Linux study guide

English Open Chat
#1

Greetings.

I am new to opensuse and linux in general and i would like to become more of a power user.
My system runs Leap 15 with KDE.
Some examples would be:

  • Customizing the of my system’s appearance (I have already played around with a nice dock, themes,icon packs and widgets.
    ) - Understanding and using the command line more
  • Writing scripts and better understanding their power(I’ve recently gotten a degree in software development so while I haven’t actually worked on the sector yet I have a basic understanding of coding)
  • Better understanding the pros and quirks of opensuse and linux in general

More topics you find useful would also be appreciated

Now obviously i do not expect from you to sit down and teach me so, specific things to google would be good, links to documentation or tutorials you know of would be even better.

Thanks in advance,

#2

For starters and FWIW,

I’ll recommend two resources I’ve created…

A brand new slide deck I created (as of this writing) for a presentation I did at my local UG this past week in a style introducing openSUSE to a brand new User …
Keep in mind that I don’t usually put a lot of content into my slides, they’re intended only to hint, and provide the basis for extemporaneous discussion

https://slides.com/tonysu/opensuse/#/

The other is my personal openSUSE Wiki…
It’s generally a collection of things I’ve encountered over the years…
It started as a collection of notes I kept for myself but then I thought not only would things be easier to find in a Wiki, those notes could be of interest to others as well.
Like every other Wiki, inspect the history of each article to know how current the info is… I don’t spend a lot of time maintaining the articles and if the article is very old, it might be obsolete although I tend to try to create each article in a way to minimize obsolescence.

https://en.opensuse.org/User:Tsu2

If you have any questions or want to correct anything you see…

  • You can PM me
  • You can modify any of my Wiki, I won’t mind and actually would encourage anyone to change anything they think should be changed. No worry, if I want to undo your changes, I can do so with a simple click :slight_smile:
  • You can create a Forum post asking your question

And, of course the Technical Help Forums are a wealth of knowledge about practically anything you can think of. Whatever question you might have about openSUSE, unless it’s something specific to a new release it’s likely someone has asked that very question before and someone has answered it… Perhaps several times in different ways.

TSU

#3

Thank you Tsu2.

Although I knew most things in the slide, i did find some new and useful things for example the systemtlc command.
I also really like your wiki, scripts and system level are already on the list and since i need a win vm I will take a closer look on docker and the general virtualization section.

I thank you for your contribution,

#4

I’d also recommend learning as much as you can about bash. One can be a
Linux user without being a Bash user (or guru), but if you want to master
a platform you should speak its language, and the primary language of
Linux is Bash. Trainings online are readily available, but if nothing
else check out The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP) which hosts the
Advanced Bash Scripting guide:

https://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

–
Good luck.

If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
show your appreciation and click on the star below.

If you want to send me a private message, please let me know in the
forum as I do not use the web interface often.

#5

See:
https://www.linux.com/learn/complete-beginners-guide-Linux%20
and
https://www.linux.com/learn/training
and
https://www.linux.com/tutorials
and
https://www.linux.com/what-is-linux

… and, of course, the Linux Foundation, itself:
https://training.linuxfoundation.org/free-linux-training

#6

Thanks for those two links, I am really enjoying them.

#7

Hi,

Welcome to openSUSE, I personally don’t recommend the tldp site for a newbie in the shell. Instead start with

http://mywiki.wooledge.org/
http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/

Good luck!

#8

Although a GUI Text Editor is for many (most?) people the “usual” (read “normal”) way to edit shell scripts, I suggest that, the Text Editor “Vim” should also be learnt – for the case that, a GUI is not available.
Some people, myself included, actually prefer to use Vim in a GUI Console window (executing as the user “root”) for editing system configuration files …<https://www.vim.org/docs.php>; <http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/>.
<http://www.moolenaar.net/habits.html>; <http://www.oualline.com/vim-cook.html>.

#9

Or something friendlier like nano :wink:

#10

You may, possibly, also need the KDE documentation: <https://docs.kde.org/>.

#11

Possibly, “nano” makes use of the “Meta” key and, it is more simple …
I must admit that, “Vi” and “Vim” force quite a lot of finger / brain exercise despite, most commands being a single keystroke – and, yes, the multiple input modes are at first contact complicated …
On the other hand, for older people, such as myself, it helps the fight against dementia, Alzheimer’s and finger rheumatism … >:)

#12

I personally invoke a mix of vim and GUI editor since I have no over-riding preference for either and am willing to use the best tool for the job…
I’ve stopped arguing in the Applications forum about the supposed inability to launch GUI apps from the command line, and if I’m already working in a windowed console might sometimes invoke a GUI text editor from the console as follows…

kate *filename*

Or, since I’m more likely in an LXQt

leafpad *filename*

TSU

#13

Something to whet your appetite – a “simple” one-liner bash script file’s content:


#!/bin/bash
#
# Remove spaces from filenames in the current directory.
#
find . -type f -print | while read FileName ; do mv "${FileName}" "${FileName// /_}" ; done
#
#14

On 07/20/2018 11:46 AM, dcurtisfra wrote:
>
> Code:
> --------------------
>
> #!/bin/bash
> #
> # Remove spaces from filenames in the current directory.
> #
> find . -type f -print | while read FileName ; do mv “${FileName}” “${FileName// /_}” ; done
> #
>
> --------------------

Bleh… underscores are abominable and hyphens should be used instead for
better readability. ← Religious war started.


find . -type f -print | while read FileName ; do mv "${FileName}"
"${FileName// /-}" ; done

Nice sharing!

–
Good luck.

If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
show your appreciation and click on the star below.

If you want to send me a private message, please let me know in the
forum as I do not use the web interface often.

#15

Actually, I use Xfce, and I still use kate and kWrite there. If you like the way kate and kWrite highlight code, you can just simply install it in LXQt, make things more pleasant.:wink:

#16

Wrong.

Hyphens are for hyphenating, underscores make for better nobreak readability.

Religious war started.

… former Journalist/Editor is now Engaged.>:)

#17

On Fri, 20 Jul 2018 21:56:03 +0000, Fraser Bell wrote:

> ab;2874410 Wrote:
>> Bleh… underscores are abominable and hyphens should be used instead
>> for better readability.
>
> Wrong.
>
> Hyphens are for hyphenating, underscores make for better nobreak
> readability.
>
>> Religious war started.
>
> … former Journalist/Editor is now Engaged.>:)

/me grabs popcorn

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

#18

No need to war – I have an extremely large down filled pillow which absorbs and disables all projectiles directed at me … >:) For persistent “warriors” I also have a private black hole which simply causes the things to disappear …
[HR][/HR]According to my (old) copy of the Chicago Manual of Style (fourteenth edition), underlining used to be used by editors to indicate that, the compositor shall set that part of the copy in italic. Following this practice, documents written with typewriters used “underscore” to indicate words to be set as italic …

The gentle art of computing uses underscores as word separators. Occasionally one refers to “snake_case”, which dates back the late 1960’s when the language “B” (a derivative of BCPL) was being defined by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie; the language “B” became the basis of the language “C” which continued the use of “snake_case” – see the book written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie …

The alternative is to use “CamelCase” (or, “camelCase”) which was first appeared in a 1954 conference proceedings; a later “first usage” was presented in a 1965 paper. The programming languages “Lisp” (1958) and “COBOL” (1959) allowed a hyphen to delimit the words of compound identifiers. See also, “Hungarian notation” …

#19

Any of the newspapers I worked at, we Editors used notations by circling the word or phrase with our red pen and adding the notation such as:

Times ulit --

for upper&lower case italics,

Times bful

for Bold Face Upper and Lower,
and would prefix headings with things like:

Futura 36bful - *Content of the Headline*

for 36 point Futura Bold-Face Upper and Lower, and subheadings with

Futura 14bfc

for 14-point Bold-Face Caps.

… and so on.

In typed copy, usually the reporters did not add markup, this was usually done by the Editors using the methods above.

However, senior reporters and columnists were allowed some markup, in which case they would preface italics with <ital> and after with </ital> if doing so as they type. But, they rarely did this. Usually, they would use the above-mentioned methods for any markup they did.

All typed copy was double-spaced to accommodate such markup, as well as edits.

LOL

Now that I have gone way off topic, I will quit.

Uh, lemme see: Yes. When I am creating a Linux Study Guide, I at first use these conventions.:stuck_out_tongue:

(Phewww! Back on topic, then.)

#20

Hi,

It is best to start knowing how to save the shell history from the beginning to avoid asking yourself “what commands did i ran” to do this or that and so on.
Write some HOWTO’s or a FAQ on things that you have done and some TODO/TOFIX list.
Run your own wiki, there is one in the openSUSE repos or when you got to know vim you can play with the vimwiki
Learn how to use a version control system for writing program/scripts.

Good luck on your journey!