So after reading a number of posts and comments on here about Linux, I’ve decided to give 'er a go. I have access to an Azure VM, but I have never done anything involving Unix before and have only a basic understanding of coding in general.
Where do I even start? The most daunting thing for me is command line script, as it seems I have to memorize close to 150 common commands and their functions. Is there a set of tools or free classes that would make it easier for me to understand, or should I just get stuck in there? I was planning on using Pop!_OS since I do a lot of gaming and it seems like the closest thing Ubuntu has for that purpose.
I wouldn’t overthink it! It’s not that hard to give it a try, just load the PopOS on a USB stick and try it out. (You can usually run it live from the USB stick, but keep in mind that things will load pretty slow compared to running it off an SSD.)
Navigating the terminal and editing config files can definitely be a part of using Linux, especially as you get into more advanced stuff or deep customization, but for the most part you will find that clicking around in the GUI will allow you to do just about anything that you can do on Windows or MacOS pretty easily. Most distros come with a software center app that you can use to easily install a bunch of programs. You certainly don’t need to memorize a ton of terminal commands–although, learning a couple of basic ones like
cd,pwd,ls,mkdir,mv,cp,rm, and so on will give you most of the tools you need to navigate around your filesystem in the terminal.The only other thing I can recommend is that when you get stuck and want to search for help, make sure you’re as specific as possible with your search times, or you might find that a lot of advice that you get is as generic as possible (which probably means terminal commands). In other words, don’t ask “how do I do X in Linux”, but maybe as “how do I do X in PopOS” or Gnome desktop or whatever.