5mo ago

Can anyone recommend a resource for better understanding Arch terminal commands, and the "why" behind them

I’ve recently installed EndeavourOS, and so far, so good. Got an OK setup and managing the basics.

Previously everything I’ve tried has been Debian based.

I know about the Arch Wiki… but was wondering if anyone recommended a relatively concise and easy-to-navigate resource to get a more rounded and complete understanding of Arch terminal commands?

I find it far more easy to learn when I understand where the terms come from - knowing that sudo means “superuser do”, pacman comes from package manager. But the moment I don’t know what yay, -s etc actually mean haha…

Thanks!

21 comments

man is your friend. It shows you the manual for a command. Like man pacman will show you the manual for pacman. You can exit it with q.
- I think this simple tip is exactly what I wanted - straight in there! Thanks pal!
  
  As a general refrence, there's also the tldr command line program/command which gives a simplified version of the man page entry for all sorts of common commands :)
  Good luck in your Linux ventures! ❤️
  
  You can also use tldr for quick guide
  
  There is a linked command apropos that searches the man page database for keywords. It can be very helpful if you forget the exact command you're looking for.
  
  You can also use tldr for quick guide
pacman and yay are basically the only "Arch terminal commands".
Everything else is just bash/Linux.
yay options are identical to pacman options, plus some extra.
If something you're used to from Debian doesn't work on Arch (like update-grub), just google the command plus Arch to find the non-specific Linux equivalent.
- This is good to know, thanks.
  So much of what you do early on is installing packages and updating. I guess it felt more different than it really is!
Install the tldr package. It's a help utility that briefly describes a command and lists several examples of common operations.
- Interesting. I’ll check this out!
But the moment I don’t know what yay, -s etc actually mean haha…

$ man yay
No your distro, but close for many uses.
https://www.debian.org/doc/user-manuals#debian-handbook
I like to read info files when there is one (there are only hundreds of info files vs. thousands of man pages). Many are on your computer already in /usr/share/info folder. To read them, either use M-x info inside emacs, or console app info which is part of the texinfo package, or tkinfo from the AUR. The console app will show you the man page if there is no info file.
Info files tend to be organized hierarchically and be more extensive and tutorial in nature than man pages.
They are just program names. Some of them make clear sense, some less so.
yay is Yet Another Yogurt. Which is a pun on yaourt, the program it was based on.
- I should have guessed!
  As obscure as stuff like that is, I do appreciate the quirky humour at the same time… once you know.
Why did you switch from using Debian? You've gone from having a system you to know to griding to a halt. An obviously worse-off situation.
- Because it’s purely for learning / messing about, so nothing is of any real consequence.
  This is all on my old, now spare and otherwise redundant 2012 MacBook Pro. My everyday computer is an M1 Pro 14”.
  I had Mint running happily for ages, and basically knew everything I would need to know to rely on Mint if I ever needed to.
  But with its HiDPI retina display I wanted to be 100% wayland, and I also wanted to use KDE Plasma… And also I own a Steam Deck, and wanted to be more familiar with Arch based distros because of that.
  So to tick those boxes and learn something new I switched. There’s no photos, documents, music or anything on it so if it suddenly won’t boot one day it wouldn’t really matter.
  The Ivy Bridge intel/Nvidia graphics on that Mac are an absolute nightmare for Linux though haha. On every distro I’ve ever tried up to and including this one…
TLDP bash guide, or something like that.

21 comments