26
If you ever run Arch Linux or barebones Debian you're kind of forced learn at least a couple of important terminal commands. These days more complex stuff it's pretty easy to just type a question and get an llm to find terminal code and they usually give you the sources of their answer if you want to check that out as well. If you find complex series of commands that are too much to memorize than doing them and pasting them into an email to yourself is always an option to look back on or you can you look at terminal histories.
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u/korywithawhy Jul 22 '26
Started with the terminal when I set up my first web server. I was in school learning web development (just front end) and didn’t want to pay for hosting.
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u/CtuchikOfTorak Jul 22 '26
For me the key was making terminal easy to use. I personally recommend Guake, for the drop from top terminal style. It saves me from having to open terminal each time and worrying on which desktop window I left it.
It's faster and more convenient for a lot of apps/commands and you can even navigate with it faster than the GUI if you use things like Zoxide.
I just really enjoy typing. My first PC didn't have a mouse, so I'm probably heavily biased, but a keyboard feels like home to me and I do everything I can to create and hone that experience.
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u/biffbobfred Jul 22 '26
My job was programming and there really weren’t IDEs for the system I was on. You kinda just learn because you need to
Make a project. There are recipes out there that have a lot of chopping so you learn knife skills, look for a project that sounds interesting that has a lot of command line skills needed
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u/SX86 Jul 22 '26
I started using the terminal to get more out of my Synology NAS (using SSH), as I wanted to go beyond the limitations of its web interface. 15 years later, it has become a daily habit. Even though I spend most of my time in a desktop environment, I now use the terminal multiple times a day on both my PC and laptop.
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u/Logical_Swordfish756 Jul 22 '26
Because I seemed useful and I was curious about it. Started with https://www.linuxcommand.org about 10 months ago, currently learning a bit everyday, hoping to keep learning the next 40 years
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u/ChillyLavaPlanet Jul 22 '26
I have a self hosted server that i maintain so i need to learn the terminal. I also do this challenge sometimes in my work where I don't use file manager at all. That also helps. Other than that customising, tinkering teaches me the rest.
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u/SweetNerevarine Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Well I started learning command line things before I ever touched Linux. You could say it was more of a transition for me. However the short answer is: by doing it.
If I was to learn the Linux terminal from zero knowledge today, employing the "by doing it" and "just start using it" method I'd do the following:
# Will list you all the programs whether command line or gui
ls /bin | less
# Displays a manual page for a given program
man ls
man less
# Display a manual for the | (pipe) concept used before
man pipe
These two powerful lines open up the possibility to learn a whole lot autonomously by trial and error.
Now, ideally some concepts should be formally explained and digested beforehand. For this I highly recommend interactive online tutorials, such as:
As for your remark on not remembering every little thing: that's okay. It is better to focus on a problem currently at hand and solve it with a good base of knowledge plus research and right away automate the problem away. As opposed to solve issues over and over again with super deep off hand knowledge...
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u/RightYouAreKen1 Jul 22 '26
I learned it (the basics at least) at work because our company used RHEL for our application VMs, and I’d need to check application logs, restart apps, etc, for my team. Leaned the basics of navigating the file system, navigating, monitoring and updating text files, running simple commands, etc. We were remoting in via SSH so there was no DE available.
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u/ThePlasticSturgeons Jul 22 '26
I started working with VMware back in the ESX days when it still had an almost full blown RHEL backend.
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u/nahman201893 Jul 22 '26
I switched over last year. I needwd the gui to get started. Since then I've learned some terminal commands and learned how to do a few things.
It's a slow process for me, but computing is fun again.
FU M$!
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u/groktech Jul 22 '26
I started dinking around with Linux back in about 1998 because I was trying to get better performance out of my 600 mhz amd box. We had dialup internet so I spent a lot of time figuring out how to get that working. All the help I found online was how to do everything from the cli so I just kind of jumped into it. Over a few years of messing with it on and off I figured out how to run a web server, and configure smb file shares and set up a Linux box as a firewall...after we upgraded to dsl internet. At some point I made the jump to installing headless server versions and working with them completely from the cli over ssh. So...just continued desire to make the computer and Linux do things I wanted them to do.
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u/Aylarth Coming from Windows? Try ZorinOS! Jul 22 '26
I was playing MUDs via telnet, then with zMud (client for Windows), and then found TinyFugue (TF, client for Linux, running in Terminal). I also became a Wizard after some years - still using putty for ssh/Terminal. That was literally a playful way to get used to the Terminal environment and get used to it comfortably. :)
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u/pissrockious Jul 22 '26
just over time learning stuff from when i had to install or setup stuff but m very beginner still. ive been installing void linux on a very old 32 bit netbook and i think the repetition of typing a bunch of commands n looking em up too to see what they do has been v effective for making me feel more confident in using the terminal.
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u/pissrockious Jul 22 '26
i think your friend is googling if a command exists for a certain thing u want to do, reading the docs of ur distro as u said and the man pages r very very useful for if u need to quickly check what smth does and what u can do w it (very vey helpful imo if ur trying to use a command u found n ur unsure whether its safe or not!)
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u/MultimediaMage Jul 22 '26
I started back in 2000 so we didn't even have Gentoo yet.
There were a ton of basic things you couldn't do in the GUI, I was into programming, and there were always trials by fire to get accelerated graphics, audio, or Macromedia Flash running. Or sometimes just the GUI at all.
I think we were on KDE 2 and Gnome 1 and I think it was RedHat 5.
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u/Stormdancer Jul 22 '26
I started before there were GUIs. If you wanted to do something, you did it in a CLI. CP/M, AppleDOS, MS-DOS, all of 'em.
I learned by doing, and looking things up in manuals.
Weird, huh.
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u/tripping_on_phonics Jul 22 '26
Judging by these comments, I’m surprised at how many Linux users are like you: OGs who came up before GUIs were a thing. I wonder if the younger generations are less fluent in terminal like myself.
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u/Stormdancer Jul 22 '26
I think we just understand that the high magic of GUI interfaces are built on the low magic of the command line. We came up talking more directly to the machine, so it doesn't concern us like it would someone who's never had to do that.
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u/Unholyaretheholiest Jul 22 '26
Copy/paste random commands until I stopped myself and forced to understand what I was doing
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u/did_i_or_didnt_i Jul 22 '26
install zsh and oh my zsh and go from there
I think I learned from an appendix of a book I had about Ruby on Rails. Then a few years of daily driving Linux running tmux and nvim instead of a modern editor
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u/this_is_life_now Jul 22 '26
Try using i3 or sway. A tiling windows manager still has all your standard GUI applications, but your terminal becomes you default interface for most things.
With a TWM you launch applications using the keyboard, focus windows using the keyboard, switch desktops using the keyboard. Even simple tasks like moving files around, you end up using the terminal because you just can't be bothered to take your fingers off the keyboard to use your mouse.
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u/TheWolfGamer767 Jul 22 '26
I started learning from websites that teach you how to use the terminal and then I started trying to use the terminal for everything even though the gui could do it. Ive only been using Linux for a few months now, but I'd say I've learnt decent enough to be comfortable with regular use of my device using the terminal. Though I started using a mix of terminal and gui because that's just more convenient
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u/Royal_Librarian4201 Jul 22 '26
For me it was for bread and butter. Till that first job, I wasn't particularly interested in terminal.
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u/Glittering_Memory_64 Jul 22 '26
the need to make it faster// deeep down in system files, there i was... editing a font file. all those late nights tweaking my waybar config with neovim, trying to find the next lightweight tool, I slowly got comfortable using the terminal, terrified as hell, knowing that one wrong edit or file removal, might break my system.
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u/small_merchant Jul 22 '26
Is like when you use windows, you didn't know how the things works but step by step you learn things, is just another form to use computer, If you really want to learn Linux and master I recommend read books
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u/7YM3N Jul 22 '26
It's been so long I don't really remember why I started. I think it was in primary school when I started to get interested in programming. But I know I wasn't using it to compile because I was using code blocks, then in highschool I tried out Linux and started getting used to the terminal. Turns out sudo apt update is faster than finding the software manager in system tray. Proficiency increases with usage.
Tldr: learnt by doing
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u/cpt_futtbucker Arch | Fedora Jul 22 '26
I started with customizing my system through dotfiles and manually dealing with conf files in /etc. Then I just naturally progressed into using the CLI for everything after settling on using Arch
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u/Apprehensive_Way4811 Jul 22 '26
My dad put me to MSX when I was 3 years old then I got used to work with computers in a quite “terminal” way.
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u/raul_kapura Jul 22 '26
Don't install gui. If you want to learn linux for work, you won't have it there anyway
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u/SweetGale Jul 22 '26
In small steps over 25 years. I used to be a Mac user and started exploring the terminal when Mac OS X was released in 2001. I had watched two friends install Linux and knew the cd, ls and man commands and not much else.
I then began studying computer science in 2002. We were put in computer labs with old SUN SPARCstations, asked to write our code in Emacs and then compile and run it from the terminal. Half of the students dropped out after the first semester. Having to learn how to use a Unix terminal was cited as the main reason.
The biggest step was when I started working as a software developer. Most people only knew Windows and Visual Studio. My background often made me the resident Mac and Linux expert and I was put in charge of things like the build system, version control, continuous integration and test automation – areas that depend heavily on bash scripts and headless Linux servers. That forced me to really start learning it in-depth. I taught myself using the Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide (available in HTML and PDF). It works both as a textbook and a reference guide. There are similar guides for some of the more complex but powerful commands like grep, sed and awk.
I only switched to Linux as my main OS in 2019. But at that point I was already relying heavily on open source software, the homebrew package manager and the terminal in Mac OS.
Don't worry about remembering things. I still look up basic stuff all the time.
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u/Quietus87 Jul 22 '26
My first computer was a 8086XT with MS-DOS 6.0. Norton Commander 4.0 was the peak user interface. Using the terminal when I started learning Linux in high school didn't feel foreign to me, because I have been using DOS and Windows command line every since.
Nowadays I use fish instead of bash, because it's pretty comfortable right out of the box. I know some basic commands, but still check --help or man for them here and there even for those before doing something, in case I misremember something. For everything else, I look up on the internet, and I will either remember it, or not, who cares. Finding information quickly is a more useful skill than memorizing everything.
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u/Narrow_Tangerine_812 Jul 22 '26
I learned to use the terminal bc one of my teachers in college made me use it. He gave a task snd said "No GUI, only terminal". He really checked how we did the task via history and just asking the exact command and the meaning of flags in command.
Now I'm using it when I understand that GUI can't do the thing I need or in case of debugging
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u/OliMoli2137 Jul 22 '26
i wanted to learn how to mount drives manually out of curiosity when first installed linux (it was ubuntu back then)
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u/Ill-Independent184 Jul 22 '26
i started using ubuntu with gnome because almost everything could be done in GUI apps, but slowly started to use the terminal and now i can't see myself using GUIs for simple tasks like copying files or changing permissions on arch hyprland, you can always go to Linux Roadmap and follow the roadmap, i recently started using this and tbh i started knowing more command about the terminal
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u/Sp1cyP4nda Jul 22 '26
I saw the Matrix and other hacker movies when I was young and impressionable. Now I can't leave the terminal. Somebody send help!
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u/lowban Jul 22 '26
My family wasn't wealthy when I grew up so my first computer was an old ass IBM 286. I had to learn how to navigate the command-prompt on DOS at an early age when most of my friends used Windows. After that learning the terminal on Linux was basically more of the same. I've used it mostly because of necessity but it also makes some things much faster to do.
By following guides online and using the trusted copy and paste method you can fix and do almost anything through the terminal. You learn things as you go.
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u/WormWithWifi Jul 22 '26
I use Reddit and AI to help me use it when I need to but i honestly avoid it at all costs
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u/fattomic Jul 22 '26
Like others, I started before GUIs were a general thing. My advice - for (say) 6 months use the terminal and only the terminal. Once a week or so read the bash man page to get up on the tricks. My younger colleagues were heavily impressed when they saw me use "!!" and "!-2"
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u/BetterEquipment7084 Jul 22 '26
By fooling around blind.
I did nothing more, but did this for months and years.
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u/Foxler2010 Jul 22 '26
Docs always pointed me to it, so I ended up being there pretty often. I got good at it simply by using it.
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u/Lucky_Foam Jul 22 '26
The same way people learn anything.
Keep doing it over and over until it becomes second nature.
Ask an NBA player how they learned how to shoot a basketball. They took thousands or even millions of shots to get where they are.
Do the same with the terminal. Keep using it. Use it for everything. And eventually you will be pretty good and using the terminal.
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u/trying_again_7 Jul 22 '26
some search engines, hitting the tab button a lot, and pouring over MAN files
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u/billie-badger Jul 22 '26
Around 2008 I accidentally flashed my entire windows system with crunchbang. It was then. Best mistake I've ever made.
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u/emotionless_3gp Jul 22 '26
It was a healthy mix of necessity+ curiosity. At first I needed to fix and configure stuff through the terminal and it was mostly googling, but everytime I spent a little extra learning what everything means and what else could it do, and it became more and more intuitive. At the same time, I realized I could do some things a lot faster if I just skipped the GUI of the programs entirely
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u/Key_River7180 Bedrock Linux / FreeBSD / 9Front Jul 22 '26
Because the instructions I found on google used the CLI instead of GUI.
I ended up doing this really often and found it cool, so I learnt how do use it, my memories of actually learning it are really fuzzy though.
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u/oshunluvr Jul 22 '26
Back in the late 90's/ early 2000's, breaking your Linux GUI was almost a daily thing. We HAD to learn some terminal magic! This also means I'm old enough to remember when Windows was an application that run on DOS, not an OS.
Videos drivers and/or settings, audio drivers, kernel updates, other things as well - broke quite often.
I kinda chuckle when somebody less experienced hollers about when this or that "broke all by itself!"
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u/bioemilianosky Jul 22 '26
Fixing windows taught me how to use cmd, fixing manjaro taught me how to use bash
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u/jlp_utah Jul 24 '26
Well, it was either the terminal or punched cards. I had my own terminal, but I didn't have my own card punch machine.
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u/astral_crow Jul 25 '26
I started with pasting things I didn’t understand from sites like stack overflow. Then I’d have to figure out what I did if I broke something. Then I moved to using ai to blindly input things I didn’t understand and once again figured more stuff out when things broke or I wanted to make small edits.
Now I am happy to use the terminal anytime without any help for a good amount of tasks. It’s clear though I have some serious gaps in my understanding when it concerns things I’ve yet to encounter.
Like I only recently got service timers understood.
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u/East_Inspector3158 Jul 25 '26
My first computer was DOS based, so I knew some basics. When I got thrown into the Linux world as a network engineer, I at least knew how to navigate and do very basic operations. Thankfully, just about anything you'd ever need to use or run is so well documented, you can figure it out. And yeah, I still have to look up syntax quite often, but it's okay. Always be learning!
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u/saltyhasp Jul 26 '26
The progression is learn some useful commands over time. I learned this from a book back in the mid 1980s. The next step is to learn "bash" scripting, basically start by putting the commands in a file, then expand to learn about the programming constructs you can use with those. After the book the "man" command is very useful (use "man man" for the man page of "man"). The "bash" page ("man bash") talks about using the bash shell.
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u/Mysterious-Depth4109 Jul 28 '26
I set up my own server on an old PC I had lying around. That made me use the terminal to do administrative stuff. Once I switched my main PC to Linux, I just used the same commands and kept doing the stuff I did before to make my system mine and solve the small problems I didn't need dedicated software for (shortcuts for switching my main screen, activating my VPN, changing video and audio to use Steam in home streaming etc.).
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u/Apprehensive_Bad5920 Jul 22 '26
Ngl, tldr. 🤷 Practice especially though. A sense of curiosity is pretty paramount, at least for me.
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u/apresmodes Jul 21 '26
Some o f us are old and used computers before GUI OSs. But really it just comes from practice. There’s nothing wrong with forgetting and looking things up too.