A Windows user new to Linux



I agree: Linux Mint (with either desktop choice). I use Mint with Mate myself.

As @arochester noted above, Linux Lite is also a very nice Ubuntu-based distro as well. However, if you have a UEFI-based motherboard, you would need to change some settings to make it work (disable Secure Boot and enable CSM or Legacy Mode). With Mint or Ubuntu you should not need to modify those settings.

Cheers
Glad I came across this thread. This is good to know.
Something else that must be posted is that some motherboards don't have the capability to turn off 'Secure Boot'. I have one of them. It is an ASUS Sabertooth 990FX rev.1 (rev.2 and most others can turn it off, but not all).
I spent a year back and forth with both Microsoft and ASUS trying to get it resolved. Finally lost a SSD with 6 years of use on it. All I got was; Microsoft was "kind" enough to allow me to Format and re-install or buy a new hard drive and re-install my Win 7 Pro, and start all over again.

Point being; make sure you can turn off 'Secure Boot' before downloading Linux Lite.
 
Hi all,

I want to become a poweruser in Linux, so, what I should do to become that?

I'm also very interested to learn the Linux Terminal completely (in an Advanced level), so, please guide me in this also.

Thanks.
 
Hi all,

I want to become a poweruser in Linux, so, what I should do to become that?

I'm also very interested to learn the Linux Terminal completely (in an Advanced level), so, please guide me in this also.

Thanks.

The best way to learn Linux is just to dive in and use it every day. The more you use it, the more you will learn. It's that simple!

If you want to learn how to use the terminal - the best way to do that is to use it more often.

It will also help if you have some kind of projects, or goals in mind. Perhaps you want to set up a personal web server, or a media server, or maybe you need some kind of shell script to automate something or to allow you to extract information from a set of files and email reports.... etc. It doesn't matter what it is - if you have one or two simple projects in mind - trying to complete them using Linux will help you to learn.

Because you are just starting out, you probably don't know many terminal commands. But there are cheat-sheets and tutorials all over the internet that can get you started with terminal commands.

So the first thing I would recommend is that you download and print a terminal cheat sheet and put it on your wall, or on your desk, or keep it in your laptop case - anywhere nearby so you can refer to it whenever you need to.

That will give you an initial vocabulary of commands. Practice using those commands and then when you are comfortable - try to find new things that you want to do in the terminal and see what other commands/programs are available to do this. And/or look for some tutorials related to it.

Speaking of tutorials Linux.org has a section dedicated to tutorials in categorised for beginners, intermediate and advanced.

Another great tutorial is the Linux Foundation's Introduction to Linux course, which is delivered online via EDX - A free online university. You can sign up to EDX for free and take any number of courses. You can even take exams for free. You only have to pay if you want a verified certificate.
So taking a look at that might also help with your first steps.


Once you are confident using simple terminal commands, the next step would be learning how to chain several commands together using input/output redirection and pipes and writing shell-scripts. And again, there are tutorials and ebooks available online that can teach you how to do these things.

Like anything, it takes a little time (so be patient), a bit of research and plenty of practice! It also helps if you have some goals in mind.
 

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