As a Linux newbie looking for DIY projects, you have plenty to choose from. Linux is full of hands-on learning and experimentation opportunities. From virtualization to server management and security, there’s a project for every beginner who wants to learn Linux. In this article, we will look at some DIY Linux projects for beginners. These… continue reading.
Very nice set of beginner advice here. Today it is so easy to get started with Linux – you can literally do it for under $50 with raspberry pi!
Back when I got started (1993?), it was Slackware and it came on 50 floppy disks. Very time-consuming to install, and to do the install my friends and I would set up a row of PCs, and we’d pass the floppies down the line. One guy would write the floppy image, and the rest would install. The guy at the end of the line would pass it back to the first guy so the floppy disk could be used for another image.
I should check out Zsh. ZFS is the best filesystem, so Zsh is the best shell, right? True story: I still use tcsh. (And I still prefer vi – not to be confused with vim.)
I never did learn nginx by itself. I was always an Apache guy, but at this point all of my websites (I run about a dozen) are nginx-powered and running in a container, and all of them use TLS from Let’s Encrypt, using traefik to orchestrate it all. If you look at my Github repo, you can see the web source and how the Docker images are built. Another repo holds the Ansible used for deployment.
When I first began to learn Linux, I purchased a basic Mini PC and installed Proxmox on it. This helped me a lot to learn most things you mentioned. The best part was that I could create and delete virtual machines as many times as I wanted, which made the learning process more convenient.
Working with virtualization also gave me a chance to learn Linux networking, which is important for anyone aspiring to become a system administrator. I learned how to create private NATs for server groups, enable multiple NATs to communicate between themselves and work with iptables and firewall applications. In summary, virtualization is a great way to learn networking as well.
Great article, one small suggestion though. Learn NFTables instead of iptables as it’s going away and there’s no real point in learning iptables. I do agree with using UFW for beginners it’s easier than falling off a bike.
True story: I still use tcsh. (And I still prefer vi – not to be confused with vim.)