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.

Bazzite is a great distro if you want to jump in and start playing games and getting the software you need to use your computer. The intent behind bazzite seemed to me that it should be accessible enough for non-technical users but provide access to a large library of programs in just a few clicks. It has a few quirks that make it different than other Linux distros if you pick it apart.

Have you ever used command prompt, batch scripts or PowerShell on Windows? That’s what BASH, shell scripting or ‘the terminal’ is equivalent to on Linux (and mac sorta). It’s the virtual scalpel you can use to tinker, fix, control, or totally screw up your system. If you don’t have important data to lose, then feel free to just try whatever and learn from mistakes you make along the way. If not, then backups are your friend, and be EXTRA careful doing anything as the root user (that’s the admin account with total access over the operating system) or any command like sudo (it might even lecture you about it once)

For self-hosting, if you have a spare machine you can just try experimenting on it to your heart’s content. If your search-engine skills are good enough then you should be able to fumble your way through install instructions or tutorials. Another alternative is you could rent a VPS and optional domain for <$90/year, which then you can learn about SSH (secure shell) and fiddle with a computer remotely for fun.

People here can probably give you advice or support, if there’s a specific problem you’re having and you’ve couldn’t figure it out from the documentation and search.

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.

For self hosting I run a separate machine with unraid which basically makes it super simple.

As far as learning Linux its tough because there are so many different ways to do things it mostly depends on what you choose. For desktop I mostly just hit the super key and search for settings or whatever I need, I never really open the terminal except for the one time I needed to disable the thunderbolt reset when connecting my eGPU.

For self hosting its mostly learning about containers whether its podman which I think theres a flatpak in bazaar, or using distroshelf which is preinstalled. Or using a separate machine with something like proxmox, truenas, or unraid.

After that the most you do is go to the application store and tell the container where to save the config files and where to access data, maybe change a port if its already used.

After that you want to setup a VPN to your home with something like wireguard or tailscale

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.

LearnLinuxTV

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

as top comment has already mentioned - try wikis. think arch wiki or gentoo. you dont have to use those distros to know about linux, just read them. and even better, spin up virtual machine, and install arch/gentoo there. since you already use bazzite, you don’t have to redo stuff already done (like playing game or something), so you use the sandbox playground to just learn. if it breaks, redo, or make checkpoints.

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.

I am also self taught. I really started where you are: installing it and trying to troubleshoot. The more I wanted to personalize my system, the more I saw frequent terms and had to learn commands etc. just on the fly. It’s like full immersion learning. Do what the steps say when you look up how to fix something and you’ll get it. Learning a whole language isn’t necessary until you have to apply it.

Linux is a whole OS so there’s a lot you might want to look at. Luckily, if you get an error message in Linux you can search that error and find a solution.

Also helpful is reading documentation. Bazzite is based on fedora atomic so the first 2 doc links will be the most helpful. 3rd one is for general gaming on Linux. And the 4th one is the arch wiki which will give you a lot of information that will probably go over your head at this point but you might want to look at from time to time.

• https://docs.bazzite.gg/
• https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-kinoite/
• https://linuxvox.com/blog/linux-for-game/
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Main_page

If you want a resource on bash specifically, here is a book.

• https://www.tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/

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

Grab an old Thinkpad and Install Arch from scratch following the wiki. It’s considerably easier than e.g. Gentoo and equips you with enough experience to debug things.

Grab a note taking app like Joplin / Obsidian too.

After that try writing a pkgbuild and configuring sway/Hyprland/DWM.

Keep something simpler for daily driving so you don’t get warn out (eg EndeavourOS/Fedora/OpenSuse or something along those lines).

IME Endeavour is a nice compromise between over engineered bespoke behaviour like eg Ubuntu and configuration pains like Void / Gentoo.

I started saving what I put into terminal into a Google doc. That way if something gets screwed I have a record for how to undo it. Also, don’t copy paste from chatgpt to terminal. And make sure the source you are using isn’t 7 years old.