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.

Colors. And a nice, readable font. Make your terminal pretty so you feel good every time you interact with it. Think about window dimensions (I personally always find the standard 80x24 too small), maybe set up some manual tiling so you can have two terminal windows fill your screen. Use the keyboard to move around your desktops.

But mostly, colors.

Okay, this is not Linux-specific, but it’s about a transferable skill:

What helped me get comfortable and learn a lot of basics was setting up NetBSD. The basic install throws you into a basic command line, with no graphical interface installed and not even the internet configured. But the online guide for setting the system up is incredibly well-written and teaches you all the concepts you need to know.

After doing this, I was familiar with a larger set of terminal commands, knew how to use vi, had a bunch of practice setting up config files in CLI and even finally learned how pipes work. It’s a very enjoyable experience, the guide is so good I didn’t feel overwhelmed once and anything you have to look up is tied to a problem you’re solving (like cursor movement in vi).

It also teaches you how NetBSD is structured. It’s not Linux, but similar enough to understand a lot of how and why things are done in Linux systems

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.

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.

To things that helps no mater your skill level the tab key is your best friend and man pages are great but if those are overwhelming install the package tldr then you can use the command tldr and the command you are trying to run to give you helpful examples of how to use that command.

Also old users don’t remember long commands if we use a command more than once. You save it to your bash alias file to create your own commands.

Maybe controversial, but the fish shell. I know it’s not strictly bash syntax, but the OOTB features are just so user-friendly. The most helpful features for learning: the autocomplete (with descriptions of subcommands and flags!) and the fuzzy history search.

I write bash scripts all the time, and am significantly more knowledgeable than anyone else on my team (admittedly frontend) because I got comfortable in fish.

I set it so when I hit CTRL-Tilde it drops down from the top of the screen.

Quake-style, baby.

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.

Knowing:

• pwd, ls, cd, cat/less, cp, mv, rm, rmdir, rm -rf, ls -lah
• command --help
• man command | grep thing I care about
• bonus points if you have tldr command installed

As someone who started with nothing but command line - Timex Sinclair, Apple IIe, DOS, I can’t even relate to the concept of being scared of command line.

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.

For me, it was having a cool-looking and user-friendly terminal app.

Have someone on Google doing the thing I need to do.

/ to search man pages was a gamechanger