this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
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So, I installed Linux Mint not too long ago, and while I've been able to do what I want to do without touching the Terminal, I am a bit curious how it works, and whether it could help me.

In particular, I am slowly getting into programming, and I've heard some people talk about strange, otherworldly things, like Vim, and Shell Scripts.

There was this PDF I downloaded called "The Linux Command Line" by William Shotts, but it is 570 pages long, and glancing through it, it seems to go into many different things, and I am afraid I'll end up learning a hundred things while only ever using ten of them, if you get my meaning.

So yeah, anyone who has some tips, or resources for a Linux newbie, please let me know.

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As far as vim goes I'll say it's not really necessary to learn but it's a good tool to have in your belt. I once tried to print the manual to vim but noped out after about 100 pages. I'd say learn how to navigate, edit, copy-paste, find and replace text in vim. You could go all the way to do crazy things like running a CLI command from within vim and put the result into the editor but from a desktop environment it isn't as helpful compared to simply having two terminal instances open.