As I continued down the path to learning the command line and all the neat tips and tricks I kept reading the same lines repeatedly.
Try this in your terminal.
Play in this application.
Get your hands dirty.
I decided to take the advice I was reading and get dirty.
Getting Dirty
Step 1: Ditch the user friendly environment for something more basic.
After running through install after install of a few major distributions, seeing the environments and testing out the interfaces, I knew it was time to switch from Mint. For your average computer user who just needs to access the internet and the ability to write a couple of documents it is perfect. For the masochists, i.e. me, who want to get to the basics of Linux and learn from mostly the ground up, it's not so great.
Step 2: Install a distribution to force myself to learn Linux.
During all of my testing I had a user requested review of Crunchbang. I really liked how lightweight and basic Crunchbang was. It allows the user to make all the changes they need and forces research and learn how to make those changes. Crunchbang also comes with very few applications that are automatically installed, which means it's taking up less space. If you are interested in more information on Crunchbang visit my full Overview and Review.
Step 3: Start figuring out personalization capabilities.
When it comes to personalization, I was spoiled by XFCE because the ability to do any personalizing was done by point and click. It was easy to create a panel strictly for my launchers, I set it to auto hide, and had some of my more used programs (Chrome, Gmail, Gimp, Drive, ect.) on it. Crunchbang comes with Tint2 for a desktop environment, Tint 2 is a panel but has no default application launcher on it. However it does allow for customization through the configuration file. As an FYI, I believe most desktop environments do offer these abilities, I picked Crunchbang with Tint2 because I liked the interface.
Step 4: Get Dirty.
I searched for ways to change the config file in Tint2 to allow for a launcher, but what I found was better. There is an array of launcher programs available to Debian based distributions. I found WBar first, which I liked the look of but found one major flaw with, how do I configure it? Wbar did not come with a config utility included and I couldn't find an install package for it. Next on the list was Docky. While the point and click personalizations were great it was hard to pin certain programs like Chrome to Docky. It was figured out that I would have to drag and drop the icon to the Docky Launcher bar.
First I had to find the desktop file so I could pin Chrome to Dockey. To do this I opened up the terminal and ran a locate for chrome and then grep for the desktop. Locate finds where files for a program are while grep is a command that searches for regular expressions. My command looked like this:
I dragged the launcher to the Docky bar and now I have all my "must be able to get to quickly" programs on the Docky bar.
Step 5: Sit back with some coffee and bacon.
It wasn't hard but it wasn't easy either. By making the switch to a more stripped down distribution I have allowed myself to use some of the functions that I have learned over the course of my studies so far. With the actual applied use of these functions I feel like I have a better understanding than I used to.
In conclusion, getting dirty with Linux is the correct way to learn. Even by testing out the programs and searching for solutions you find that it gets easier, things just start clicking. Get dirty my friends.
Step 4: Get Dirty.
I searched for ways to change the config file in Tint2 to allow for a launcher, but what I found was better. There is an array of launcher programs available to Debian based distributions. I found WBar first, which I liked the look of but found one major flaw with, how do I configure it? Wbar did not come with a config utility included and I couldn't find an install package for it. Next on the list was Docky. While the point and click personalizations were great it was hard to pin certain programs like Chrome to Docky. It was figured out that I would have to drag and drop the icon to the Docky Launcher bar.
First I had to find the desktop file so I could pin Chrome to Dockey. To do this I opened up the terminal and ran a locate for chrome and then grep for the desktop. Locate finds where files for a program are while grep is a command that searches for regular expressions. My command looked like this:
Once I entered my password all the desktop functions listed. I had to look at the list and figure out which one I needed to be able to drag and drop the icon onto the launcher.
I figured out pretty quickly it was this one that I wanted, I then went into the file manager into the file systems folder-usr-share-applications folders (follow the yellow brick road) until I found the launcher in my file systems.
Step 5: Sit back with some coffee and bacon.
It wasn't hard but it wasn't easy either. By making the switch to a more stripped down distribution I have allowed myself to use some of the functions that I have learned over the course of my studies so far. With the actual applied use of these functions I feel like I have a better understanding than I used to.
In conclusion, getting dirty with Linux is the correct way to learn. Even by testing out the programs and searching for solutions you find that it gets easier, things just start clicking. Get dirty my friends.
This is IMHO by far your best post yet. Keep up the great work!
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