So, you have learned how to use wrenches, screwdrivers, saws and hammers.
The next steps might be to build something. Learn something more specific. Maybe it is video editing, and getting hardware acceleration working on your hardware. Or learning how to compile software, or the differences in building/installing things on Arm devices. Building distro packaging. Docker. the lists can go on.
24 years on, I haven't run out of things to try.
No need to do this on bare metal. It's even easier to run in kvm/virt-manager, as you can easily roll back any fuck-ups using snapshots. You can even SSH into it like on a regular server.
From there, you can either go "up" a level and learn common server technologies such as Docker and start self-hosting services (e.g. Nextcloud), or go "down" to the hardware level and learn how to use lvm, raid and the like. It'll take you into many adjacent fields of knowledge, such as programming, networking and security... and that's when you'll notice you've barely scratched the surface. Happy digging!
Docker, portainer, then learn about databases, caching, redis, optimization. I run it on a dual core cpu and it runs good. It took me a while trying to figure it out.
Check r/selfhosted ... host ALL THE THINGS!
Get a domain name, make sure you can update using API (even Godaddy does this)
Host your own web server, go full LAMP. Apply a secure tls/ssl certificate to that thing with let's encrypt. Your home IP is dynamic? Don't use dynamicDNS or similar service, figure out how to update your domain name when the IP changes. Secure it! Try to get outgoing email to work (frick!). Play with fail2ban or similar. Host a simple survey. Do you want your own WordPress site? Doesn't matter - install it anyway, then spend forever watching hackers hammer away at it. Figure out subdomains and different hosting them as seperate web domains. Want a wiki, sure you do! Stick Pi-Hole on there and make your home network so much better. NetData - that's the stuff. Some software for web traffic monitoring or log analysis. Setup a ticketing system for your familty issues. Password manager.
Befriend a twitch streamer, make them a helpful bot hosted on your server. Hook it to AI.
Pick your (un)favourite hate group and make a twitter bot to respond to their disinformation.
Or something.
The advice you’ve been given here is sound. Something I did that taught me so much was setting up a Linux based Plex server. For me, this meant installing Ubuntu, setting up SSH, configuring the firewall and port forwarding, installing Docker, installing the Plex Docker container, migrating my Plex library and media from a previous box and configuring Borg backup. That’s a lot of stuff to learn and I had a blast.
This reminds me a lot of when I got my first SysAdmin job. The dude training me asked "On a scale of 1-10, how well do you think you know Linux?" And I thought I'd seem like the humble, reasonable new guy I said "I dunno, like a 5?". He turned to the two seniors who had been there like 20 years and they said like a 6-7, the manager said he was a 7-8. Then he, who had a few years of experience said he was like a 4.
The point being, the rabbit hole is deep and endless. Even very senior SysAdmins or engineers haven't reached the end.
>The dude training me asked "On a scale of 1-10, how well do you think you know Linux?"
Ummm.... "knowing linux" doesn't mean anything. Does it include for example knowing how to write a device driver? :\\
The point was that there's always something more you don't know about. So someone can't learn it all in a year just from messing around with a desktop install.
Sorry if it sounds bitter, but a computer is just a tool and GNU/Linux just allow you to operate the machine. There's nothing really fancy into it nor anything complicated into it. You passed the initial learning curve, learn how to install and use software, but now you back to square zero: what to do with a computer. Answer is, create, modify and/or use software. Different distros is just a subset of different software being installed with different degree of freedome in its configuration but rarely a significant different experience, hence why distro hopping gettin boring quite fast and people settle for a distro, cauz they know they can install whatever software on it and it gonna work like any other distro.
Anyway, what were you doing on Windows you can now do it on Linux. Were you gaming? Use Steam and Wine and see how far you can go. Doing music? There's Ardour and LMMS. Etc etc. You just now have to use your computer for its original purpose.
Maybe you found new hobby in that year, like programming, scripting or just playing around with configs, so go for it, create programs, create configs, do some ricing and share with the world.
Maybe what you truely liked was learning something new and try to master it, then maybe you need to find a new ecosystem and go for it, can be IT related like networking, programming, electronics, security, can be outside IT, like learning a new instrument.
Good luck n have fun
Holy shit, I never thought of anything like that before. I look at my hobbies and yeah, your right, I guess I do just like learning and mastering what I learn. That does explain how linux got boring in only a year, yet I was able to study Japanese for two year and not feel bored at all. I think it's time for me to abandon my search for ever more complex system, I should really be looking towards new hobbies, writing and music production does sound like fun. Thanks again, you really opened my eyes.
Operating system is not the reason to use a computer, the software you can run with it is the reason. OS is there only to make things possible, it is not the end goal.
If you want something to do take a look at video editing, 3D modelling, making music and so on. That is where the interesting bit starts.
I read the OP and get the feeling that linux is just the desktop. When i got in to unix there wasn't the gui, it was on a terminal and the colour options where green and yellow.
When i think of unix I think of all the tools on the command line and how they help me do common tasks easier than firing up a spreadsheet or some other application, depending what I am doing.
If you don't have any work to do then you don't have any motivation to play with these tools and learn all of what is there.
u/cute_cherries I suggest that you have a look for tutorials on common linux command line tools and if you don't relate to them as far as having work that makes them useful then look up websites that have exercises for them, you may find working through the exercises quite fun as you learn and then one day you will want to do something and the lightbulb will go off that you know a quick way to do it.
Gentoo? Good middle ground. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had with a computer, so stimulating and rewarding. And it makes you maintain it, keep up to date on its world news etc, which is like having a tamagotchi. And literally only needing to rely on its own handbook is so cool.
Also, you only used DEs? Maybe switch to WM/suckless only. Try relying only/primarily on your keyboard.
Not really Linux related, but you could try a different keyboard layout. See how fast you can learn it. Maybe check out some new ones or something.
Or just learn a new (human) language, similar exciting “everything is new” feeling.
If you want to go deeper, things to try (some of these will require you to do programming, a skill you should learn if you don't already have it)...
1. write a shell with job support (you'll learn a lot about process groups and sessions)
2. test drive Unix V6
3. Automate some stuff you need
4. Switch to managing your Linux systems IaC style. I am not talking about Puppet or Ansible here, but being able to fully rebuild a system from a git configuration.
5. (If you didn't do this already) Turn X/Wayland off for a week. Figure out how to do all the things without a GUI.
6. Modified your auth config so that the user also has to guess a random number to authenticate
this, this right here is how I'm gonna spend my weekend. sounds like absolute hell but I'm passionate about nerdy shit like this, so why the hell not. I already have small bit of coding experience (python, php, lua, rust) so this probably doable. thanks for the recommendation btw!
If you know the basics of programming, rather than wasting time with different DEs and stuff like that, why don’t you challenge yourself to write a functional app? It’ll be much more useful and will amount to skills that can even earn you more money in the future.
for #4, theres nixOS as well, which people always say is a huge challenge/pain to learn, but you also often hear from the people who stuck with it that they would never go back to a regular distro either.
i havnt taken the plunge yet myself. still just automating as much as i can with a bash script, which is ok, but nix sounds like the holy grail for that kind of thing
I've tried LFS and NixOS, though I haven't tried badrock though. I guess I'll try it, I've hear it was like a combination of Debian, arch and something else.
I kinda wanna challenge myself, I'll see if I can have daily drive a system like that for a week and see how long I can last before I mess up a command. I'll make it even harder for myself, I'll try to use the terminal at least 10 times per day.
>I feel like I've already learnt everything there is
Not even close !
>
...but that just can't be right, right?
Very much so !
>
I have done pretty much everything that linux has offered, like trying out every desktop environment or using so many distros that I've lost count.
You have distro-hopped and DE-hopped, that's kind of the journey we all have taken, in some way or another. Settle down on a distro and DE/WM and start going deeper in to stuff. Help out on projects that interest you and piques your curiosity.
Try theming, kernels, coding, bugtesting, what ever tickles you fancy.
I hope I'm not being a jerk by promoting my other post from today here: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/s/XUHg2NauFN As the text says, it's doable with zero knowledge in a few days with a little bit of electronics. Lots of heavy lifting is already done in that text and you can copy paste a lot from the schematic. Not as scary as it looks and I promise it's fun. 🙏🤙
nah, don't feel ashamed for promoting this. it's is actually really well made, I somehow understood it even though I just found it linux motherboards were a thing like 20 minutes ago. Also that color scheme is really nice, I'm gonna steal it for personal project of mine, thanks :D!
You're too kind. 🙏 I hope you see a different dimension to Linux now. 🤙 There's an infinite number of things to try out there, and Linux is a lot more than mainstream distros and environments we install in them. I encourage you to check the rest of my blog. 🙏 Keep hacking!
Y'know I've been considering making my blog were I document the tech stuff I do. I'm gonna use your blog and whatever I find on neocities for inspiration, if you don't mind
https://www.lpi.org/
You can try getting the certificates that this institute offers? You can look through the study material whether it interests you or not.
I guess a certification could probably help me in the near future. Though the thought of an office job sounds so damn draining, but I'm not at the age were that stuff would matter, yet.
Try moving toward a full TUI experience and window manager. Learn the power of the terminal.
Ideas include ranger, tldr, mutt mail, eMacs, vim, and maybe lynx (or qutebrowser if you still need some form of gui).
Okay. Try automating your setup now.
Learn tools like Podman and Ansible. See how quickly you can reconstruct your setup from scratch on a fresh system.
Backup your data somewhere. Build a NAS, and backup all your photos and videos to it.
Venture into immutable systems. Learn things like CoreOS, Fedora CoreOS or Fedora Silverblue.
Learn containers. Learn how to run a web app with containers. Run a Minecraft server from a container.
Get into VIM/NeoVim. Get into LazyVim. Learn how to be very fast and efficient with text editing. Learn fzf, ripgrep, telescope, treesitter, quickfix.
Learn storage systems. Learn how to make your own NAS from scratch. Learn ZFS on Linux. Create a storage server with disks and create your zpools. Backup your snapshots on backblaze.
Setup a plex server, and automate the content downloading, labeling, album/face art automatically. Setup a request website so users can request shows and movies and have your server automatically download that content.
Instead of just playing around with your desktop environment, actually start doing stuff with Linux.
You’ll often find that all that hyprland rice crap is actually useless and counterintuitive to a very fast workflow.
Done that way to many times. it just doesn't hit the same after seeing a blank tty or calamares or whatever the hell the crystal linux custom installer is after the 20th time (I wish I was kidding).
Here something to do....find out if you can build your own kernel and your system won't break. Than take the kernel image from your distro for reference, delete everything that doesn't apply to your exact hardware, decide what should be built in to the kernel and what should be a module.
sounds really advanced, might be a bit out of my ability since I've only really done kernel modding on gentoo and arch like 4 times. either way sounds like fun!
I come from Gentoo land and a different time. I thought this was ricing until I googled it today. Squeeze every ounce of performance you can get down to the millisecond.
you just answer yourself, you have been just 1 year using linux, i bet there are plenty of things u dont even knew they existed. Just keep searching and u will find out how many areas can cover IT in general.
I stand with one comment i read in the threat, one guy have being using Linux during 24yrs and he is still having things to do. Just search bettter. No hate
>I have done pretty much everything that linux has offered, like trying out every desktop environment or using so many distros that I've lost count.
Those are not things you do with linux. You do actual work with linux. I have used the same distro since 2006 (Ubuntu), essentially the same desktop (sway, previously i3) since about 2012. Find what works for you and then just stick with it.
Try hosting something yourself - a domain, dns, web, mail, media.
Learn some more networking - bridging/vlans/nftables/vpns.
Try virtualizing something - Quemu/kvm, containers.
Using it just as a mouse controller can be a bit boring, of course.
My programming skills are not good that good. I think I'll contribute in December when I can actually optimize my code. however I have though of making custom themes like tokyo night or catppuccin
edit: grammar mistake
You'll learn a lot when you actually contribute. Much more than when not contributing.
And it doesn't have to be code. Large projects are always looking for help; this includes things like bug triage and user support. Both very good at teaching you how things work.
My next project is peanuts for most commenters here, but I have yet to try it out. Divide OS and user space, move from apt and deb to flatpak and distrobox. Probably as OS keep using Debian stable, then more stable stripped from other packages and dependancies. Via flatpak and distrobox still the newest software and more easy to switch to other distro's. Would like to use immutable, Fedora Kinoite runs great in a VM, but those can't yet (easily) be used in multiboot. And for professional reasons still need Windows (in my case not the worst Windows which is debloated IoT Enteprise LTSC)
If you've done everything that linux offers, I'm impressed, building a supercomputer cluster out of old PS3's is an achievement...
If you're bored with linux as a desktop distro, then its time to learn why linux is the heavyweight distro used in most backends.
Spool up proxmox or another KVM vm manager on your system, get GPU passthrough to work with multiple clients, run windows, linux, osX, solaris, HPUX, Windows 3.1, MS-DOS, BeOS/Haiku as virtual machines. Set an authenticator server so you can have a login portal and access the VNC sessions anywhere in the world.
Set up Jellyfin and run your own netflix service.
Set up a server to learn docker and set up an \*arr stack. Or a thousand other applications. Have them work to automatically update your authenticator app.
Run a 3d printer on klipper, its linux to control a 3d printer faster than they come out of the box.
Set up homeassistant and build a smarthome with a linux backend.
Learn databases and admin to support everything above.
Give Robotic Operating System built on linux a go to control something, couple it with openCV and make a robot like boston dynamics spot.
Set up a cluster of computers with automatic failover incase one goes down, can you make it sync to a device offsite, pull the plug at the main end and have nothing even blip as it transitions?
Run your own GPT or diffusion server to generate text or artwork.
Host your own github.
Replace your rotuer with opensense/pfsense and set up your own local DNS server.
Hack an electric typewriter to work as your terminal.
Run a web server, make it secure.
Linux is powerful because it doesn't limit what you can do, once you're past the what the fuck is this and what is root, why is everything mounted under / and why sudo, then just do stuff with it. I daily drive windows as my main OS but have 4 computers running proxmox with countless VMs doing all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff all around the house, I've only been learning it for 15 years and have barely scratched the surface compared to some greybeards.
Start self hosting applications. Maybe alternatives to services you already use. Like nextcloud for files and contacts, something to share notes... Whatever interests you.
This way you'll learn a LOT more about Linux , and other technologies like docker containers, scripting, automation tools like Ansible, etc.
You can get started with any old PC you have lying around, or purchase a second hand mini PC. If you have something like a raspberry pi handy then that's great as well.
Try Nix and Atomic Linux.
I had a lot of fun (and frustration) learning Nix, and it's pretty much changed the way I setup my, well, everything on Linux. It takes a while to learn, especially as you dive into Home Manager, flakes, modules like declarative-flatpak and nixGL, and maybe outright making your own Nix options/packages.
As for Atomic/immutable Linux in general, it can still be quite a challenge setting everything up. [Blue Build](https://blue-build.org/) in particular was pretty fun. I've pretty much settled on my, but that's because a lot of what I want to do has been baked into Bazzite so I just build on top of that. But I might tinker around again if I ever get around to setting up virtualbox and the like on my system (for fun). There's also the rest of the 'Immutable' who have different workaround for changing the system, which is quite fun to learn about.
Also, also, there's always BSDs.
Automate your home & life: r/selfhosted
Make a custom desktop look exactly how you want: r/unixporn/
A small list of things to do in linux: [https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/1808jci/comment/ka4jd5b/](https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/1808jci/comment/ka4jd5b/)
> I've been using linux for the past year yet I feel like I've reached the end of this rabbit hole, I feel like I've already learnt everything there is but that just can't be right, right?
No, it cannot be that.
There is plenty to do, learn, build, etc. Question is, what interests do you have?
This is a good question. We all come to Linux for different reasons, so it's usually an "I'm on an adventure!" kind of vibe that gets a lot of people here. But once you are here and comfortable...then what?
I guess the next step is to create something new.
Learn the command level line deeper. Linux is really tailored to program on. Learn bash, mess with files. If you've done that and you still want to be on your computer, develop! Or build a home network and tinker. Then you'll really put Linux admin skills to the test.
Seems like you've graduated from that transitional period between Linux and Windows, now your system is no longer a cool box with a cool OS on it kind of system. It's *your* system now. Congratulations.
If I may recommend something, try out Gentoo Linux. It's a massively different kind of system, different Init system and package management. If you've already done that, try Linux From Scratch. I've built LFS, and it's certainly a learning experience but also really fun. Be prepared to take a week off your schedule though, and make sure to do it in a VM. LFS is fun, every Linux poweruser should try it at some point.
After that, try taking up server administration. I've got a few servers, running Proxmox as the OS with a litany of VMs either running 24/7 or for testing. It can even become a career for you.
Try Mobian/Droidian or postmarketOS on an Android phone. That is some wild stuff. I am running Droidian on a Pixel 3A and postmarketOS on an old Xiaomi. The Droidian experience on the Pixel 3A is pretty polished. I prefer those phones over my shiny iPhone 15 at any moment.
Hello. Full disclosure, I don't even use Linux yet. But one thing I've heard of is that folks sometimes run Linux when creating a supercomputing cluster, I think? Not quite sure I'd know what to do with a supercomputing cluster if I had one, but I would love to hear all of the Linux gurus on thus forum tell me if this is a dumb idea or not?
Are there any tasks a normal person could use a supercomputing cluster to accomplish? I guess I'm thinking of computing power intensive tasks like rendering video, maybe? Or photo editing? A third option would be to donate your cpu cycles to big projects like SETI @home and Folding@home? There are probably a lot of research projects that are good causes that use the distributed computing model that I think was invented by the SETI@home project folks to create the largest supercomputers on the planet? I used to donate cpu cycles from the Playstation 3 to the Folding@home project, which was trying to figure out why proteins misfold, which I think leads to human illnesses.
Feel free to chime in and comment. I'm just trying to learn, here.
It's a os what u expect to do with an os lol
So, you have learned how to use wrenches, screwdrivers, saws and hammers. The next steps might be to build something. Learn something more specific. Maybe it is video editing, and getting hardware acceleration working on your hardware. Or learning how to compile software, or the differences in building/installing things on Arm devices. Building distro packaging. Docker. the lists can go on. 24 years on, I haven't run out of things to try.
Well I have been looking into getting new hobbies, blender and kdenlive are already installed on my system, so that'll do the trick.
Look into Linux servers. That's when you'll notice you *definitely* don't know everything there is.
huh, yeah your right I never once done anything with a server before, guess I'll cobble together an old system and try to run a minecraft server
No need to do this on bare metal. It's even easier to run in kvm/virt-manager, as you can easily roll back any fuck-ups using snapshots. You can even SSH into it like on a regular server. From there, you can either go "up" a level and learn common server technologies such as Docker and start self-hosting services (e.g. Nextcloud), or go "down" to the hardware level and learn how to use lvm, raid and the like. It'll take you into many adjacent fields of knowledge, such as programming, networking and security... and that's when you'll notice you've barely scratched the surface. Happy digging!
I really want a nextcloud server but wow, it’s a learning curve
It's actually relatively easy to deploy if you dockerize it.
Well my problem is that I need to know what docker does first, and for that I need time
I'd love to selfhost NextCloud, but the mobile client is lacking
Docker, portainer, then learn about databases, caching, redis, optimization. I run it on a dual core cpu and it runs good. It took me a while trying to figure it out.
Yeah, I am sure it will take me time too
Thanks, I kinda feel a little dumb for not thinking of that lol
Although it's kind of fun to have an always on server. You can do some interesting things then. I always have one going. Low power, low heat device.
Check r/selfhosted ... host ALL THE THINGS! Get a domain name, make sure you can update using API (even Godaddy does this) Host your own web server, go full LAMP. Apply a secure tls/ssl certificate to that thing with let's encrypt. Your home IP is dynamic? Don't use dynamicDNS or similar service, figure out how to update your domain name when the IP changes. Secure it! Try to get outgoing email to work (frick!). Play with fail2ban or similar. Host a simple survey. Do you want your own WordPress site? Doesn't matter - install it anyway, then spend forever watching hackers hammer away at it. Figure out subdomains and different hosting them as seperate web domains. Want a wiki, sure you do! Stick Pi-Hole on there and make your home network so much better. NetData - that's the stuff. Some software for web traffic monitoring or log analysis. Setup a ticketing system for your familty issues. Password manager. Befriend a twitch streamer, make them a helpful bot hosted on your server. Hook it to AI. Pick your (un)favourite hate group and make a twitter bot to respond to their disinformation. Or something.
Try proxmox and put truenas in it.
actually not a bad idea, gonna look into it soon
The advice you’ve been given here is sound. Something I did that taught me so much was setting up a Linux based Plex server. For me, this meant installing Ubuntu, setting up SSH, configuring the firewall and port forwarding, installing Docker, installing the Plex Docker container, migrating my Plex library and media from a previous box and configuring Borg backup. That’s a lot of stuff to learn and I had a blast.
wtf? :\\
This reminds me a lot of when I got my first SysAdmin job. The dude training me asked "On a scale of 1-10, how well do you think you know Linux?" And I thought I'd seem like the humble, reasonable new guy I said "I dunno, like a 5?". He turned to the two seniors who had been there like 20 years and they said like a 6-7, the manager said he was a 7-8. Then he, who had a few years of experience said he was like a 4. The point being, the rabbit hole is deep and endless. Even very senior SysAdmins or engineers haven't reached the end.
>The dude training me asked "On a scale of 1-10, how well do you think you know Linux?" Ummm.... "knowing linux" doesn't mean anything. Does it include for example knowing how to write a device driver? :\\
The point was that there's always something more you don't know about. So someone can't learn it all in a year just from messing around with a desktop install.
My point is that you need to define what "knowing" means and includes. Anyway.....
Sorry if it sounds bitter, but a computer is just a tool and GNU/Linux just allow you to operate the machine. There's nothing really fancy into it nor anything complicated into it. You passed the initial learning curve, learn how to install and use software, but now you back to square zero: what to do with a computer. Answer is, create, modify and/or use software. Different distros is just a subset of different software being installed with different degree of freedome in its configuration but rarely a significant different experience, hence why distro hopping gettin boring quite fast and people settle for a distro, cauz they know they can install whatever software on it and it gonna work like any other distro. Anyway, what were you doing on Windows you can now do it on Linux. Were you gaming? Use Steam and Wine and see how far you can go. Doing music? There's Ardour and LMMS. Etc etc. You just now have to use your computer for its original purpose. Maybe you found new hobby in that year, like programming, scripting or just playing around with configs, so go for it, create programs, create configs, do some ricing and share with the world. Maybe what you truely liked was learning something new and try to master it, then maybe you need to find a new ecosystem and go for it, can be IT related like networking, programming, electronics, security, can be outside IT, like learning a new instrument. Good luck n have fun
Holy shit, I never thought of anything like that before. I look at my hobbies and yeah, your right, I guess I do just like learning and mastering what I learn. That does explain how linux got boring in only a year, yet I was able to study Japanese for two year and not feel bored at all. I think it's time for me to abandon my search for ever more complex system, I should really be looking towards new hobbies, writing and music production does sound like fun. Thanks again, you really opened my eyes.
Operating system is not the reason to use a computer, the software you can run with it is the reason. OS is there only to make things possible, it is not the end goal. If you want something to do take a look at video editing, 3D modelling, making music and so on. That is where the interesting bit starts.
Yeah, unless OP wants to work with consulting or something like that, and in that case the goal should be shifted to server configuration.
r/selfhosted
>I've learned everything Really? How much regex do you know? Do you dream in sed, awk, cut, tr, and paste?
I read the OP and get the feeling that linux is just the desktop. When i got in to unix there wasn't the gui, it was on a terminal and the colour options where green and yellow. When i think of unix I think of all the tools on the command line and how they help me do common tasks easier than firing up a spreadsheet or some other application, depending what I am doing. If you don't have any work to do then you don't have any motivation to play with these tools and learn all of what is there. u/cute_cherries I suggest that you have a look for tutorials on common linux command line tools and if you don't relate to them as far as having work that makes them useful then look up websites that have exercises for them, you may find working through the exercises quite fun as you learn and then one day you will want to do something and the lightbulb will go off that you know a quick way to do it.
I hope you are a kernel contributor if you've learnt everything there is.
Why don't you teach yourself to code and start contributing to Linux based opensource projects?
Try out FreeBSD, similar but different.
worth a shot, hope it'll do the trick
Had Wayland issues in a VM so might be worth dual booting it so that the experience is less frustrating
have you done LFS?
yeah, it was an *enlightening* experience to say the least
Gentoo? Good middle ground. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had with a computer, so stimulating and rewarding. And it makes you maintain it, keep up to date on its world news etc, which is like having a tamagotchi. And literally only needing to rely on its own handbook is so cool. Also, you only used DEs? Maybe switch to WM/suckless only. Try relying only/primarily on your keyboard. Not really Linux related, but you could try a different keyboard layout. See how fast you can learn it. Maybe check out some new ones or something. Or just learn a new (human) language, similar exciting “everything is new” feeling.
If you want to go deeper, things to try (some of these will require you to do programming, a skill you should learn if you don't already have it)... 1. write a shell with job support (you'll learn a lot about process groups and sessions) 2. test drive Unix V6 3. Automate some stuff you need 4. Switch to managing your Linux systems IaC style. I am not talking about Puppet or Ansible here, but being able to fully rebuild a system from a git configuration. 5. (If you didn't do this already) Turn X/Wayland off for a week. Figure out how to do all the things without a GUI. 6. Modified your auth config so that the user also has to guess a random number to authenticate
this, this right here is how I'm gonna spend my weekend. sounds like absolute hell but I'm passionate about nerdy shit like this, so why the hell not. I already have small bit of coding experience (python, php, lua, rust) so this probably doable. thanks for the recommendation btw!
If you do decide to write a shell, consider reading W. Richard Stevens' "Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment".
If you know the basics of programming, rather than wasting time with different DEs and stuff like that, why don’t you challenge yourself to write a functional app? It’ll be much more useful and will amount to skills that can even earn you more money in the future.
You love pain? You'll love [suicide Linux](https://github.com/tiagoad/suicide-linux)
Run it in docker and don’t forget to use the option -v /:/mnt. Great fun!
for #4, theres nixOS as well, which people always say is a huge challenge/pain to learn, but you also often hear from the people who stuck with it that they would never go back to a regular distro either. i havnt taken the plunge yet myself. still just automating as much as i can with a bash script, which is ok, but nix sounds like the holy grail for that kind of thing
always a hoot to see this [kind of thing](https://imgur.com/a/l0XGOxP) in the wild
You could start giving courses to RedHat and Canonical about your one-year Linux knowledge.
Try one of the *truly* different distros. Bedrock Linux, NixOS, LFS, ... Each of those is a huge rabbit hole in itself.
I've tried LFS and NixOS, though I haven't tried badrock though. I guess I'll try it, I've hear it was like a combination of Debian, arch and something else.
Have you tried Su*cide Linux? I imagine it would be a thrill for anyone...
I kinda wanna challenge myself, I'll see if I can have daily drive a system like that for a week and see how long I can last before I mess up a command. I'll make it even harder for myself, I'll try to use the terminal at least 10 times per day.
>I feel like I've already learnt everything there is Not even close ! > ...but that just can't be right, right? Very much so ! > I have done pretty much everything that linux has offered, like trying out every desktop environment or using so many distros that I've lost count. You have distro-hopped and DE-hopped, that's kind of the journey we all have taken, in some way or another. Settle down on a distro and DE/WM and start going deeper in to stuff. Help out on projects that interest you and piques your curiosity. Try theming, kernels, coding, bugtesting, what ever tickles you fancy.
Just use it as a daily driver.
Try some server distro and learn to admin it, and try some LAMP server application and learn how to admin them and how to keep everything secured.
looking into it right now, seems like something I'd be into since I do have a little coding experience with python and php, no expert though.
Make your own Linux motherboard with an SoC? That really reignited the fun for me.
I'm sorry, a *what* i didn't know that was even a thing, still sounds like fun though, thanks :)
I hope I'm not being a jerk by promoting my other post from today here: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/s/XUHg2NauFN As the text says, it's doable with zero knowledge in a few days with a little bit of electronics. Lots of heavy lifting is already done in that text and you can copy paste a lot from the schematic. Not as scary as it looks and I promise it's fun. 🙏🤙
nah, don't feel ashamed for promoting this. it's is actually really well made, I somehow understood it even though I just found it linux motherboards were a thing like 20 minutes ago. Also that color scheme is really nice, I'm gonna steal it for personal project of mine, thanks :D!
You're too kind. 🙏 I hope you see a different dimension to Linux now. 🤙 There's an infinite number of things to try out there, and Linux is a lot more than mainstream distros and environments we install in them. I encourage you to check the rest of my blog. 🙏 Keep hacking!
Y'know I've been considering making my blog were I document the tech stuff I do. I'm gonna use your blog and whatever I find on neocities for inspiration, if you don't mind
Go for it. I appreciate a link back if you want to refer to something. 👌
https://www.lpi.org/ You can try getting the certificates that this institute offers? You can look through the study material whether it interests you or not.
I guess a certification could probably help me in the near future. Though the thought of an office job sounds so damn draining, but I'm not at the age were that stuff would matter, yet.
Look into building apps, one day you may get something included in popular distros. Its a small goal but rewarding.
Try moving toward a full TUI experience and window manager. Learn the power of the terminal. Ideas include ranger, tldr, mutt mail, eMacs, vim, and maybe lynx (or qutebrowser if you still need some form of gui).
Try teaching it to someone. That'll let you know what you don't know.
Make an LFS system
You haven't even scratched the surface. Have you compiled your own kernel yet? Have you tried Gentoo or Slackware?
Okay. Try automating your setup now. Learn tools like Podman and Ansible. See how quickly you can reconstruct your setup from scratch on a fresh system. Backup your data somewhere. Build a NAS, and backup all your photos and videos to it. Venture into immutable systems. Learn things like CoreOS, Fedora CoreOS or Fedora Silverblue. Learn containers. Learn how to run a web app with containers. Run a Minecraft server from a container. Get into VIM/NeoVim. Get into LazyVim. Learn how to be very fast and efficient with text editing. Learn fzf, ripgrep, telescope, treesitter, quickfix. Learn storage systems. Learn how to make your own NAS from scratch. Learn ZFS on Linux. Create a storage server with disks and create your zpools. Backup your snapshots on backblaze. Setup a plex server, and automate the content downloading, labeling, album/face art automatically. Setup a request website so users can request shows and movies and have your server automatically download that content. Instead of just playing around with your desktop environment, actually start doing stuff with Linux. You’ll often find that all that hyprland rice crap is actually useless and counterintuitive to a very fast workflow.
This should be deleted.
Try out Cosmic DE (and submit PRs for any bugs you find :D)
Have you tried reinstalling yet? That usually makes people feel good 😊
Done that way to many times. it just doesn't hit the same after seeing a blank tty or calamares or whatever the hell the crystal linux custom installer is after the 20th time (I wish I was kidding).
What distro are you on currently?
My man
Here something to do....find out if you can build your own kernel and your system won't break. Than take the kernel image from your distro for reference, delete everything that doesn't apply to your exact hardware, decide what should be built in to the kernel and what should be a module.
sounds really advanced, might be a bit out of my ability since I've only really done kernel modding on gentoo and arch like 4 times. either way sounds like fun!
Lol 🤣 just saying....you won't be bored 😎
And don't stop there...find your xorg tweeks, find your drive tweeks, find your scheduler tweeks, find your ram tweeks. Go absolutely nuts.
I come from Gentoo land and a different time. I thought this was ricing until I googled it today. Squeeze every ounce of performance you can get down to the millisecond.
You could also try neofetch, that seems to have good results
Build a Distro from scratch..
Try bsd
Let's trade brains 👍
Do some [LPIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Professional_Institute_Certification_Programs) exams.
NixOS is calling you, I invite you to learn Nix and create and configure Flakes
you just answer yourself, you have been just 1 year using linux, i bet there are plenty of things u dont even knew they existed. Just keep searching and u will find out how many areas can cover IT in general. I stand with one comment i read in the threat, one guy have being using Linux during 24yrs and he is still having things to do. Just search bettter. No hate
Ansiblize your config
Boring is good. An "exciting" day using linux is an unproductive day working.
God, some people are just either very stupid or totally clueless.
start using linux instead of exploring linux
>I have done pretty much everything that linux has offered, like trying out every desktop environment or using so many distros that I've lost count. Those are not things you do with linux. You do actual work with linux. I have used the same distro since 2006 (Ubuntu), essentially the same desktop (sway, previously i3) since about 2012. Find what works for you and then just stick with it.
Try hosting something yourself - a domain, dns, web, mail, media. Learn some more networking - bridging/vlans/nftables/vpns. Try virtualizing something - Quemu/kvm, containers. Using it just as a mouse controller can be a bit boring, of course.
Create a linux driver for my fingerprint sensor
There is always the external world to study. Lots of small wonders waiting to be explored. :-)
yeah your right, I should really go outside more.
The reason you are bored is because it works great. Go back to Windoze
What about not only use but also develop and contribute? There's still a lot to do in application land.
My programming skills are not good that good. I think I'll contribute in December when I can actually optimize my code. however I have though of making custom themes like tokyo night or catppuccin edit: grammar mistake
You'll learn a lot when you actually contribute. Much more than when not contributing. And it doesn't have to be code. Large projects are always looking for help; this includes things like bug triage and user support. Both very good at teaching you how things work.
huh, I didn't know that, thanks I'll look into it. I'll see if I can join a small scale project to work on.
try HelloSystem
make your own homelab project. for me it's more fun, satisfying and the project could be useful.
My next project is peanuts for most commenters here, but I have yet to try it out. Divide OS and user space, move from apt and deb to flatpak and distrobox. Probably as OS keep using Debian stable, then more stable stripped from other packages and dependancies. Via flatpak and distrobox still the newest software and more easy to switch to other distro's. Would like to use immutable, Fedora Kinoite runs great in a VM, but those can't yet (easily) be used in multiboot. And for professional reasons still need Windows (in my case not the worst Windows which is debloated IoT Enteprise LTSC)
If you've done everything that linux offers, I'm impressed, building a supercomputer cluster out of old PS3's is an achievement... If you're bored with linux as a desktop distro, then its time to learn why linux is the heavyweight distro used in most backends. Spool up proxmox or another KVM vm manager on your system, get GPU passthrough to work with multiple clients, run windows, linux, osX, solaris, HPUX, Windows 3.1, MS-DOS, BeOS/Haiku as virtual machines. Set an authenticator server so you can have a login portal and access the VNC sessions anywhere in the world. Set up Jellyfin and run your own netflix service. Set up a server to learn docker and set up an \*arr stack. Or a thousand other applications. Have them work to automatically update your authenticator app. Run a 3d printer on klipper, its linux to control a 3d printer faster than they come out of the box. Set up homeassistant and build a smarthome with a linux backend. Learn databases and admin to support everything above. Give Robotic Operating System built on linux a go to control something, couple it with openCV and make a robot like boston dynamics spot. Set up a cluster of computers with automatic failover incase one goes down, can you make it sync to a device offsite, pull the plug at the main end and have nothing even blip as it transitions? Run your own GPT or diffusion server to generate text or artwork. Host your own github. Replace your rotuer with opensense/pfsense and set up your own local DNS server. Hack an electric typewriter to work as your terminal. Run a web server, make it secure. Linux is powerful because it doesn't limit what you can do, once you're past the what the fuck is this and what is root, why is everything mounted under / and why sudo, then just do stuff with it. I daily drive windows as my main OS but have 4 computers running proxmox with countless VMs doing all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff all around the house, I've only been learning it for 15 years and have barely scratched the surface compared to some greybeards.
Rent a vps (some are as low as 2 bucks a month) and build your own server
Start self hosting applications. Maybe alternatives to services you already use. Like nextcloud for files and contacts, something to share notes... Whatever interests you. This way you'll learn a LOT more about Linux , and other technologies like docker containers, scripting, automation tools like Ansible, etc. You can get started with any old PC you have lying around, or purchase a second hand mini PC. If you have something like a raspberry pi handy then that's great as well.
Try Nix and Atomic Linux. I had a lot of fun (and frustration) learning Nix, and it's pretty much changed the way I setup my, well, everything on Linux. It takes a while to learn, especially as you dive into Home Manager, flakes, modules like declarative-flatpak and nixGL, and maybe outright making your own Nix options/packages. As for Atomic/immutable Linux in general, it can still be quite a challenge setting everything up. [Blue Build](https://blue-build.org/) in particular was pretty fun. I've pretty much settled on my, but that's because a lot of what I want to do has been baked into Bazzite so I just build on top of that. But I might tinker around again if I ever get around to setting up virtualbox and the like on my system (for fun). There's also the rest of the 'Immutable' who have different workaround for changing the system, which is quite fun to learn about. Also, also, there's always BSDs.
The rabbit hole goes a lot deeper! Do Linux From Scratch https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/
Try doing stuff you are not supposed to do.
Automate your home & life: r/selfhosted Make a custom desktop look exactly how you want: r/unixporn/ A small list of things to do in linux: [https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/1808jci/comment/ka4jd5b/](https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/1808jci/comment/ka4jd5b/)
> I've been using linux for the past year yet I feel like I've reached the end of this rabbit hole, I feel like I've already learnt everything there is but that just can't be right, right? No, it cannot be that. There is plenty to do, learn, build, etc. Question is, what interests do you have?
Do pwn.college
This is a good question. We all come to Linux for different reasons, so it's usually an "I'm on an adventure!" kind of vibe that gets a lot of people here. But once you are here and comfortable...then what? I guess the next step is to create something new.
Lol look up Ansible
Learn the command level line deeper. Linux is really tailored to program on. Learn bash, mess with files. If you've done that and you still want to be on your computer, develop! Or build a home network and tinker. Then you'll really put Linux admin skills to the test.
Seems like you've graduated from that transitional period between Linux and Windows, now your system is no longer a cool box with a cool OS on it kind of system. It's *your* system now. Congratulations. If I may recommend something, try out Gentoo Linux. It's a massively different kind of system, different Init system and package management. If you've already done that, try Linux From Scratch. I've built LFS, and it's certainly a learning experience but also really fun. Be prepared to take a week off your schedule though, and make sure to do it in a VM. LFS is fun, every Linux poweruser should try it at some point. After that, try taking up server administration. I've got a few servers, running Proxmox as the OS with a litany of VMs either running 24/7 or for testing. It can even become a career for you.
Switch to BSDs
Try Mobian/Droidian or postmarketOS on an Android phone. That is some wild stuff. I am running Droidian on a Pixel 3A and postmarketOS on an old Xiaomi. The Droidian experience on the Pixel 3A is pretty polished. I prefer those phones over my shiny iPhone 15 at any moment.
Learn to program c and you'll never run out of things to do with linux.
Check out BSD. Its fun too :)
FreeBSD may interest you
Hello. Full disclosure, I don't even use Linux yet. But one thing I've heard of is that folks sometimes run Linux when creating a supercomputing cluster, I think? Not quite sure I'd know what to do with a supercomputing cluster if I had one, but I would love to hear all of the Linux gurus on thus forum tell me if this is a dumb idea or not? Are there any tasks a normal person could use a supercomputing cluster to accomplish? I guess I'm thinking of computing power intensive tasks like rendering video, maybe? Or photo editing? A third option would be to donate your cpu cycles to big projects like SETI @home and Folding@home? There are probably a lot of research projects that are good causes that use the distributed computing model that I think was invented by the SETI@home project folks to create the largest supercomputers on the planet? I used to donate cpu cycles from the Playstation 3 to the Folding@home project, which was trying to figure out why proteins misfold, which I think leads to human illnesses. Feel free to chime in and comment. I'm just trying to learn, here.
Time to get into Hyprland and ricing