I keep bash scripts on my desktop to do common things
this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2025
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If it's basic commands, there's games like Terminal Quest that can help gamify your learning. Helped me.
There's nothing wrong with notes. I keep a text file open permanently at work and home with all my notes in it. I have a bunch of commands in it to copy-paste. Or Ctrl+r and type to search the history.
But if you want to memorize, I usually use flash cards.
Back in the ancient pre-Internet days I worked for many years with a system called VMS made by Digital Equipment Corp (aka DEC), now long gone. VMS was a dream to use - every command and option was an actual word, and you could abbreviate commands and options any way you wanted, As long as you were unambiguous, it would figure out what you meant. So easy to learn, and felt so natural. Based on that alone I thought VMS would become more popular than Unix, with its cryptic commands, and those single-letter options that are sometimes the first letter of something obvious and other times seem totally random. But internally VMS wasn't structured as well - for example, piping output from one command to another was possible, but it wasn't geared for that like Unix is. There was also no free version of VMS, and it only ran on DEC hardware, so not that many people even knew about it. The dawn of Linux for PCs was essentially the nail in the coffin for VMS. But I do miss that CLI.
Probably not very helpful in this case but a very nice resource for learning cli is:
Man is great to check quickly what something does. I use atuin as my shell history to make it a lot easier to search
You know atuin is legit because the demo gif on their site is using GruvBox, the most bestest color scheme.
Practice.
Practice.
Practice.
That's really the best I can give you. The more you use the commands the easier they come to you.
Even novices can struggle with the command line. Don't be afraid to search online for answers. I still need to look up arguments for things that I don't use daily and I've been using Linux for almost 20 years now. Duck duck go and man are your friends.
One thing that I have found nice is using a shell that remembers what you have typed in the past because sometimes I will remember part of a command but not the whole thing, for example fish shell remembers commands and will start to auto fill commands that are typed as long as I have the beginning of the command correct and as long as I have typed the command in the past, which works wonders when you're doing similar commands but with different file names or you are trying to remember the more advanced portions of git
A side note that I want to add regarding alternative shells be aware that every shell has its own strengths and weaknesses, for example fish shell is amazing for auto completion and plug in support, but it's downside is it's not compatible with standard bash Scripts and scripting as a whole on it is pretty mediocre
Just create aliases with words you'll remember. Fart, Fart2, ect.
Stick to one distribution. Using notes is fine. Make aliases if necessary. You will learn with repetition.
Fish
What does Fish that Bash does not, specifically to help the person remembering the program names and options??
It automatically suggests commands, you've run before, if you start typing the first letters, like so:
You can also press the Up-Arrow at any point to show other commands from your history which contain the text that you just typed.
So, it is similar to Ctrl+R in Bash, but easier to use and you don't have to actively think about it.
And, if you can't remember the options for commands, fish will offer you suggestions. So, if you type ls - and press tab, fish will give you a list of all of the valid switches and a brief description.
Up arrow
or
"history" if you're a psychopath
history | grep whatever is quite useful when you just barely remember a command or the files you used it on.
Also use alias for it like "hist" then do "hist stuff"
Around 2012-2014 it was common to have Conky print things like system information or keyboard shortcuts in the desktop.
I think Conky is still around although less popular now. You could look into that though.
This is just an example from an image search for Conky desktop, but it gives you an idea how information can be displayed https://live.staticflickr.com/4062/4543953032_e6d7473206.jpg
I made a text file using vim that contains all of the commands I use. I open it in a terminal window when I need a reference.
i made this for anyone struggling to remember vim commands and want a basic text-editor like experience
Do you struggle to remember the names of commands or how to use them or how you have used them in the past?
That looks pretty tight, thanks
How often do you need commands you cant remember? The ones i use are typically memorized via regular use, or i just look it up for the one off ones. You can use some distros without ever touching the terminal too if thats what you prefer.
I'm also not a text first person. There are a lot of us about. I have found GUI applications to do most commands I need. Most IT users don't know them, as they've never searched for them. I pin the apps as Favourites in the launcher, to help remember my processes. The apps typically keep the last used values, making them quite productive.
Apart from fzf that helps me find recently used commands and also files and directories easily, I also use tldr that gives you a simple cheat sheet for every command and very often saves you trawling through endless man pages.
Hi,
I’m a Windows user of all life
I was a Mac user for 35+ years (still am, partly). It took me a little while to get used to new names/commands in Linux but that's to be expected. And it is not much an issue anymore ;)
I am those persons that has bad times remembering names, words… imagine commands… Even after using it so much I remember some basics but I’m struggling a lot and I have to go back to notes constantly to do some basic operations. Even worst after trying multiple distro from from different upstreams that commands are … Different
What kind of commands exactly? I mean, I don't know that 'commands' are different from one distro to the other' as they all use the same apps. So, beside the name of a few specific ones (like, maybe the app installer).
What would be your recommendations to help me. Are there tools to help this issue ?
My two sole advice:
- don't try to remember too many commands. Instead, focus on the ones you use daily or very often. After you get those memorized you can always decide to memorize more... or not memorize them at all. I don't bother remembering them, why would I when I can easily use Ctrl+F and instantly find them the moment I need them?
How do I do? I keep a text files in which I store all the stuff I seldom use but still want to be able to find in case I need it someday. To make finding them easier, I put descriptive titles and comments with each command. And that's what I'm searching for, not the command name ;)
- If you're talking about Terminal commands, learn to create your own aliases they will let you remember a short name instead of full commands. I have a few lengthy commands and some scripts (for example, to compress/convert images) that I I regularly use. I don't remember them. I've saved them in a .sh file that I can either call through a Terminal or simply by a right-click in my File Explorer (it's Nemo and they're called 'Actions', on Linux Mint)
tealdeer and writing them down in a document