Before Switching to Linux - Learn the Shell

While you don't typically need to learn basic Linux commands before installing a distribution I highly recommend to do so. Reason being, if your system breaks and you have data. It can be a pain to back it all up and such, and a majority of the time you are only a couple of commands away from fixing your system!

How to learn the shell?

Now, if you use MacOS you can likely skip this step entirely if you use the terminal. MacOS uses zsh and Linux distributions typically use bash. Both are very similar. If you are a Windows user, you are goin to want to use WSL which stands for Windows Subsystem for Linux (confusing name right?).

Setup

There are a couple of prerequisities:

- Windows 10 Build 2004 or later

- A system with virtualization support

To setup wsl, it's a one command thing.

wsl --install

After that, let it run then open the Ubuntu app from your start menu. It will prompt you to set a password, go ahead and do that.

Learning the Shell

There are many guides such as the one below on Linux's simple set of preinstalled commands.

https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/linux-commands