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Humberto David Esquerra
Humberto David Esquerra

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Warning! Are you making this Linux mistakes?

Preface

Linux is a hard environment to journey into especially if you come from the “normal” world of a Windows OS environment. If your worried to venture into Linux, are new to Linux, Or seem to still have trouble using it then this article is for you.

Learn the command line (like as if your life was on the line)

Can you get away without using the Linux shell commands line and just using the GIU? Yes, Should you? NO! The Linux terminal is a powerful tool at your disposal that you can do anything with. Want to move every file from one directory to another? Just use a simple command to move it over. Want to delete every file from a directory? Just use a simple command to delete everything. Want to make a file executable and make it callable from anywhere? Just use a simple command in terminal. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of commands that are built into most Linux flavors. You just have to learn them. But which commands should I learn? Start with navigation. Learn how to move around all the directories. For example commands like ls, cd, pwd. Then you can work your way up to moving, removing, copying, editing files. These commands for example would be rm, cp, mv, nano, and cat. Then after learning the basics you can move your way up to more advanced commands.

Caution! Commands can get risky

Linux is awesome, powerful, and can get you in serious amounts of trouble. Linux in general will give you the power to do what you want. Want to download something totally random off the internet without any research and make it executable? No problem. Want to remove another users entire directory? You can do that. Want to recursively remove half the files on the system in little to no time? Easy peazzy. In general you should be cautious with the rm, sudo, and mv commands. These commands are capable of either removing software, moving software, or gives you super user privileges immediately. If you don’t have to have to sudo something then you probably don’t have to. While moving or removing software can corrupt the system.

Linux should work with you, Not against you

There are a lot of different Linux distributions out there, some will work better for YOU than others. If your new to linux you should start with a friendlier more GUI friendly linux flavor. These linux distros would be distros like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pop Os, and Elementary Os. Most of these come “right out of the box” with video players, image viewers, rich GUI’s, web browsers, and even office tools. No extra installation needed.Then there are more advanced, bare bones, minimalist and build yourself linux distros. These would include Arch Linux and Gentoo. These types of linux distros expect more expertise and research to make work because you’ll be configure things to your hardware from scratch. If you are a beginner or are someone who wants less hassle to make things work then stick to the more beginner user friendly favors of linux.

Thank you for reading!

This is a mini-article I made awhile ago and I hope you enjoyed it! Wondering what i’m up to lately? Check me out my personal website here at http://davidesquerra.com Or here’s my git hub https://github.com/Davidfree2

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