Doing hackthebox or other CTF challenges, Using CLI software, writing bash scripts.
Breaking things.
Have someone on Google doing the thing I need to do.
Good cushions
I have no clue… I grew up on Windows 3.11 and I thought Windows was kinda lame while MS-DOS was the coolest thing ever because you typed things like magic spells 😅
This right here (more or less - first home PC was Win95, but it still relied pretty heavily on DOS, esp for games). I loved the RPGs where you typed in your actions, too.
C:[Enter]
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Mastering the command line? A few observations. First, consult and take notes (yes, even seasoned terminal veterans forget syntax.) Secondly, embrace tab completion. It’s your friend, and a surprisingly effective substitute for remembering every single command. Third, the true test: procure a VPS or remote server and exclusively use the command line. No GUI crutches allowed. It’s a digital wilderness, and you’ll learn to navigate it.
Lastly, and this is non-negotiable: keep a terminal window permanently resident on your desktop. Consider it a vital organ, deserving of its space. It’s a constant reminder of the power you wield, and a readily available portal to a world beyond the pretty buttons.
On that front: to developers-
Please make sure you include bash completions for your tools
Hehe, I’m doing this all the time now ! 3 years ago when I started my linux/self-hosted server journey with debian: CLI only !
Was difficult at times and had a few breakdowns (most got fixed the next day… Sleep/taking some time off really helps !!!)
One thing I’m still bad at… Is taking notes. Haven’t found a good way take IT notes. And I tried sooo many different approaches…
Breakdowns are inevitable; a good night’s sleep is often the most elegant solution. :) I utilize Zim (for note management) as plain text remains a perfectly serviceable option, imo.
I upvoted this comment multiple times while reading.
Practice I guess. Especially using cli for specific tasks that is done more efficiently on there than the gui.
Moving files using regex for example is useful. Or finding files with specific phrases in them. Stuff like that
When you aren’t in a rush try to do stuff in command instead, looking for a file? , try to find it in command. Need to copy and move a folder? Don’t use your file manager, use the command line instead.
Eventually you will piece together the bits you learn and it starts to make sense, and then you feel like a God. Lol.
I 100% agree. I’m still relatively new but this helped me become much more confident.
What helps me is to understand what commands acronym means. For instance cp for copy, mkdir for make directory, blkid for block id, ls for list (not too sure about actual meaning for s) and so on!
Nice tips about ctrl+r to search in command history. Was not aware it existed!
‘ls’ is an abbreviation for ‘list’, not an acronym. Like copy -> cp, and the other keystroke saving abbreviations.
pwd for password, man for mansplain, and dd for destroy disk
Stumbled across a game that teaches the command line as you play it. Seems like a good place to share https://gitlab.com/slackermedia/bashcrawl
personally, writing and saving simple scripts - IE project based learning - is how i got time in the saddle.
In my experience repetition helped. Not memorization, but more like muscle memory.
Also, ensuring to never copy and paste commands but to type them in manually yourself. It’s hard to enforce this on yourself, but worth it.
I appreciate that this article started with “ways to reduce risk” because that’s an extremely valid concern and tied to why you shouldn’t ever copy and paste. The one time in my early Linux forays where I copied and pasted I wiped the wrong drive. It definitely taught me to always manually type it in and not get too lazy, because what you copied might not match what you want to do exactly.
Also, ensuring to never copy and paste commands but to type them in manually yourself. It’s hard to enforce this on yourself, but worth it.
“Command: sido not found…”
As a fan of german rap this gave me a good chuckle. Thx.
I am a Linux noob as far as the desktop goes. But I’m quite comfortable in the terminal because for years I’ve maintained a home server running Debian. After I install the OS, I unplug the keyboard and monitor and the only way to talk to that box is through SSH.
Really specific here, but font control.
Us folks with dyslexia in its various expressions have trouble with command line. If you can’t read a specific command, good luck ever getting comfortable with it. You can’t error check yourself, so until you build up memory, you’re kinda screwed if you can’t use the fonts that are available.
I think just doing it more, and thinking it’s cool to interact more directly. At least that helps me. I do feel bad for dyslexic peiple though, it’s a lot harder for them to use CLI.
Yeah that was it for me. Just keep regular backups and bear in mind that you’ll probably break stuff at first. But once you get the hang of it, it’s like a whole other level of control over your system.
Also I’m not dyslexic but would things like tab completion and aliases help maybe? I sometimes shorten often-used commands with aliases just for convenience (as an example, I use
rsync
a lot, particularly the commandrsync --ignore-existing -rav
which I just shorten tors
to save time) so maybe that could also be used to avoid mis-spelling?Thats a good idea, i have not made any aliases yet. Also remembering all of those aliases is another challenge ha. I keep a text file named commands on my desktop with a whole bunch of commands I forget.
I have some mapped to super simple aliases too like
e1
to reboot,e2
to shutdown etc. I don’t remember why I started doing that, but that way I only have to remember which number does what lol.