New Linux User: 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I First Started

Working with Linux servers is a fun and rewarding career. But for those getting started, the learning process can be a bit of a challenge to navigate. In this video, Jay goes over ten things he wish he knew about Linux when he first started. There's definitely potential for more, if you're interested...
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*Time Codes*:
00:00 - Intro
00:47 - Number 1: Unused RAM is Wasted RAM
03:03 - Number 2: High CPU usage is often a good thing
04:22 - Number 3: inodes (and how that impacts available storage space)
06:51 - Number 4: The large number of Linux distributions is a GOOD thing
09:05 - Number 5: Set up LVM on every server
11:08 - Number 6: Nobody memorizes all the commands and options
14:52 - Number 7: Always have a backup distribution
17:31 - Number 8: Version control (Git, etc) isn't only useful for software engineers
19:08 - Number 9: LVM snapshots exist
20:20 - Number 10: Ensure backup jobs reference ALL disks, even those that were newly added
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#Linux #Devops #cloudcomputing

[@kjakobsen]

For years i was obsessing about have "free memory". And getting mad, that my operating system, "ate" all my memory. Untill someone, asked me why i wanted a slow inefficient computer.

[@piked86]

Why wouldn't you use what you paid for? Only worry when there is little left or it's frequently close to full.

[@scheimong]

"Unused memory is wasted memory." This is the most concise explanation I've heard of this concept.

[@lliamthrumble]

The only real thing that needs to have a free excess is hard disk space. Everything else only needs to have a buffer of free. Its not about how much you have free, its about how fast that ram can do its job. That's all.

[@CTimmerman]

@@scheimong Is your swap file the size of your free space yet? Virtual memory matters!

[@CTimmerman]

@@lliamthrumble Chrome gets really slow when the OS starts to swap, so i built an OOM killer to save my SSD and other programs' data.

[@FlamingCockatiel]

1. Unused RAM is wasted RAM. 2. Sometimes high CPU usage is a good thing. 3. Inodes need to be tracked, as well as available space. df -i command is importatnt. 4. Large number of distros is good thing, a superpower. It allows you to change up the user interface. 5. Use LVM (logical volume manager) to get more control over your storage, treating multiple things as one. You can resize file systems online. 6. You don't have to memorize Linux commands. Memorize everyday ones; it's okay to look up lesser-used ones. 7. Always have a backup distro. 8. GIT version control is not just for software developers but also for system administration. 9. LVM has a snapshot feature, useful for trying new things. 10. Especially for cloud servers, take all individual volumes when backing up data.

[@jankowalsky9473]

Good notes :)

[@jpwillm5252]

Around 2002, when I was fed up with the repeated crashes of my system, I went to ask three questions on the usenet forum: - "As a non-IT person, do you think I can install and configure a GNU/Linux system? - Am I obliged to know by heart a myriad of magic formulas? - Will these orders still be valid in a few years? The old wolves reassured me, and told me that if I got into the habit of reading the manuals and getting information before doing any manipulations, things would fall into place quite naturally. Moreover, the commands that I will have to use will be the same in ten years. They were right, and I just jotted down some "cooking recipes". 8-)

[@javabeanz8549]

In my experience, most GNU utilities tend to keep the options the same over the course of time, just adding new ones. But, if you jump over to BSD the utilities may have the same name, but different options, and sometimes the GNU has things BSD doesn't. I encountered such issues with the "whois" commands, so I had to tweak how I automated checking for expiration dates and name servers when jumping between the two.

[@jpwillm5252]

@@javabeanz8549 Rigor seems to be in order at GNU. Thank you for this information about BSD that I personally don't know well.

[@illegalsmirf]

Fast forward ten years and you have systemd with totally new commands and concepts, plus a lot of other replacements (ip address show instead of ifconfig for example).

[@jpwillm5252]

@@illegalsmirf That's right. Luckily we still have distros without this ugly thing.

[@javabeanz8549]

@@illegalsmirf very true, I didn't say that we don't get new software. Like getting a list of open sockets, we now have ss -tpln to see what daemons are listening on which TCP ports. I have also moved from ipchains, to iptables years ago, and I think that we have moved on from there. But I don't manage several firewalls for ISPs anymore, so a bit out of the loop there.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

1:47 The key thing to identify this situation (in the “top” display, or output from the “free” command) is to look at “available” RAM, not “free” RAM. The former includes cache usage, the latter doesn’t. So don’t worry if the latter is small, so long as the former still shows some useful amount.

[@theeddorian]

The biggest handicap I experienced with Linux, which is what I have used for years as my primary OS, was a an absence of well documented applications. That has greatly eased over the last 20 years or so, and generally anything you can do using a Windows (or Mac?) system can be done on a Linux system.

[@JJFlores197]

More or less, yes. There's always the learning curve, though depending on the person. A lot of people can pickup Linux pretty quick and others will struggle a lot.

[@shawnlewis389]

Thanks for being transparent about not having to memorize commands. You just lifted a huge load off of me brother. I have definitely built my own cheat sheet. Which is very helpful. As always, I love your content. Keep up the good work.

[@phrtao]

The real skill you need is to be able to refresh your memory quickly. So you can look up what you need and understand what you are reading. Only the real world tests this - it applies to every aspect of computing and most other things as well.

[@anthonyfmoss]

And me!

[@kencreten7308]

I have no reason to think you should have to memorize a bunch of commands. I'm interested in why you might feel it necessary?

[@chaslinux]

I now remember cut because I've used it a few times in BASH scripts, but I don't really remember awk and sed, so I just consult some scripts I've used them in. I throw those scripts up on github and consult them when I need to remember what I did before. Also tab is a real blessing trying to remember or discover commands.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

After you’ve used certain commands and options a few dozen or hundred times, you do automatically memorize them. For the rest, there’s man (among other sources). This is why I’ve started writing man pages for some of my own programs. Nitpick: grammatically, it should be “I wish I had known”, not “I wish I knew”.

[@rickcontreras4943]

Jay, I think you’re a great teacher and I learned so much from you. Thank you for being on the channel.

[@amj.composer]

This is one of the worst channels ever. He rambles too much without saying anything of substance. There are far better channels out there

[@AniaKovas]

Yeah, gonna be directing my students to you. Your calm explanations are sound. Heck, I learn things and I've been around the block a few times. Thanks for putting these out.

[@geoptus]

Thanks very much Jay, this was very useful advice. I'm particularly interested in the LVM implementation - will definitely be checking out your content for that. 👍

[@PoeLemic]

Hell yes. This was a great video. I wish you'd cover a lot of things you didn't know at the first. Maybe, organize them according to complexity (or career-period) versus just random topics.

[@bobanderson1727]

Great video, Jay. I'm always learning things from you. It seems that you have an endless supply of Linux knowledge to share. That's OK, though; 'cause I have a pretty healthy appetite for learning those kinds of things. Thanks for all of your videos and books. They've been a great help to me. From the Linux Mint Essentials book that got me started with Linux (back in the day); to the Mastering Ubuntu Server books of recent times... What a long "road" we've traveled since the CP/M days. ...and you've helped to make the trip a great experience for me. Thanks bunches, Jay.

[@gregorymccoy6797]

Far more informative than I thought this would be. Great tips.

[@keltyll]

Thank you, learning so much , can't wait for part 2.

[@Chalisque]

To explain the multitude of distros, I like to use a car analogy. There is one brand of engine, Linux, and a bunch of related models (aka versions). Then there are a couple of popular brands of chassis (Debian and Redhat) and a few other less common ones (Arch, Suse). On these chassis, companies then add the controls (gear stick, steering wheel, pedals) and interface, generally using off-the-shelf families of controls (KDE, Gnome, XFCE), and then add the body and styling and such. So all the cars have the same engine, and there is a small number of choices of chassis, and then each distro adds its own customisations on top of that engine and chassis. Ultimately, like driving a car, once you are comfortable with changing gear and steering, you can easily move from one car to another and only have to re-learn stuff like how to use the radio. Some cars will go fast; some will let you carry more cargo; there are vans and go-carts, and such. By comparison, Apple is like a Rolls Royce that makes three brands of cars, using entirely in-house engines, chassis, and so on, and with a policy that if the electric windows stop working, the solution is to buy a whole new car.

[@ozmosyd]

Thank you. I have picked up some more sys admin tips and for me today was the 'tippet' on disk space. I appreciate your work muchly.

[@eh597]

This video made me feel much better in regard to memorizing all the commands. I took the Red Hat course through my school and was overwhelmed with all the commands. Thanks.

[@DrKellieOwczarczak]

Yeah, that is something that took me a while to get comfortable with as well. I learned very early on to be very specific in my comments in my code, etc. because, next week, next month, or next year, I might need to do that same exact thing, but I will not remember it. If I wanted to memorize stuff, I guess, I could have been a Lawyer. LOL!

[@sotecluxan4221]

As I love it, to add the costs of the items in my cart, having the exact amount in my hand, when approaching cashier, see his smile cause it went so quickly, so I like to write cmd because stuff is quickly done. To memorize ~30cmds should be no problem for average pple.

[@nieczerwony]

​@@DrKellieOwczarczak This is exactly me as software engineer. I always add comments and detailed docs to my projects (especially APIs). I do other stuff like flowcharts, system schemas etc. I always write test for my code and have backups for all of these. I even created myself a tool (as a project) that keeps details with tags, topics and description, which I can pull if needed. Also in most cases I prefer code readability than length or syntax, and that helps a lot. In that way I am not stressed and worried about my work.

[@jfitzpatrick6108]

Great talk! Glad I listened. Thank you for sharing your learning curve.

[@javabeanz8549]

I ran into the inode issue a very long time ago, also on a mail server, however, it wasn't the messages themselves, it was a file system based grey listing solution I was using to help with spam. The answer then was to dedicate another drive to that solution, but to make the clusters very small, so very many inodes. As to LLVM, I avoided it on physical servers, because of the physical backup and recovery of a failing drive was much harder with LLVM in the mix. I see it as a great plus in a virtual server system.

[@LinXnerd]

Yes, that's info that I can definitely use. Now I will use git and LVM in ways that I didn't realize. I see them all of the time and thought that only admins and devs needed them. I had forgotten about inodes because I haven't had problems with those for years. But it's a good idea to know how to fix the problem in case it ever comes about. I think that it happened to me a long time ago but I thought that the distribution was buggy. 😏

[@msmodaafrique7513]

Awesome content! Thanks so much for always delivering!

[@Thomas_Grusz]

Thanks, that was helpful, I'd be interested in part II.

[@kencreten7308]

i agree with Shawn Lewis below after hearing what you said about commands. I've always felt exactly as you do, but didn't think about this idea of certification tests demanding knowledge of commands mostly likely soon to be forgotten post exam. I totally agree that we have documentation at hand, and quickly on the Net, for all Linux commands. And the one's that we use often are the ones we naturally memorize.

[@LuisGalindo0]

I would love a series of videos like these. Tips for current Sys Admins that are still learning.

[@nicedev8189]

Every video from you worth tons thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience, I have learn so much from you!

[@effdpaul1815]

Thanks so much for your Linux Instructional Videos: When I first jumped into Linux 15 years ago, as an alternative to Windows, I just wanted to be a user ... not a script writer, analyst, or administrator. I soon found out that to be a Linux User, is to wear all of those hats. The ability to self-educate was difficult for me as the availability of quality instructional material was difficult to find ... at least at first. I do have a friend who is an experienced Linux Administrator and that has helped over the years ... especially with the catastrophes that can happen. I am glad I found your channel ... it's been a good source of quality information. I still have a long journey ahead. Thanks once again.

[@PoeLemic]

Yes, you are not the only one. I'm moving away from WIndows, because I think LInux is more the future. So, I'm trying to educate myself too. And, it feels like a long road too.

[@effdpaul1815]

I use flash cards for Linux Commands & specialty terminology. I wanted to remember ... to memorize certain things because they were new to me when I first learned them, and I planned on using that info regularly. For me, repetition was the most effective memory tool for Linux.

[@shannongreen1520]

Truth in its purest sense

[@eldiabloramon]

NOTE: if you are running Oracle Unbreakable Linux - it gobbles up ALL the memory by default to alocate it to ASM controllers and Oracle Databases 😊 FYI: for linux commands, working in an Enterprise PROD / TEST / DEV env, i write templates of my most used commands, that i can edit and paste into the bash shell. That makes it WAY easier then trying to remember evry little thing. Also the “history” command is your friend, and locate. 😊

[@pixelpusher8986]

Whew!! I’m so glad to know I’m not the only Linux noob using man pages. I learned a few things reading the man ls pages the other day. So much more than I realised. Great video. I’m going get that book too.

[@Felix-ve9hs]

6:51 the large amount of Linux distros is what made me shift to FreeBSD as my main server OS, the insane number of choices just paralysed me

[@tenfourproductionsllc]

The main disadvantage of having 100s of distros is that it makes extremely difficult for a 3rd party vendor to supply support for their products. Imagine having to teach your support team Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse, Arch and then all it's dozens of variants. It's insane. The one thing google has done with linux is take it out of open source and streamline it into ONE OS period.

[@robertwest7633]

I've been in Linux System Operations for about a dozen years but have been using Linux since 2.2. This is a well done list. I think the only thing I'd add to really introductory material like this is this: du and df. They might (probably will) report different usages. This can be frustrating when tracking down a "disk full" issue. This, really, is far more common than the exhausted inodes issue. If a file is deleted (but still actually open by a process), df will report that space as still used, while du will not. If this deleted file is very large, the difference could be huge. lsof (list open files) will help you track down the culprit in this case. Often this is caused by a log rotation that does not restart the application doing the logging.

[@moogleworks501]

Incredible info. Thanks for sharing!

[@jesse7631]

Great video Jay, as always! I have never really understood the fixation some Linux distro reviewers have with looking at how much RAM the system is using after first boot, or what it's using during normal operations. I'm like, what is this, 1998?

[@thenathanhaines]

This was another great video! Interesting things you'd learned, practical uses for familiar tools, and an honest look at how much you need to "know" to run a server. Since 1994, the `apropos` command has been a stalwart friend!

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

I just do “man -k”.

[@thenathanhaines]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 That's pretty apropos.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Not apt?

[@moshiachhasawakened6781]

That was extremly helpful if not brilliant! Thank you

[@ibrahimabdeltawab6418]

So helpful! Thanks so much, and I’d like to mention your light and color, it’s awesome 👏

[@ThePenguinJunkie]

Thank you for making this video. It was very informative and gave quite a bit to think about. -Bryan

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

4:56 It would be easier just to say that inodes limit the maximum _number_ of files you can create on the volume, regardless of the space they occupy. So if you run out of inodes, you cannot create any new files (or directories), you can only extend existing ones.

[@CTimmerman]

How soon would a 1TB drive with Etx4 run out of inodes?

[@openevents]

@@CTimmerman Depends on the config, you can specify a number of inodes per X MB's .... but using XFS they are created dynamically, so you never run out.

[@CTimmerman]

@@openevents Is XFS better than ZFS? A redundant storage pool of random old drives sounds useful.

[@CyberCommercialBroadcasting]

Thanks a lot Jay, learnt some newer things from this tutorial.

[@kipsangjacob270]

Thanks, Jay for the advice!! the inodes was relatable

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

2:27 Yes, it most certainly is true. Remember, userland apps like GNOME are not responsible for managing filesystem cache--that is done by the kernel. So any RAM the apps are using is actual regular application RAM, and if they are using a lot more than other comparable apps, then yes, that counts as “bloat”.

[@florke64]

Very informative. Thank you

[@Chalisque]

The TL;DR on inodes is that a directory entry (when you see a file in your file manager, or when running ls, what you're really seeing is a directory entry) points to an inode. An inode then tells Linux where the file's data is on the disk. The number of inodes is (I think) set when you create the filesystem. Each file or directory requires an inode. So no available inodes means you can't create a new file, only allocate more free space to existing files. A nice thing about inodes, and actually something you get with NTFS (and I think it only got put there because MS wanted to have a minimal Posix subsystem in Windows NT so that they could get government contracts) is that you can have multiple directory entries pointing to the same file (hard links). This means you can efficiently create a clone of a directory hierarchy, which I tend to do before doing any destructive power renaming (e.g. applying a naming scheme to a bunch of media files) in case my Python script has an error which messes things up. With NTFS, hard links are hard to make unless you're running cygwin or git-bash.

[@shitinsideyou]

Great video Jay, thank you!

[@KSGleyzer]

Thank you for your videos! Very interesting and helpful 👍

[@stevejohnson1321]

If I can remember a few letters of a command I once used, sometimes I'll drag .bash_history file into a text editor so I can use the search function. If you use a shell other than bash, the file name will be different. Although the Up-arrow will eventually get you to that past command, sometimes I used it two or three years ago. That can mean a lot of clicks.. Olden days .bash_history would get truncated to save resources, but on desktop systems the file can stay alive for years.

[@WeirdDuck781]

Dont forget that you dont have to change distros if you want a specific desktop environment. More often than not you have plenty of tutorials on how to swap DE without remaking your whole system or learning the ins and outs of another distro. Distro is more of an idea of an amalgamation of what a gnu/linux system should look and work like as the foundation. I might be wrong but the distro selection usually revolves around what package manager it uses... While newcommers are usually just looking into the looks and popularity (which isnt wrong at all). I use arch (btw) because i didnt mind the rolling releases (tbh you can kind of opt out of this ) and the fact that it comes out of the box with basically just the kernel, bootloader and package manager, from there i just pick my "goey" and some apps. You like apt-get more but you wanna use a specific distro that uses something else? Noone is stopping you and its usually not that painful to swap package managers

[@SweetHoneycode]

I had what I called the big 2 when I started in 2004 - Ubuntu, Fedora and Opensuse. These were what I used either as a primary driver or my backup. Lately I now use Linux Mint. I've learned to use a Home partition to make this easier.

[@szr8]

Did you mean to say "Debian" when you said "Ubuntu" ? I ask because the latter didn't exist yet.

[@benygh911]

@@szr8 TRUE...✌👍

[@jpcoll2011]

Ubuntu came out in October 2004.

[@jpcoll2011]

​@@szr8Ubuntu came out in October 2004 and I started to use it in early 2005

[@MichaelCook-oo8lj]

8:28 The point about using a different distro if you don't like the user interface - I would take this one step further and point out that for the most part you can install pretty much any desktop environment or window manager on any distribution. You don't have to even switch distros. Ubuntu is famous for it's unique spin on Gnome, but you can easily rip that out and replace it with anything you want. Or, you can install several desktop environments and switch between them as your mood dictates without any real issues.

[@paultapping9510]

I was just thinking about this the other night, while trying to sum up why I like Linux to a friend. The extensibility is actually insane when you think about it too much. You can do everything up to and including compiling a custom kernel. Literally every aspect of the way your machine behaves, looks, acts, and reacts is up for modification. But even before that you have desktop environment/window manager choice and extensibility, and before that you have the, by Windows standards, already insane levels of customisation that the vanilla install of something like plasma or gnome offer. People in Linuxland get mad about sysD, people in windowsLand get served ads on their desktop and have to just like it.

[@gomex1996]

Pretty nice,thank you very much,it was helpful!!!

[@madmadmal]

LVM is not a backup solution but many think so because it can include a “cloud” service. Data exists only where it located. In other words if the data in any one place, like an LVM cloud space there is no backup. Unless there a considered plan to make data replicated in more than one place it can be lost. Usually data should exist in three places, the original, a live backup, and an offline backup (one offsite and dead to changes, think of a place that is kept in a safety deposit box.

[@MatthewCrawford]

As a software engineer, I agree that any resources not in use are being wasted... In general a very informative list, thank you :)

[@Trozpent]

I think it's such an important point that even the most experienced people do not memorise everything, and thank you for saying it because I think it's often a scary thing for us newer and less experienced people often worry about. It's something I learnt with Photography that even the best photogs do not turn up take one shot and it's perfect. they take thousands of pictures to find their best shot to show the world. I've been watching lots of the "into the terminal" series form Red Hat recently and it's so great seeing one of their most experience people there even makes mistakes and forgets things. It's just down to what you use on a daily basis is different from the next person. I'd love to learn more about your career, how you transitioned and what you do now. I think it would also be really great to learn what you use for your note taking. Obsidian is such a widely discussed tool these days. I've taken a look at Logseq which looks really interesting but I cannot wrap my head around how to use it effectively and always find myself comparing it to Obsidian which I probably shouldn't. Do you host things like your notes or do you keep them local on your computer?

[@slalomsk8er397]

Server CPU can be low if it's waiting for you - like my nextcloud on my raspberry pi ;) But you are right and this was a major driver in virtualization and later containerization - use the resources to the max with minimal overhead and bottlenecks. Yes, backups are only really in existence if you tested them and retest on a schedule!

[@javabeanz8549]

I think that the CPU usage is widely variable. I manage web servers and email servers for customers these days, so unless there's a lot of activity, CPU usage is very low. But I used to deal with monitoring servers for ISPs, and high loads were common. When pulling data from thousands of devices on a regular basis, the servers were kept very busy.

[@denalimike8159]

Love the videos thanks!

[@ivandelevic]

Very,very useful for beginners! Respect for video! Thanks 🙏👍

[@LearnLinuxTV]

My pleasure 😊

[@toromac9786]

the Git idea for version controlling config files is genius, so obvious now you mention it.

[@dragonsage6909]

Great insights, thanks!

[@giganticyufka]

This is really useful advices. Thanks!

[@helloimatapir]

Great content as usual Jay. I do miss the old intro though...

[@MohMoh-mw9ml]

thank you, very helpful and encouraging.

[@somecallmetimelderberries432]

Very helpful, thanks!

[@zarzavattzarzavatt9309]

nr 7. unfortunately there is not always easy to have a backup distro at hand. in many environments there are other constraints than the distro itself and the app running on it: availability of official/verified images in public clouds, your security agent may only support a limited number of distros, etc. some distros, even if supported by your apps get support last of all (debian :) in some cases you just have to go wherever the big players are going.

[@shadynit]

Thanks for teaching us, good to know those things. I really appreciate you. By the way, the T-shirt is so cool, where can I purchase this one?

[@Monarchias]

Yes please. I would like to see more of '10 Things I wish I Knew about Linux'! For example on a sideway, different level of technologies through your career. What you met what you knew and what new technologies surprized you? Thank you for your educational videos.

[@PoeLemic]

Yeah, I said same thing -- rather than random stuff; he should organize it by career-period or grouping-ideas to topics (e.g., disk management or server installation), etc.

[@godrugal1]

many thanks for this very informative video

[@igrewold]

Good stuff man, thanks

[@dljohnsonmusic]

Really good video and insight

[@eliasperez5168]

I just came across your channel I love this thank you so much

[@Vandan9166]

Hey Jay, great video. Like your style of teaching. Cheers! Dan Manzano

[@Crackalacking_Z]

You are so right about certifications, there are way better ways to test if a person actually understands what they're doing.

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

When it comes to using Linux commands, I think it’s worthwhile to try to remember the general syntax of commands you use frequently, but don’t worry about remembering all the options / flags / arguments/ etc. So long as you have the name of the command, most commands are a simple “command -h” or “command -help” away from getting a list of available options and ways to use it. Yes you can do “man command”, but manual pages are confusing and terrible! 😀 They’re either way to brief with no additional info or WAY too long and convoluted, so at least see if the command has a -h or -help flag first.

[@brettsjoholm]

Ohhh. That's awesome. I never knew that... Because yes, man pages are useless for me most of the time.

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

@@brettsjoholm yep. Sometimes -h or -help doesn’t do much better, but often it will give a nicely condensed blurb of the command syntax and what each of the possible flags / arguments do.

[@Svyatoclav]

Try to use "tldr" command - it is VERY helpful for me, I actually use it every day to see stuff about commands in very quickly way lol

[@sylviam6535]

Make notes of your most used commands. As you said, navigating the man pages is just terrible.

[@trajectoryunown]

tealdeer is also handy for common programs. It's basically a mini man page with the commands and options you're most likely to want to use.

[@darylcheshire1618]

I’m a Windows user who used Linux infrequently and is very rusty. I was researching curl and I saw this complex example in Stack Overflow using Lynx, SED and Awk and instead of installing Windows versions decided to install Mint on an old laptop to apply this example I found (which had typos). I was gratified to connect to the internet and then change to the command line with ct-alt-F1 still connected to the internet to play with curl. I do remember running Redhat 2.4 which ran beautifully with sound and I then ran a distro upgrade and my anguish when the upgrade broke the sound driver. I was using a weird-ass motherboard sound chip and I ended up buying a common sound card just to run with Linux. SoundBlaster from memory. The mobo sound chip was Aureal and the company went out of business so the support had stopped. Follow-up: Creative Labs (maker of SoundBlaster) had sued Aureal over patent infringements (multiple lawsuits) and Aureal won but the legal costs bankrupted the company and Creative Labs acquired the IP at the bankruptcy hearings and Redhat withdrawing the drivers would have been the nail in the coffin for Aureal products. Sucky yes, it really is a dog eat dog world.

[@bobwong8268]

Wow... 👍👍👍👍👍 Thank You Jay!

[@mehdizeynalov1062]

super video thank you --- nice setup...

[@ionluv]

Great tips. Thank you.

[@user-di4bt7qu2i]

Great info! Yes, please make a follow-up to this video.

[@akshayjadhav7227]

Really great video!

[@pylang3803]

That book plug was so smooth :D

[@ewoukemngnia2568]

thanks very much, good content and advice that will be of great help to me !!!

[@Janemayank]

Good one. Very Useful.

[@augustedrifande6017]

Is it possible, to some extent, to place the distribution you're using in a GIT (a form of backup)? Either, to reinstall or synchronize parts of the FS (with this differential you can know several aspects of your FS)?

[@V0KIAL]

We are lucky to have such an amazing teacher. Great channel, really

[@LeeMyers-Jr]

I agree on not memorizing all the commands, you will memorize what you use often the rest just go in your cheat sheet/book. Decades ago I took to my philosophy that a smart person doesn't have to know everything but know where to find the information they need. That was years before the internet existed and why I have a boatload of books. But I also believe a good administrator has a familiarity with the commands that are available to use when needed. Otherwise everything is a nail when all you have is a hammer.

[@sportbikeguy9875]

High CPU usage might not be an issue on a server, but if your desktop is idling at, say 80%, you don't really have much overhead for other applications

[@TAP7a]

Git is great for everyone - whether youre writing documents, anything from memos, a PhD thesis or novels to hardcore software projects like the Kernel, less formal code projects like data analysis/data science projects or sysadmin scripts. If you write anything in your job, it's worth learning git. Just learn to write mostly text based (like .txt, Markdown, LaTeX, code files) rather than flooding your repo with large binaries like Word docs

[@arthur_p_dent4282]

I’m getting there with the Linux commands. I think my biggest hurdle right now is learning how to effectively use pipes. Also I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of things like grep and awk.

[@mrklean0292]

I had a block years ago with pipes and grep. The only way I got past that block was through working with them and other commands to redirect data.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

grep is useful, but I never bothered with awk. I learned Perl first, and that does everything that awk can do, just as concisely, and more.

[@Allysroadtorecovery]

The Linux Command line by William Shotts is a great free online resource.

[@cristianbejan1970]

Is swap memory still useful? I saw recommendations like 1.5x or 2x RAM for swap allocation but in this video only 2GB are allocated instead of 48 or 64GB if we are to follow recommendation.

[@flyinhawaiian9174]

You mentioned that nothing is guaranteed in Linux as in a distro could change to something you don't like. What if I start with a distro that uses the EXT4 file system and then later I want to move to one that uses BTRFS? What happens to my files? Is such a move even possible?

[@arthur_p_dent4282]

I also want to add. Notion has been super useful for creating my own cheat sheets. I basically extract all the useful stuff from the man page for the command, and than embellish that with stuff I’ve learned elsewhere.

[@PoeLemic]

What is Notion?

[@arthur_p_dent4282]

@@PoeLemic it’s an app for taking notes. It basically uses an abstracted form of markdown language. You just type backslash followed by what ever your looking to add (ie table, bullet, heading, url, page).

[@RegularEverydayNormalGuy]

That is an amazing tip! Thank you, I use Notion a lot but never imagined this

[@ciCCapROSTi]

For point 7: I don't really care about the distribution, I care about the DE. I'm a desktop user, not a server admin, so the look is more important to me than the underlying stuff. But the point still stands: if KDE goes away, I'll have to have a hard look at which DEs provide the most Windows-like environment.

[@luizansounds]

yeah, options are good, the facts built my own personal Desktop experience built around sway says a lot

[@pepe6666]

LXQT :) its very dull & boring. modern, and boring. classic desktop paradigm. its fantastic.

[@erjowah]

I personally like GNOME because I was using Windows since 2001 and i'm just bored of seeing a bar with a menu so the way of Gnome to show apps and all always makes me to use it. But I don't like some ideas of GNOME and lack of customization even there's extensions that can break the system in every update... I'm using Debian rn

[@hamzaal-laham9863]

Very useful video, thanks

[@gerrymaddock9234]

I agree w/you on certs. Question, what is that monitor behind you next to your phone and what do you use it for?

[@almartin4]

As a newby, I do have a question about an issue that just appeared. I am using PopOs, which I like a lot. There are some multi TB drives I cannot access at.all . They worked fine and then I suddenly there was an error message on my USB port "cannot access that drive." Is there some way of getting the access working, again? Regards

[@architkumar1265]

Memory from the cache can be provided to any application which needs it. So basically we should have free memory more, instead of Cache memory as cache memory is not that important. If we have cache memory more, we can either reboot the system to increase the memory and eliminate it from cache, or we can use a command -> [echo 3 > proc/sys/vm/drop_caches] Correct me, if I'm wrong 👍🏻👍🏻

[@hansdampf2284]

4:24 you could argue that the purpose of a server is not doing work but providing the possibility that work could be done if it is demanded. So even an idling service provides the service of the possibility and so is not without purpose.

[@fernandobernardo6324]

I always have installed two functional distros and I use each one about 2 or 3 days then I switch and I use a shared folder to put all my documents and important files. In the last two years I'm using Opensuse Tumbleweed with KDE and Arch Linux with Gnome Desktop. Something doesn't seem to work in one distro I try the other one.

[@notjustforhackers4252]

I'm pretty sure that the inode issue only affects ext volumes ( ext4.....3? ). Apparently its not an issue on other file systems.

[@13thravenpurple94]

regarding commands, installing 'tldr' is a massive help

[@voodooyam]

and dont forget the info command, and curling cheat.sh!

[@maurolimaok]

Number 7: It seems, due to the path Ubuntu is going, Vanilla OS and Pop OS will derivate themselves directly from Debian, no more from Ubuntu. Things are changing.

[@emmanuelpoirier4602]

That's a good list. Thanks.

[@TradersTradingEdge]

Jay, you can't imagine how it was a relieve to me to know now, that I don't have to memorize so much in Linux. I thought I just getting too fast too old LOL. That was really a main bother to me when working in the shell. Now, I just continue to use my cheat-sheet §8-) Thanks man for being so transparent. 🤗👍

[@Allysroadtorecovery]

Learn one thing how to navigate and search for specific commands or use cases by using man.