Not that I don’t still love using linux daily, but it is getting a little old having to search for how to do anything even just install a simple program (recently, had a. Deb file to install unifi software that wouldn’t install and had to find a custom script to do it).

I feel like there’s no way I’d ever learn all the random commands I’ve been copying and pasting (and keeping in a text file for later) and can’t help but feel it’s kind of clunky. And I don’t feel like I really know anything of what Im doing. Even man pages baffle me. I’ve been into computing for 20 years but only used linux a little like 8 years ago, but now it’s been my main os on my desktops for probably 2 months. I know, maybe that’s just not long enough. I just don’t like the fact that if I couldn’t search, I’d be completely stuck on a lot of tasks.

  • Novocirab@feddit.orgEnglish
    222·
    4 days ago

    A good start is to install tldr. You use it like man, but it gives you shorter explanations – or rather, a short list of illustrative examples.

    As for man pages themselves (which I often find overwhelming, too), if you’re not doing that already, you can pipe it into grep to extract just those lines that contain your search string:

    man ps | grep user

# or for two lines of context above and below each match:
man ps | grep user -C 2

    Going further, check out Fish instead of Bash. I haven’t use Fish yet, but it’s said to be much better for learning Linux commands as a beginner. Later on, you may switch to Zsh. In any case, hitting Tab once or twice will often give you a list of possible completions to the command you are typing.

    PS: I see no good reason why anyone should downvote this question.

    Edit (June 23): As it so happens, just today I’ve stumbled into the O’Reilly book “Classic Shell Scripting” by Robbins and Beebe (ISBN 9780596005955). What can I say – its age notwithstanding, it’s apparently an extremely good book for understanding things and learning how to solve real problems. (It presupposes some familiarity with Unix-like systems and with the shell, so if one’s just starting out, the book “Learning the Unix Operating System” may be better.)

    • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
      6·
      7 days ago

      Man pages are displayed in less (which acts as the so-called “pager” here), so you can search man pages interactively like you search in less. And you do that by pressing /, then typing your search term and pressing Enter. Then you can jump between results with n and Shift+n. This is also how search works in vim, by the way.

      Perhaps another tip in this regard, to search in your command history with Bash (for re-running a command you’ve previously used), you can press Ctrl+R, then start typing your search term. Pressing Enter will run the displayed command. To skip to older search results, press Ctrl+R again. If you want to edit a command before running it, press → or Ctrl+F instead of Enter.
      This UI is a bit fiddly in Bash, but worth figuring out.

      As for Fish, it’s great for new users, because:

      • it has a much more intuitive Ctrl+R UI, displaying all the search results interactively and not behaving weirdly in certain situations.
      • it automatically sifts through your command history as you type and suggests the most recent command which starts with the prefix you typed. You can fill in its suggestion with → or Ctrl+F, or only use the next word from it via Alt+F. You can skip to older matches with ↑, which is then a proper search like Ctrl+R in Bash, so not just prefix-matching. And yeah, overall just really useful, because it’ll both make it quicker to run frequently-used commands, and sometimes suggest a complex command which I didn’t even remember that I once ran.
      • its tab-completion shows short descriptions of what most (sub-)commands or arguments do.

      But:

      • don’t set it as your system-wide default shell or there’s some chance of shell scripts not executing correctly. What you should do instead, is to set it as the startup command to run in your terminal emulator.
      • the syntax of Fish is somewhat different to that of Bash, which can be confusing when you’re still learning the Bash syntax. It’s not the worst thing in the world, as it basically only affects scripting and more complex command chains.
        Scripting is not a problem, because you can throw a shebang into the first line to use Bash syntax (#!/bin/sh or #!/bin/bash). You should add a shebang to your scripts anyways.
        And running more complex commands isn’t too big of a deal either, because you can run bash in your terminal to launch Bash, then paste the command into there to run it, and then quit back to Fish with exit or Ctrl+D. Typically you’ll know to run bash, because Fish’s syntax highlighting turns red after you’ve pasted a complex command.
    • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      I do have tldr and fish and love it ! Although I get a little annoyed that my aliases from bash didn’t carry over into fish because I sometimes forget to launch fish since I almost always use the ctrl alt t shortcut to launch term

      • toynbee@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        You can change your default shell in a few ways. I’ve never used fish, but vipw should open your passwd file, in which you can change /bin/bash to the appropriate path for fish (which you can find via which fish). It’s probably best to only change this for your user.

        A possibly simpler option (and one that I don’t believe requires root access) is the chsh command. I’ve never used it myself, so I’ll let this site provide instructions for it: https://www.howtogeek.com/669835/how-to-change-your-default-shell-on-linux-with-chsh/

            • HayadSont@discuss.onlineEnglish
              1·
              6 days ago

              My pleasure fam! Btw, I’m in no place to dictate what’s right or wrong (or whatsoever). I just wanted to add their perspective on the matter*.

              • toynbee@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                5 days ago

                I don’t know that I agree with the take represented in your linked article. If I’m reading it correctly, the primary reason not to switch shells is that those shells might not exist universally. That is a valid concern, but running which fish (as referenced in my original comment) should help to mitigate that risk factor. Scripts should always use a hashbang to specify their desired environment so, unless you’re overriding that, it shouldn’t be a concern.

                I agree that you shouldn’t use shells that are not available to you. I don’t think that means you shouldn’t try to change shells if you are unsatisfied with your current one.