How do I learn more specific tasks/troubleshooting?

[u/sankarasleftelbow]

“Learn by using” only gets somebody so far in their experience with Linux. It’s been pretty good for me I think, after two months since abandoning windows I would say I’m approaching a “beginners understanding” of Linux; general operation of it, at the very least. I’ve spent hours troubleshooting stupid easy fixes, relied on AI much too often for basic things, and broke my first system because I didn’t understand that “no-depmod-nvidia” hanging during an update wasn’t exactly the best time to shut my PC off, and so I broke a few core CachyOS files. I decided, instead of fixing them, I was capable enough at that point (about a week ago, by the way) to manually install Arch Linux. After a couple days of on/off work, among learning how partitions/mounting actually work, learning how to reformat my usb after chrooting into my system, etc, I had a desktop, somewhat, and I was pretty happy with it. Installing packages, updating/maintaning my system, doing very brief/basic visual scans of AUR packages before I install them, I can confidently do these things on my own, aswell as basic file organization, and I’m starting to have some memory of basic terminal commands.

I know I’m rambling, sorry, I love writing to be honest. My point here is that it feels like its more difficult to approach more advanced things because most guides/content is directed at brand new users, and in my experience, it becomes significantly harder to “learn by doing” when things become more complicated. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to discuss this topic on this sub, but I did find that pirating games and troubleshooting them is actually a fairly decent way to learn, I’ve even started editing .ini files myself (which I now understand is doing fuckall because of the, excuse my beginner lack of understanding, “proton layer” that is created with steam? I think? It creates its own .ini files or something?). Anyway, while that somewhat works for that niche specifically, at least half the time, I feel like learning other sectors just seems way too difficult. I’d like to get into python, I guess, and develop a basic understanding to where I could write tiny little programs that could be useful to me in some way, maybe, I don’t know.

I guess I’m just worried about hitting a wall. Any advice for this would be much appreciated, as I’m sickly addicted to the feeling of successfully doing something somewhat advanced/some short of troubleshooting myself. Anyway, I really want to keep learning, I just don’t know where to look.

[u/onefish2]

Make regular backups using something like Clonezilla to an external drive. Its easy to image and easy to restore.

If you are going to edit a config file, make a backup:

cp xyz.conf xyz.conf.bak

Unless you do something catastrophic like delete your home directory or the /etc directory, know this; there is no reason to reinstall Arch. Boot up the latest Arch iso, chroot in and fix what needs to be fixed.

Some people like btrfs with snapper and limine for the bootloader like the defaults on a CachyOS install. That is a great way to roll back an update that went south. But its not a backup.

My best tip is to go to the Arch wiki first before googling or using an AI/LLM.

If you do use an AI/LLM. Don't rely on that answer. Check with another to see if they tell you the same thing.

When in doubt... check the wiki. Don't understand what it says or means? Dump the article into an AI/LLM and ask it to do a ELI5 for you.

Linux is not Windows. It's a modern version of Unix.

[u/archover → u/onefish2]

One of my favorite quotes:

"Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."

Good day.

[u/sankarasleftelbow → u/onefish2]

All very solid advice, thank you. Becoming as little dependent on AI as possible is my goal

[u/onefish2 → u/sankarasleftelbow]

AI/LLMs are a tool. Treat them like that and learn from them. Don't blindly copy/paste things into the terminal.

[u/NFTrot]

Two approaches that helped me:

The first is easy, hang around here on the Arch sub and try and help others. You'll be exposed to all sorts of different problems. If you don't know how to help, you might learn something anyway from what other people suggest.

The second is to break a system in some way and try to get it working again. I did this a lot preparing for the RHCSA exam when I took it years ago, and I learned quite a bit.

[u/Astrodion123]

Nice. I have learned how toanahe every file from a terminal >:D

[u/ZMcCrocklin]

I run arch, so I get it. I personally went with Plasma as well (no full KDE). One thing you may want to experiment with is LVM on LUKS. Basically setting up logical volume management & encrypting your drive. Useful for some intermediate knowledge.

Python is good to learn. w3 schools has a good starting tutorial for free. AI tools/skills runs off fastapi if you wanted to learn how to code with fastapi on python.

Best way to learn more advanced projects is to pick up a project. Think of something you want to do. Maybe set up VMs with virtualbox or vagrant. Learn how to work with docker containers & kubernetes. Think of something you might want to do with your computer. Run a local webserver, learn how to work with apache/nginx, php, mysql/mariadb. Find a project for a real world application..

[u/sankarasleftelbow → u/ZMcCrocklin]

Thanks, I’ll check out the python course for sure, and as for the fastapi stuff, will that help for future planning to run/train a local ai model? That’s something I’ve really wanted to eventually try, obviously I’m nowhere near the knowledge/hardware requirements for that but maybe in a couple years.

[u/ZMcCrocklin → u/sankarasleftelbow]

Honestly, you can set up something like openclaw or open webui to set up an AI web chat for yourself & connect to models hosted by their providers or bedrock. It's just paying for the subscription vs. running the models locally, so the hardware may not necessarily be a blocker, but the cost of subscription/token usage may be. Still good to learn how to set up a back end to tlak to them. And yes, tools/skills use fastapi to run a lot of tasks (although you can actually get models like Claude Sonnet to write you up some decent tools/skills code). I interchange the terms because it's based on the platform you use.

[u/sankarasleftelbow → u/ZMcCrocklin]

Do the models follow the same guidelines? Token usage is definitely a factor but not as much of a worry for me, I don’t mind waiting/switching models mid task, but for piracy especially, it can get pretty annoying creating elaborate lies for claude to believe just to accidentally show a .rne file and have to start over

[u/ZMcCrocklin → u/sankarasleftelbow]

No. They all reason differently. You may want to get on gemini, Claude, or Grok on their public chats & ask about model benchmarks & architecture (dense vs MoE - mixture of experts, something to read up on). For benchmarks ask it to explain what each benchmark measures & what type of reasoning/application it's relevant to. Your models can do what they do based on the prompt you create for your agent & built-in knowledge/guardrails for those specific models. You can set up different agents with different prompts and a base model to use.

Just to add, I'm still learning all the ins & outs of setting up AI. I've been doing it as a project for work, setting up internal AI chat bots. Part of the cool thing as you can give them personalities. One of my buddies set up the prompt & identity for his bot as Deadpool.

[u/TwiKing]

Eventually you'll be satisfied that you know what you need to and start using the computer. At this point I'm done with everything- configs, backup plan, AURless (make my own pkgbuilds), bug/error free. 

Have every app I need, all my games work and optimized everything I can think of. All I need to do is update once and go about my day. 

I'm ready if anything breaks, and have my chroot plan sitting on my desk. I have a full second basic copy of my Arch on a USB for easy mobility and convenience.

Gentoo on the other hand keeps me very busy.. that distro gives a new name to dep hell lol

[u/sankarasleftelbow → u/TwiKing]

I actively use it while learning, to be honest, which might mean i learn slower but i dont know, id rather be able to do both instead of pure learning 100% of the time. Alot of what i want to do ends up in issues anyway so i tend to spend most of my time troubleshooting something.

[u/Crashting_]

That’s sound very good, your dedication is very strong and I think it’s going well you made more progress than someone like me in 2 months. Well honestly if I were you I would distro hop a bit if possible in free time because working with arch becomes easier and more easier the more you use it. So maybe try a Debian based distro or maybe even switch your DE. If you want to tinker with only arch Linux maybe just customize it fully to what suits you like changing the mouse cursor or the terminal color but it’s up to you!

[u/sankarasleftelbow → u/Crashting_]

Thanks, I’ve been screwing around with the idea of switching DE’s; I ran plasma on cachy and liked it well enough, tried xmonad and I have to say, the keyboard oriented workspace isn’t for me lol, at least not yet. I went back to plasma just to have a functional environment but I think ill try out xfce soon. As for distro hopping I’m really interested in Debian itself. Looking to get a laptop (this has all been done on my desktop) so I can tinker with other distros, Artix is another one I wanna check out once I learn more about init systems and why systemd is the bane of everyones existence.

[u/HangurberDude → u/sankarasleftelbow]

I got into Linux because I liked tinkering. Granted, I haven't had the option to daily drive Linux because my only options are an old laptop to slow to do much with and a family computer that my family would be upset with me if I installed Linux on it. For now, I've just been tinkering consequence-free on the old laptop.

I started with Mint, just as a slight experiment, I decided it worked too well, nothing to troubleshoot, nothing much to do. So, I tried manually installing Arch. 1st time, I forgot to install network manager, so I decided to start all over again. 2nd time worked perfectly. I tinkered with Arch for far longer than Mint. Plenty to configure, plenty to troubleshoot. Eventually, I got to a point where I didn't know what to do with it anymore, so I started trying NixOS. It's a lot of fun, completely different from Arch. I've been very happy working with it, except once(sort of).

As I've mentioned, I want something to work on, something to troubleshoot, so I obviously use the unstable branch of Nixpkgs. I discovered Qtile, and I thought it looked pretty nice. I installed it with the system module, and it worked for a while. Then, I kept getting errors every time I tried to rebuild the system. 'qtile.desktop not found' Now, I do try to avoid troubleshooting solely with AI, but NixOS isn't nearly as well documented as Arch. So, AI led me through dozens of attempts before the final solution. It had me install Qtile and effectively write out the system module manually. A little bit more of a hassle than I expected, but that's kind of the point.

Anyways, the point of my rather large rant is: if you're looking for something new to tinker with, maybe give NixOS a shot. A lot of people on this subreddit seem to like it as well.

[u/sankarasleftelbow → u/HangurberDude]

NixOS is so interesting to me, i dont entirely understand the whole declaration of config files thing but it seems really cool, not to mention its pkg repo is insane. I don’t think have the skills to try it yet, maybe in a few months, but its definitely a distro I want to check out (and maybe even daily drive) in the future.

[u/archover → u/sankarasleftelbow]

I think from a computer science standpoint, pursuit of Nix would be a better use of time, than hyprland (eye candy). Maybe unpopular opinion but that's mine. But do anything that makes you happy.

Welcome to Arch and good day.

[u/sankarasleftelbow → u/archover]

Good point, i care more about learning the intricacies of the system than learning how to rice to a crazy extent, especially when i can just clone a git repo

[u/archover → u/sankarasleftelbow]

If I could make suggestions to pursue, it would be systemd and network CLI config.

Great to hear that, and good day.

[u/Crashting_ → u/sankarasleftelbow]

That sounds Awesome!

I personally use Hyprland because I like tinkering with it and changing everything because I went to Linux for the performance and customization not specifically the privacy. But Debian and artix on your list is good, you will tinker with it a lot and I’m jealous honestly because I’ve tried to many distro but I keep coming back to the same Cachy os Hyprland set up.

[u/sankarasleftelbow → u/Crashting_]

Fair enough, Hyprland has always interested me because of all the tiktok rices, i mean, they’re awesome. Its honestly the reason I tried Linux, I just thought it looked cooler. I now realize how awful windows actually was lol. Especially when it comes to pirating, not that it was super hard on windows or anything, but having to specifically hide folders and constantly fight windows defender is something i dont miss at all. Honestly, thats the reason I’ve stayed. I don’t have to fight my own system anymore.

[u/Crashting_ → u/sankarasleftelbow]

Yeah same problem, but for some reason instead of seeing Linux as the new standard after hitting 10% of all devices in the world (I think or it was users) they all those developers are still lazy and I have always a reason to get back to windows defender and all the other stuff simply for things like school and programs not made for Linux. And yeah honestly I also went to Linux for Hyprland is the best choice I made in my online life

[u/sankarasleftelbow → u/Crashting_]

Fair enough. Luckily I’ve been able to avoid it for now, but I’m dreading the eventual day I’ll have to return, whether it be a dualboot or a work pc or whatever. I’m sure I’ll have to go back, it’ll probably feel like a foreign language by then.

[u/G0ldiC0cks]

Check out stuff published by red hat. It may initially seem a little ahead of where you're at, but it sounds like you're picking up quickly so just don't give up. One early project I did just to try learning stuff was setting up an NVMe cache for my spinning platters with lvm2. Worked surprisingly well and great way to learn logical volumes.

[u/sankarasleftelbow → u/G0ldiC0cks]

Sorry im a little confused, red hat as in RHEL? Or is there another?

[u/G0ldiC0cks → u/sankarasleftelbow]

Yes, the red hat in red hat enterprise Linux is a company whose website has some tutorials on things like setting up an LVM cache –

https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/6/html/logical_volume_manager_administration/lvm_cache_volume_creation

It's obviously geared to RHEL, but things like LVM are the same regardless of your distro. You might find a few quirks different on your system, but all in all it's a solid resource.

[u/sankarasleftelbow → u/G0ldiC0cks]

Oh very cool, ill be sure to check it out

[u/8-BitRedStone]

I never dedicated time to "learn Linux." If I need to use something, then I learn how to use it. There is simply too much to learn in total, so trying to learn stuff I'll never use is kinda pointless. I still barely know the command line beyond the stuff required to install Arch