linux in a minute
a handy youtube series that covers a lot of this stuff if you prefer to take it in via video
that kali virtual machine on your MacBook will get you far. Your new friend is the command line (terminal window you're showing).
vi (visual editor) is one tool you'll need to know. Lots of tutorials will suggest something called nano. It does the same thing but it's kind of annoying IMO, lots of conntrol-things (ctrl x to exit, ctrl k to cut, ctrl-u to paste. wtf) vi is the old school one, and if you learn it there will be lots of places to use it including things like some network switches. A friend got asked in an interview if she knew the "six editor" (vi in roman numerals lol)
a bash script is a way to put a bunch of commands into a file that you run like a program. You'll want to know a little (or a lot) about that. If you have done something with multiple steps 5 times start asking yourself if maybe a script might be helpful. Where do you put scripts? somewhere in your PATH (echo $PATH) If you make the script executable (chmod +x and put it in one of the directories in your path you shouldn't have to type the full path to it.
The OG masters who wrote most of this stuff
WHat's that? the file system is hierarchical, / is called "root". There is also an account called "root" which has the privilege to do anything regardless of whether file prtections. root is also called the superuser. If you get a 'permission denied" error, you can put sudo in front of it, you'll probably get prompted for a password. It doesn't want the password for root, it wants your password. This can be fixed by editing a file called /etc/sudoers. "sudo visudo" will keep you from fucking yourself over by making a syntax error: if you screwed up, you can go back in and edit it again with "e"
/etc is where a lot of system-related stuff is stored. password file (passwd but you should use a command "vipw" to edit that to make sure you don't lock yourself out (acually "sudo vipw"). It's just a text file wiht fields separated by :
Once you start to get a handle on these things, you'll want to learn a little bit of Python, another scripting language that is more like a "real" programming language. Lots of interesting things can be done
YouTube videos are your guide.
Need a thing? search for "bash tutorial", or "vi tutorial" or "linux file system tutorial". you could use chatGPT to learn some stuff but it can be kind of spoon-fed, doesn't force you to think about what it's doing, it's just fucking magick. If you do decide to use chat, to write some bash scripts, take a moment to read it and see if you understand what it's doing.
commands can be modified by switches. There are a couple of conventions. Some things start with -- like --input=file.txt --output-anotherfile.txt --help will often give you some assistance
another convention is -i file.txt -o anotherfile.txt. Why are they different? who the fuck knows but you'll bump into both
there is a comand called "man" short for manual that is another way to get help for a command. These aren't so much tutorials as reminders, it kind of assumes you kind of aware of what you're looking for
man is very old school i.e. goes back to early 1970s. There is a command you can install called tldr which is also useful, gives more examples on how to
sudo apt install tldr -y without sudo, you're probably not going to fuck up the whole system, but you might make your local user (in your case "sam") kind of fucked up and maybe even broken. Fiigue out how to add another user account so if you hose sam, you might make another one called "sammy" or "dave" as in dave's not here.
grok what I've told you so far and you've got most of what a week long bootcamp will teach you.
you've gotten the windows knowledge, did they teach you Powershell in your A+ course? that's a good place to star to do system administrator level stuff, Powershell is its own deep, but internally consisten, beast. There is a Powershell for lInux but not many people actually use it
GUIs are nice but the real power is in the shell, usually it's "bash"
(b)ourne (a)gain (sh)ell so called because it harkens back to an ancient thing called the Bourne shell (sh) but much easier to use
tab completion when you're typing a command or file name will save you a lot of typing
sh didn't have it
the prompt on the terminal screenshot shows your username (sam) the host name (sam-linux) and what directory you're in. ~ is a shortcut to hour home director but in the hierarchy it's actuall either /home/sam or /users/sam. "pwd" (print working directory) will tell you what it really is.
cd (change directory) lets you move around in the file system. "cd /etc" will take you to where many configuration files live. etc is a directory under / cd .. takes you up one level. cd by itself will take you back to home dir. Didn't mean to do that? cd - will take you back to where you just were. you can use it repeatedl to jump back and forth between two directories
i didn't learn that one for decades
Kali is based on Ubuntu and other than it has a bunch of hacker tools, it's basically the same. Fedora is a version of another thing called RedHat which is a lot of businesses use. Minor differences (yum or dnf instaead of apt)
Arch is weird. Wait until you get how things work in either or both of the other two before you confuse yourself with Arch. Arch kind of assumes you already know a bunch
need to modify graphics files like .jpg, .png or .gif? "sudo apt install gimp" installs the GUI program called Gimp (Gnu Image manipulation program) it's a little wonky but it does most of what photoshop does
cropping is a good place to start. Of course, "gimp tutorial" on youtube
wanna play around with pictures, videos (.mp4, .avi) and stuff from the command line like converting from one to another? ffmpeg (sudo apt install ffmpeg) does quite a bit. It's command line not GUI.
yes, apt is the command you use to install new programs. "sudo apt update" followed by "sudo apt upgrade" will bring you to the latest versions of many many things
getting tired of saying "yes" when it asks you? adding -y on some commands (especially apt) will skip the question.
cat (short cor "catenate") types out a file, rm will delete it. Be careful with rm
mv is how you rename things
Some commads like rm might want to confirm each file. --force and -f can override that
git. should mention that as a version control system. Lets you track changes to files over time. old school would have a dir called ~/bin but some places now hide things in ~/.local/bin. "git init" starts the archive. git add puts the latest version that you'd like to keep, git commit pushes the add into the archive. Once you have done that, you can go back to an older version (more than i can tell you here, use the tools) in case you do something catastrophically stupid and want to go back to the version before you messed it up.
oh yeah. hidden files. in bash, a file that starts with a . is hidden i.e. if you simply do ls it won't show it, but ls -a will. ls -la will show you hidden files along with more than just the name. one hidden file you'll want to be at least a little bit conversatnt with is called ~/.bashc (or ~/.zshrc on your Mac) These are commands that get executed every time you log into the system. sets up things like your prompt, PATH, aliases (next paragraph) and anything else you like to have around when you're doing things.
Aliases are a way that let you abbreviate a command to something simpler. In ~/.bashrc you will usually find
alias ll="ls -la" While I am mentioning aliases i should also mention environment variables. like aliases give you short-hand to a command, an environment var gives you shorthand to things like a path. I think I mentioned $PATH above. This is an environment variable. You create it without a $ sign but you reference it with one. pedantic people today would use ${PATH} but both work. Can't really say why the second one is better off-hand but that's how I write my scripts these days. Build good habits early.
it'sIf you want to add somethign to your path, you would
export PATH=$PATH:/home/sam/sammytoolsso when you type ll it will act like you typed ls -la
processes are important. Things that are happening are in processes. ps -aux (sometimes ps aux will do it too) will show you all of the processes that are running on your system right now. There is a command called top (prettier one you can install with apt is called htop) which will display and refresh as a pretty display you can watch. Each line shows you things like how much CPU the processes are consuming, the command itself, etc.
Aren't ADHD driven info dumps fun?