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Learning Linux, next steps? (self.linuxquestions)

submitted 3 months ago by ScientifficDoggo to c/linuxquestions

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Good day all,

I'm currently about 3 months into using Linux exclusively for personal computing and gaming. I stared out trying EndeavourOs /w the Linux Surface kernel on my Surface, having now settled on Manjaro on my surface and CachyOS on my gaming rig.

So far the experience has been relatively painless. Now, having settled down comfortably into a rhythm of running sudo pacman -Syu, getting lost in the AUR and wiki, I feel like exploring more into what Linux has to offer.

So, on to my question, what do i do now? There's a bit of choice paralysis for me. Where did you all decide to dig in first? What resources did you use? What projects did you take on to deepen your knowledge? What do you feel is essential for crossing the threshold from average user to almost-superuser, then from there and beyond?

Thanks in advance for your time. Hope to hear from you all soon.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Enjoy your stable systems while you can! Learning comes through solving problems as they come up. It's a good sign if you don't have to.

Need some new functionality? Figure out how to set it up. Encounter a bug or issue? Troubleshoot and fix it. Functionality that you want doesn't exist? Time to program it yourself.

You can also start customizing (ricing) your system as you wish. Take a look at unixporn style communities for inspiration and advice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

That's it. Broke my installation when I reverted to a snapshot that had a different kernel installed. Could fix it with arch-chroot and learned a thing or two how btrfs subvolumes work.

[–] ScientifficDoggo 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Thanks for the reply.

I'm guessing systems tend to lose stability over time? What's something that broke that you've had to fix in the past that sticks out in your mind, doesn't matter the reason.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I've been using Linux a long time. Eventually when you get a brand spanking new system or upgrade a component, you will inevitably have to compile a driver from source.

For the longest time, I had to extract garbage from a Windows wifi driver, package it into a Linux driver and pray it worked. Every. New. Kernel.

Now most of my hardware just about works unless it's super fresh. More than anything my problems stem from some Library I use for a hobby project being poorly documented, requiring an ancient external source, or just being incomplete in a way I find frustrating.

So my answer is start hobby coding and then hate your life because everything you learned is functionally incomplete and existentially annoying.

Looking directly at you Intel Extension for Pytorch.

[–] ScientifficDoggo 2 points 3 months ago

Thanks for the insight thus far. I appreciate it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Bluetooth, obscure laptop quirks, audio, fonts, maybe a dozen Nvidia related issues. Seldom all at once- but have been at it over a decade. >.<

Not an 'over time' issue caused like Microsoft's creepy fetish for more and more of your habits/data but, our devs are human volunteers, usually with day-jobs.

Highly recommend a bare-metal, manual install of Arch- promise it's not as scary as it might look, just lots of reading.. When stuff breaks, you'll have a decent idea of how your system is put together and where things have gone wrong. Congrats on objectively picking a derivitive of the finest pre-compiled distro Gnu/Linux has to offer! ^.^

[–] ScientifficDoggo 2 points 3 months ago

Thank you for the info! That arch install is looking more and more like the next project I'll be taking.