I was in the same boat about 12 years ago. Linux was much more difficult to get working well back then, but now, it’s just slightly more work than windows.

I learned by trial and error and I don’t keep any sensitive files on my OS hard drive, so if I screw up, I don’t lose anything.

For instance, someone recommended Endeavor OS a few weeks back and I had never heard of it. After using it for a week, I realized the arch community and OS isn’t for me and I’m more of a beginner. So I switched over to mint Cinnamon which I use on my Plex server. Got everything setup and working within and hour and I don’t have any issues like I did on my past Linux distros.

It’s super easy to use these days and I love it!

You can instead try a distro that just works on most hardware, like Linux Mint or other easy-to-use distros suggested in this thread. That way you can slowly learn how to use Linux if you want, while using Linux, so you can later use a more finicky distro more suited to what you want.

For years I used Ubuntu, but when GNOME 3 came out I changed to Xubuntu, and then when Snap came out I changed to Mint Xfce. I’ve used several 2nd-hand desktops and laptops over the decades, so brand-new hardware might be more problem-prone.

I started off trying Slackware, SUSE, and Mandrake; but struggled too much with them so I stayed with Windows. Ubuntu just worked for me, so it allowed me to easily ditch Windows. Years later, I had update problems when I tested MX Linux and Debian, but instead of trying to fix it, I personally found it easier to just look for a distro better suited to the way I want to use my computer.

It sounds like you are already doing it! Fixing annoying stuff as it comes up feels painful and tedious, but that’s the good instruction you’ll remember. Hopefully you aren’t hitting too many work stoppage type issues. Definitely reach out for help for those, but be prepared for uptight people to tell you “RtFm noOB”. You’ll get it done.

My only advice is to give a little bit of time to learning at least basic bash commands (search and print a cheat sheet) and basic Vi / Vim. Vim is what got me to Linux in the first place to be honest. Those 2 things will give you the latitude to move around and work on any issue you might come across as any user even if you “break” something.

Good luck! You’re already doing the hard stuff.

Did you read tutorials or videos when you started using Windows? Probably not, you wanted to game or write or be social on the internet and you learned “on the job”.

It’s the same thing with Linux. Don’t take it too serious. Some nerds started that rumour that Linux is “hard” and only for the techi folks. That’s not true at all, it never was.

Yes, there are things that just work different and you have to find a new way to fix them. But it will come when you encounter them and we will be here to help.

Just start with Mint or Bazzite and you will be fine.

what distro are you using. I have not really had to do anything with my laptops except install.

Honestly? Do you want the “real experience”?

Set up a VM (or a spare computer) and start an Arch install following the various tutorials.

Why?

Well, Arch may not be the best daily driveable distribution if you want just an uncomplicated experience, but setting it up from the bare bones boot medium and slowly following the (very well written) instructions in the wiki it will give you a solid foundaition going forward and UNDERSTANDING what you are doing.

Also - while not explicitly Linux and quiet a bit dated - i HIGHLY recommend to read The UNIX Programming Environment, written by the guys who are responsible for this branch of the OS evolution in the first place. It is a nice read to understand why - to this day - some things are the way they are.

Edit: Typo

Linux is broad and deep so it would help if you gave some examples of tasks you are failing to do.

Edit: I guess I can give some fundamental topics for your search, but I don’t have many resources at the ready.

For starters, many topics will apply to all of Unix, not just Linux. So make sure you understand the difference, and learn about the Unix philosophy.

Also, I think the most useful piece of documentation is the Arch Wiki. I’d always check here first. The table of contents should give you a good idea of the scope of information.

1. Filesystems. In Unix, everything is a “file”. Explore the directory layout. Maybe learn about the FHS (filesystem hierarchy standard) and XDG. Learn how file permissions and ownership work. Learn about disk encryption with LUKS. Learn about GPT partitioning and EFI boot partitions. If you want to manage a filesystem spanning many storage devices, I highly recommend looking into ZFS. You might also want to set up some kind of file service like NFS or something with a web client like copyparty or dufs. Try out the dust and duf tools for checking space usage.
2. Networking. I don’t know how deep you need to go here, but Linux networking is highly customizable. I think most distros use systemd’s built-in DHCP client in systemd-networkd. Have a look at nftables if you want to mess with firewalls. Wireguard for VPN. Learn to use the ip tool.
3. Remote Access. Especially for a desktop, it’s very useful to set up an SSH service on your PC so you can access it remotely from e.g. a laptop. You can even SSH over the public Internet using a VPN.
4. Monitoring. Install BTop to get a quick overview of system activity and resource utilization. I also like the procs tool as an alternative to ps.
5. Shells. As part of your Bash journey, I’d also check out shells like fish, zsh, and nushell.
6. Package Management. I’m not very familiar with Bazzite’s package manager. It’s an immutable distro, so that will make a difference. Read the bazzite docs for this I guess. You’ll probably need to learn about flatpaks. I’d recommend checking out Nix if you want to try something different. I also quite enjoyed Arch’s pacman if you’re willing to try a new distro like CachyOS or EndeavourOS.
7. Dotfile management. I recommend learning some basic Git or Jujutsu (jj) and managing your configuration files in a git repository. You can also do this with Nix via Home Manager.
8. Desktop Environment. I don’t know which variant of Bazzite you chose, but it’s probably a complete DE out of the box. Just know that you can customize your DE quite a bit. I personally enjoy tiling window managers; you might want to check those out.

I learned a lot from Raspberry Pi tutorials; that’s where I got my start.

Bazzite might be a bit of a tough one to get your hands dirty in; it’s an immutable distro, it locks down the guts of the OS kind of like Android does. Useful for gaming appliances, not so much for learning to sysadmin.

Bazzite is going to be a little different from normal distros since it’s immutable but what issues do you have? If you’re truly a beginner it might not be a bad idea to pick up a linux beginners book and just read it.

There’s a free, 30 day program for learning Linux that may help, The Linux Upskill Challenge.

I like that it walks you through doing stuff, step by step, starting with foundations and building on it.

what helped me when I first started using Linux was the Arch Wiki. Even though I wasn’t using Arch the information in that wiki is invaluable. Even now that i’m on NixOS I still use the Arch Wiki as a tool when I need answers. everything is there. even man pages.

Another resource is IRC and Discord. I’m not sure if Bazzite as an IRC channel but the quickest answers to issues I was having has been via whatever distro channel on Libera. Discord also for specific distros. But I’ve found many of the maintainers and devs will hang out in their respective distros IRC channel all day so what better resource for help than directly from the source.

Finally either peertube or youtube channels. There are some fantastic channels that help learning this stuff. Primary of which is Veronica Explains. By far the most easy to understand and follow videos for linux. She reminds me of watching old episodes of The Screen Savers and Call for Help. Another that is great that is more specific to workflows and command line stuff is Bread on Penguins. Very easy to follow, she provides git repos and links to EVERYTHING she talks about and even writes most of it herself. For customizing your build There’s The Black Don. he’s great too. builds out a lot of stuff himself and provides repos for everything he’s working on. He’s built an awesome tool for Arch that allows reproducability similar to NixOS.

Best teacher I had was breaking things by installing everything under the sun then trying to fix it. But its time consuming.

I would say go at it yourself, you’ll learn along the way, same as you did with windows. For tips, its hard to say, see if you can get your hands on Sander van Vugt - linux fundamentals. I watched it a few years into my linux journey and it schooled my ass still.

LearnLinuxTV

This is one of many great playlists from LLTV. I cannot recommend this guy enough.

Honestly, the way I learned Linux best after a numerous failed tries over the years was switching to Arch. It gets a lot of crap from the online community, especially regarding its users, but I think it’s an excellent distro especially for people at a moderate to advanced level.

First off, the archinstall script makes the actual installation process - notoriously one of the hardest parts of using the distro - much easier. It comes with a barebones set of components installed to get you up and running.

From there, you just start to think of the things you want to do with your system and begin building it out piece by piece. Consult the Arch wiki for a number of application options and then pick one. Usually there’s some additional configuration involved, not much, just a config file that needs tweaking or something, but this helps you learn things slowly. It also guarantees that if that particular thing breaks in the future, you have a better idea of what might have gone wrong and where to start looking because you previously set it up (somewhat) manually yourself.

Occasionally you’ll stumble across something on your system that’s not working the way you thought it would and it’s because you needed to manually install some additional component or dependency yourself. So again you consult the wiki and just do that. It’s about slowly building the knowledge.

When you’re finished you have a highly customized system with only the components you wanted and a better knowledge of it all.

IMO I feel like what you’re doing is the best way to learn.