I am a complete newbie to the Linux space. I am currently running Pop on my desktop and Mint on my laptop (yes it is because of Win11). I want to get into coding and I work nights, so on my nights off I have time to work on projects. I set up a minecraft server for a buddy of mine tonight, but sadly it was less fun and more step by step.
So my question is two-fold:
How would y’all suggest I learn how to work with linux more quickly and efficiently.
What do y’all suggest I make a project for my nights off?
I can’t exactly promise you fun but setting up one of the modular text editors, namely emacs or (neo)vim as your IDE is going to give you a better understanding of Linux and depending on how custom the setup is, the language that you are trying to set up.
You have any experience? Any idea what you wanna do? Or idk you really even wanna code? Running Linux or a Minecraft server isn’t coding it’s running stuff other people coded.
Since you are into Minecraft you could try to get into writing mods. Might be a bit intimidating when you have no experience though.
I know, this is the part that I want to start to understand. I have no serious experience with any particular language. I want to find something that that I find interesting. I have a large amount of experience with networking, specifically for audio, lighting, and production networks from small to massive.
I am not into minecraft, my buddy is. Would it be feasible to get into writing DAC things? I don’t know.
For #1 is force yourself to run it as your main OS and find alternatives to things you miss rather than dual booting or using a secondary system when you get “stuck”.
If you want to dive “under the hood” then I’d avoid “easy” desktop distributions. Gentoo/Funtoo still give you some insights into the different parts that are core to the OS, Arch might too (never ran it so someone that has run both might be able to compare)
If you really want to understand how a Linux distro ticks then Linux From Scratch is still your ticket as far as I can tell. Just don’t expect it to be a workable long-term desktop OS (I mean, there’s people that run it like that, I’m sure, but that’s next level hardcore in my book) but it’ll give you insights I’d argue other distro’s simply can’t provide (and a newfound appreciation for the work distro maintainers do, I’m sure )
It depends what you mean with “learn Linux and development”. Here are a few topics of interest:
Embedded Linux (Yocto, Raspberry Pi)
Kernel development (schedulers, drivers etc)
Backend development (servers, Databases, redundancy)
OS administration (package managers, systemd, bash)
Toolchains (gcc, cmake, gdb, docker)
Editors / IDEs (vim, visual code, eclipse)
Games (Steam, lutris, Proton, Wine)
Game development (vulkan, sdl, godot)
… And much, much more. To learn it all? Years upon years. Do not be discouraged, however. The ocean is vast but possible to sail, and learn.
I do suggest starting with editors, bash and package managers / OS administration. This will build a foundation and familiarity with the rest of the system. Then approach it just like you would eat a whale, slowly and one piece at a time.
Arch and Gentoo are in my opinion pretty similar from a learning how to setup Linux from a bare bones environment perspective. Personally though I prefer arch for that because my oh my I hate waiting for things like a desktop environment to compile. I actually had a class in college where for part of it we focused on Linux and so the class had everybody go through and setup a Gentoo environment and explained each part. I got out of that part of the class by just showing I could setup and use Gentoo which was pretty straight forward because I had already used arch a decent bit.
Which on that subject, one project idea would be to make yourself a script that installs one of these bare bones Linux distros (be it Gentoo, or arch, or void, or what have you) and sets it up the way you like
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