beginners guide to gnu/linux

[lilac bobcat]

so you, like many others have started to dive into the "linux" world, but maybe feel a little overwhelmed by all the information and terminology that can be quite confusing to anyone looking to start their journey of understanding the vast FOSS(free open source software) lands.

where do you start? or perhaps you already have started, but are getting lost in the sea of jargon that everyone else has casually drowned you in, and are having a hard time coming up for air?

this pdf may act as a great beginners reference for many of the things you will run into on your search results when looking for a solution to any issues you may have.

instead of scrolling through like a lost child on twitter, instead use the ctrl + f command to do a page search, and search up the word directly as needed, it will save you many hours of information dumping.

the above resource has... many... redundancies due to capitalization, for some reason, but there is no shortage of definitions, that's for sure.

if anyone else has additional helpful resources for beginners just starting to dip their curious toes into the waters of GNU/Linux that you wish you had known about when you started for the first time, please share them here

one thing to note about going on this journey into understanding the unending content of gnu/linux, is that the community will be full of gatekeepers, and jerks who will just slap you with lines like "just read the documentation" which is going to be a commonplace thing, as unlike other operating systems that are made by a single company and follow a strict guideline for how their system functions.

linux and its many distros(distrobutions) and flavors are made by the community, so you will nearly constantly be learning some new way to install, run, or troubleshoot something for each and every app, or widget you want to play with on your desktop. granted, that comment of reading the documentation isn't harsh in and of itself to be told, but many people forget to be nice about it.

so don't be discouraged if folks don't just hand you the answer directly. linux is also not so simple that anyone will be willing to just solve your problems for you either, so please do not expect the community to be brimming with experts that can do black magic for you and all your problems go away without you putting in any effort on your part.

linux is very much a DIY(do it yourself) based community.

[lament wren]

last sentence is incorrect, many distributions like Ubuntu and mint strive to be OOTB, with no configuration needed and are meant to be simple to use

[lilac bobcat]

the last sentence was in regards to the community, not the distrobutions themselves. you are correct that the distros are becoming fairly simple to use out of the box, but when the user wants more, they will inevitably run into incompatibilities or an update will break something, and they will seek help from others, who are very much more often than not, stuck in the DIY mindeset, as my last sentence had stated.