LearnLinuxTV

This is one of many great playlists from LLTV. I cannot recommend this guy enough.

Bazzite is going to be a little different from normal distros since it’s immutable but what issues do you have? If you’re truly a beginner it might not be a bad idea to pick up a linux beginners book and just read it.

IMO I feel like what you’re doing is the best way to learn.

It has been a long time since my transition. I remember the journey well. I used to watch nixie does linux and a specific queries for different problems I had in both youtube and google to get what I needed.

I did a search on YT and came up with this video that was derived from the linux foundation. Only watched a few minutes bit might be a good place to start.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWbUDq4S6Y8

Welcome to linux! Lemmy is very accepting and helpful for your questions as well.

I want to say, it takes a while to learn many stuff in Linux. You didn’t learn everything of Windows in one video or blog post either. And in Linux, its even “worse”, as it is open ended with many operating systems and replaceable parts. That means its by design more to learn than on Windows. I’m just setting expectations. “Learning Linux” is not a single event or product you learn, and you hopefully never stop learning.

1. Maybe start at high level “What is Linux?”.
2. Go into “The Linux Filesystem”.
3. Learn about “Linux Philosophy and Shell Tools”.
4. That should lead you into scripting with “Bash”.

That should give you a bit of background and basics to start with. Just search these terms and start learning and experimenting. Plan years into learning…

Linux is a whole OS so there’s a lot you might want to look at. Luckily, if you get an error message in Linux you can search that error and find a solution.

Also helpful is reading documentation. Bazzite is based on fedora atomic so the first 2 doc links will be the most helpful. 3red one is a general gaming on Linux doc. And the 4th one is the arch wiki which will give you a lot of information that will probably go over your head at this point but you might want to look at from time to time.

• https://docs.bazzite.gg/
• https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-kinoite/
• https://linuxvox.com/blog/linux-for-game/
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Main_page

If you want a resource on bash specifically, here is a book.

• https://www.tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/

Something I noticed early on is that a lot of explanations for Linux can be used, at least partially, for multiple subjects/programs/situations. Also stress can hinder perception. So when I would reach a roadblock, I left the project in the corner and came back to it a few days later. For the first year, it helped a bunch.

Also taking the time to read terminal logs when something breaks helps a bunch, either to figure out by yourself, or to search in your search engine of choice.

And like with learning a new language, the learning curve requires patience. Besides, having had the opportunity to test multiple systems, some popular and some highly specific, each was quirky even when close to a system I already knew, so maybe testing around in a virtual machine or a spare laptop to find the Linux distro that best fits you might help?

Grab an old Thinkpad and Install Arch from scratch following the wiki. It’s considerably easier than e.g. Gentoo and equips you with enough experience to debug things.

Grab a note taking app like Joplin / Obsidian too.

After that try writing a pkgbuild and configuring sway/Hyprland/DWM.

Keep something simpler for daily driving so you don’t get warn out (eg EndeavourOS/Fedora/OpenSuse or something along those lines).

IME Endeavour is a nice compromise between over engineered bespoke behaviour like eg Ubuntu and configuration pains like Void / Gentoo.

as top comment has already mentioned - try wikis. think arch wiki or gentoo. you dont have to use those distros to know about linux, just read them. and even better, spin up virtual machine, and install arch/gentoo there. since you already use bazzite, you don’t have to redo stuff already done (like playing game or something), so you use the sandbox playground to just learn. if it breaks, redo, or make checkpoints.

For self hosting I run a separate machine with unraid which basically makes it super simple.

As far as learning Linux its tough because there are so many different ways to do things it mostly depends on what you choose. For desktop I mostly just hit the super key and search for settings or whatever I need, I never really open the terminal except for the one time I needed to disable the thunderbolt reset when connecting my eGPU.

For self hosting its mostly learning about containers whether its podman which I think theres a flatpak in bazaar, or using distroshelf which is preinstalled. Or using a separate machine with something like proxmox, truenas, or unraid.

After that the most you do is go to the application store and tell the container where to save the config files and where to access data, maybe change a port if its already used.

After that you want to setup a VPN to your home with something like wireguard or tailscale

I learned a lot from Raspberry Pi tutorials; that’s where I got my start.

Bazzite might be a bit of a tough one to get your hands dirty in; it’s an immutable distro, it locks down the guts of the OS kind of like Android does. Useful for gaming appliances, not so much for learning to sysadmin.

Honestly? Do you want the “real experience”?

Set up a VM (or a spare computer) and start an Arch install following the various tutorials.

Why?

Well, Arch may not be the best daily driveable distribution if you want just an uncomplicated experience, but setting it up from the bare bones boot medium and slowly following the (very well written) instructions in the wiki it will give you a solid foundaition going forward and UNDERSTANDING what you are doing.

Also - while not explicitly Linux and quiet a bit dated - i HIGHLY recommend to read The UNIX Programming Environment, written by the guys who are responsible for this branch of the OS evolution in the first place. It is a nice read to understand why - to this day - some things are the way they are to this day.

Bazzite is a great distro if you want to jump in and start playing games and getting the software you need to use your computer. The intent behind bazzite seemed to me that it should be accessible enough for non-technical users but provide access to a large library of programs in just a few clicks. It has a few quirks that make it different than other Linux distros if you pick it apart.

Have you ever used command prompt, batch scripts or PowerShell on Windows? That’s what BASH, shell scripting or ‘the terminal’ is equivalent to on Linux (and mac sorta). It’s the virtual scalpel you can use to tinker, fix, control, or totally screw up your system. If you don’t have important data to lose, then feel free to just try whatever and learn from mistakes you make along the way. If not, then backups are your friend, and be EXTRA careful doing anything as the root user (that’s the admin account with total access over the operating system) or any command like sudo (it might even lecture you about it once)

For self-hosting, if you have a spare machine you can just try experimenting on it to your heart’s content. If your search-engine skills are good enough then you should be able to fumble your way through install instructions or tutorials. Another alternative is you could rent a VPS and optional domain for <$90/year, which then you can learn about SSH (secure shell) and fiddle with a computer remotely for fun.

People here can probably give you advice or support, if there’s a specific problem you’re having and you’ve couldn’t figure it out from the documentation and search.

Best teacher I had was breaking things by installing everything under the sun then trying to fix it. But its time consuming.

I would say go at it yourself, you’ll learn along the way, same as you did with windows. For tips, its hard to say, see if you can get your hands on Sander van Vugt - linux fundamentals. I watched it a few years into my linux journey and it schooled my ass still.

what helped me when I first started using Linux was the Arch Wiki. Even though I wasn’t using Arch the information in that wiki is invaluable. Even now that i’m on NixOS I still use the Arch Wiki as a tool when I need answers. everything is there. even man pages.

Another resource is IRC and Discord. I’m not sure if Bazzite as an IRC channel but the quickest answers to issues I was having has been via whatever distro channel on Libera. Discord also for specific distros. But I’ve found many of the maintainers and devs will hang out in their respective distros IRC channel all day so what better resource for help than directly from the source.

Finally either peertube or youtube channels. There are some fantastic channels that help learning this stuff. Primary of which is Veronica Explains. By far the most easy to understand and follow videos for linux. She reminds me of watching old episodes of The Screen Savers and Call for Help. Another that is great that is more specific to workflows and command line stuff is Bread on Penguins. Very easy to follow, she provides git repos and links to EVERYTHING she talks about and even writes most of it herself. For customizing your build There’s The Black Don. he’s great too. builds out a lot of stuff himself and provides repos for everything he’s working on. He’s built an awesome tool for Arch that allows reproducability similar to NixOS.