For anyone just starting I highly recommend: "Linux Pocket Guide" and if moving forward adopting linux as a daily driver "Efficient Linux At The Command Line". Both books by Daniel J. Barnett.
Even if you're a seasoned Linux user you will learn a lot from those books.
QQ: even when I use Linux as a daily driver I don’t use the cli much. I heard that getting a cheap vps, set up some popular services, and then exposing it to the Internet actually teaches a lot about sysadmin. Does this make sense?
One big issue for me is that when I use Linux I only use it for a specific purpose, e.g. hacking kernels, and the cli commands are extremely limited. I have been using a Linux box for a year and haven’t learned much TBH.
Absolutely! In my opinion, the only way to learn anything in any meaningful way is to actually do the thing. In the example you described, you'll quickly start jumping into "Wait, how do I configure a firewall?" and discovering ufw et. al.
"The Linux Command Line" by William Shotts is pretty good book for new and experienced command line users. He has also written the supplemental book "Adventures with the Linux Command Line". The author has also generously provided them for free download at https://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php.
The pocket is perfect for beginners. It has a nice introduction in chapter 1 that explains all essential concepts to understand and operate the console. Then it is basically a sort of reference of a moderate list of most useful commands for performing different tasks.
The "Efficient" book is an in depth walkthrough of the shell and how to reason and combine important commands to perform not trivial tasks. It is certainly a book to be re-read from time to time because it has plenty of good tricks and explanations.
I can think of a better analogy than littering for pirating an item at more than 1 place. When you litter, you add to the trash. If everyone littered, it would be awful. But if everyone pirated the same content on a different site/platform/protocol, it would still be 1 pirated item.
The better, IMO, analogy, is if you have an ad glued somewhere, say at a bus stop. Another person comes with their ad and wants to glue it. They glue it over the previous ad. The amount of ads visible remains the same. There's a negligible disadvantage for the city - they have to haul away twice as many paper. But most importantly, the amount of visual clutter hasn't been increased if the second ad is glued over the first one.
That analogy works if you're against piracy and ads on public places, of course.
People trying to justify piracy was tired in 1997 and it's embarassing now.
It would be better if you just embrace the fact that you're unwilling to pay for creative effort and OK depriving creators of money - that isn't my ethos but it's at least honest and consistent.
Arguing that piracy doesn't hurt someone is trivially wrong, lazy, and self-centered.
This isn't even abandonware. If you don't want to buy the book, go to a library or read a publicly accessible blog, but piracy is bullshit full stop.
Adobe fixes PDF zero-day security bug that hackers have exploited for months
https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/14/adobe-fixes-pdf-zero-day-security-bug-that-hackers-have-exploited-for-months/
Why is this marked (2019)? Besides the book PDF, everything seems to have been created in a commit 3 weeks ago. The way some things are phrased smells of LLM style as well.
Even if you're a seasoned Linux user you will learn a lot from those books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Barrett
One big issue for me is that when I use Linux I only use it for a specific purpose, e.g. hacking kernels, and the cli commands are extremely limited. I have been using a Linux box for a year and haven’t learned much TBH.
"The Linux Command Line" by William Shotts is pretty good book for new and experienced command line users. He has also written the supplemental book "Adventures with the Linux Command Line". The author has also generously provided them for free download at https://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php.
The "Efficient" book is an in depth walkthrough of the shell and how to reason and combine important commands to perform not trivial tasks. It is certainly a book to be re-read from time to time because it has plenty of good tricks and explanations.
If you see litter on the ground already, that doesn't make it OK to litter more.
The better, IMO, analogy, is if you have an ad glued somewhere, say at a bus stop. Another person comes with their ad and wants to glue it. They glue it over the previous ad. The amount of ads visible remains the same. There's a negligible disadvantage for the city - they have to haul away twice as many paper. But most importantly, the amount of visual clutter hasn't been increased if the second ad is glued over the first one.
That analogy works if you're against piracy and ads on public places, of course.
It would be better if you just embrace the fact that you're unwilling to pay for creative effort and OK depriving creators of money - that isn't my ethos but it's at least honest and consistent.
Arguing that piracy doesn't hurt someone is trivially wrong, lazy, and self-centered.
This isn't even abandonware. If you don't want to buy the book, go to a library or read a publicly accessible blog, but piracy is bullshit full stop.
https://nostarch.com/linux-basics-hackers-2nd-edition
That, and the Anarchist Cookbook..