For anyone just starting I highly recommend: "Linux Pocket Guide" and if moving forward adopting linux as a daily driver "Efficient Linux At The Command Line". Both books by Daniel J. Barnett.
Even if you're a seasoned Linux user you will learn a lot from those books.
Just a nitpick: Barrett, not Barnett. It's nice to see a new edition of Linux Pocket Guide come out just 2 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Barrett
Thanks for pointing it out! I visually checked the books on the shelf but my eyes tricked me and confused "rr" by "rn".
QQ: even when I use Linux as a daily driver I don’t use the cli much. I heard that getting a cheap vps, set up some popular services, and then exposing it to the Internet actually teaches a lot about sysadmin. Does this make sense?
One big issue for me is that when I use Linux I only use it for a specific purpose, e.g. hacking kernels, and the cli commands are extremely limited. I have been using a Linux box for a year and haven’t learned much TBH.
Absolutely! In my opinion, the only way to learn anything in any meaningful way is to actually do the thing. In the example you described, you'll quickly start jumping into "Wait, how do I configure a firewall?" and discovering ufw et. al.
Love both books by Daniel J. Barrett.
"The Linux Command Line" by William Shotts is pretty good book for new and experienced command line users. He has also written the supplemental book "Adventures with the Linux Command Line". The author has also generously provided them for free download at https://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php.
I didn't know about this one. Looks an in-depth book on the shell as well. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for the recommendation. Both books seem to about the command line. How are the books different?
The pocket is perfect for beginners. It has a nice introduction in chapter 1 that explains all essential concepts to understand and operate the console. Then it is basically a sort of reference of a moderate list of most useful commands for performing different tasks.
The "Efficient" book is an in depth walkthrough of the shell and how to reason and combine important commands to perform not trivial tasks. It is certainly a book to be re-read from time to time because it has plenty of good tricks and explanations.
Thank you for both of these recommendations.