start from man man and learn to use man pages. Get used to lookup man pages for any topic before checking on the internet

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Haven’t seen anyone mention https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/ yet. It’s a Linux shell game where you need to solve problems using shell commands that only requires an ssh client on your machine: you ssh into the first server, solve a problem, and the solution points you to the next server. It starts easy (e.g. read out this file using cat) but gets hard quickly. But you can always look up solutions when you’re stuck. It gives a good idea what certain commands are used for and how they can be combined in powerful ways.

• To learn Arch, install it from scratch (without archinstall), it’ll force you to read the Wiki and learn a lot of necessary commands in the process. After the installation, just keep using it. Using a Linux distro full-time as the only installed OS is the best way to keep at it and truly learn it over time. There’s no magic bullet here. Just keep using it and solving problems or issues as you go, learning more and more stuff as you go. If you need other OSses as well, run those in a VM. I don’t recommend dual-boot setups.

• Don’t blindly copy/paste commands you don’t understand. Always try to understand them first. Some commands can be very disruptive or even destroy your configuration. If you don’t understand it or are able to adapt it so that it fits to your particular configuration or system, you can EASILY damage a configuration, or even make your system unusable. Also, some people like trolling other people and deliberately share harmful commands. Generally, test potentially destructive commands or complex commandlines before actually running them.

• Document major config changes that you do. This is useful because you’ll be able to undo certain changes or even replicate your current system configuration fast when you change distros or have to reinstall in the future. For example my current Arch-based setup is fully documented in form of an almost-directly executable shell script. It does require some interactions but very little. If I ever have to reinstall this system, or upgrade my hardware, it can be done insanely fast and it’ll have the exact same configuration. This goes from basic partitioning and encryption all the way up to dotfiles and individual program configurations.

• Don’t feel the need to learn hard/advanced tools like Vim or Emacs unless you really think you’re getting an advantage from that and aren’t hesitant to put in the time and effort to learn them. Most people don’t need to use them. They’re amazing tools but you need to be prepared to lose quite a lot of time to learn them before you can become productive with them, and this might not be a tradeoff that’s useful for every single user. You can also get away with much simpler tools, like nano (as a console-based editor) or whatever programmer’s text editor you want.
• Similarly, whether a pure WM or compositor plus assorted tools compared to a full desktop environment is worth it for you or not, is up to you. There’s no wrong or right answer here. I’ve tried out pretty much everything and these days use KDE Plasma because I like the consistency and integrations and dislike having different, inconsistent stand-alone tools for panels, menus, notifications, wallpaper, file manager and so on. But again, there’s no wrong or right answer here. Just what makes more sense for you. It’s worth learning how to be able to configure and use a minimalistic setup, for sure. So trying it out doesn’t hurt and increases your knowledge overall. In general, in the Linux world it’s good to always know enough to not be screwed once some component suddenly doesn’t work anymore. For example, a competent Linux user should be able to deal with (temporarily) not having a GUI and fixing his system via commandline.

• A minimalistic, DIY distro like Arch can be amazing to learn everything, if you want to do that at least. If you just want a working desktop system with as little effort as possible, then don’t do that. But if you intend to learn every detail, then a distro like Arch is better suited for that goal than a “bloated”, fully pre-configured distro like Mint or Ubuntu is. Because Arch is much simpler on a technical level than those are. It’s much easier to understand e.g. the relatively simple package building process on Arch than it is on Debian/Ubuntu-based distros. But this “simple” explicitly refers to technical simplicity or minimalism. Most users expect something else when they hear “something is simple”. Arch is not simple as in beginner-friendly, but it is simple in terms of technical complexity, which is why many advanced users and tinkerers like it because it doesn’t stand in their way. It also means though that you HAVE to learn many things, e.g. how to configure a firewall, because it doesn’t come with any preinstalled by default. With Arch, the admin is supposed to know about everything and configure every component himself, at least on a somewhat basic level.

• If you want to go to even more details, you could also try out a source-based distro like Gentoo or Crux, which can also be a great learning experience, but it’s even more details regarding compilations of each package, dependencies, compile-time options, etc. you have to deal with than with a minimalistic binary-package-based distro like Arch, so whether that’s useful for you or not is up to you of course.
• While we’re at it: LFS (Linux from Scratch) is not a distro per se, it’s a guide on how to build your own distribution from scratch. It’s VERY time intensive and not recommended unless you truly want to learn how to build a complete distribution from scratch, or maybe start your own distro some day which isn’t based on another existing distro.

The tldr cli (tldr.sh) is a great way to get familiar with options of differ programs.

I still find Tealdeer useful even now, it helps me get working with commands I know little about, more so than a manpage

What tips/ideas do you have for getting better at navigating the terminal, and getting a better understanding of how the os works

Running an OS as a virtual is liberating. Dive in, make mistakes, fix them (or not and have to reinstall or redo from the last save). No real consequences for exploring.

Read and do! If it’s just a toy you play with sometimes, you might find learning harder. I find that making it your daily driver will motivate you to improve and fix things and in doing that you’ll learn.

If you want to get better at Linux terminal and standard unix commands I would try https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/

It’s an interactive tutorial which will help build basic skills. There are a million guides and walkthroughs for this, but I would try each level on your own first before you look at a guide.

Install harder distros (preferably on bare metal) and use them. If you need to fix something, google it. This helped me a lot.

If you are beginner in Linux, try beginner-friendly Arch-based distro: EndeavourOS, CachyOS, Manjaro

You can learn Arch without too much hassle while using one of them

I can tell you how I learned linux. be prepared to cringe.

1. I installed Linux before going to school, I figured that if I used Linux as my main OS I would be less tempted to dick around and play games

2. I eventually found a coop part time job as a dev. I used my own Linux machine, and being the star eyed young person I was I used arch.

this is the cringe part:

3. I did dev work on arch Linux without fully understanding how it works and ran into multiple issues (none of which was because of arch). for instance my USB wifi driver was the dogshit broadcom ones so the “drivers” for it were kind of messed and I had to hack several things into get it to work.

I learned systemd, Linux kernel modules, dkpg, obviously more familiarity with bash and shell stuff

4. I ran into issues with grub because FUCK grub. so I had to learn about boot loaders, fixing your install with chroot on a live usb, I also wrote step by step guides to untuck my particular problem just in case I run into it again

so moral of the story is… dive in?

I’m going to go against the grain a bit and suggest studying for a certificate. Find one that looks interesting, and just prepare for it. You don’t necessarily have to get the certificate, but training for it will give you a good foundation for running your systems.

https://hackr.io/blog/best-linux-certifications

I’m late to the party but have you seen Linux Journey? https://linuxjourney.com/

With arch, I’d recommend just jumping in the deep and and installing it, looking things up on the wiki when something goes wrong. Just do it in a virtual machine or on an old laptop or something to start with. I broke my previous distro (mint) by doing some really stupid stuff, and I decided to just go fuck it and install arch. I don’t think I’ve ever learned as much about linux as that weekend.

I suppose that I was already pretty comfortable with the terminal since I was studying computer science at the time so I had a lot of reason to use it. I think the best way to use the terminal is to force yourself to use it, programming is great for this but you can try e.g. sorting your photos or mp3 files or something as practice too.