Hello, firstly thank you for taking a look at my post.
I switched over from Windows to Fedora 40, I’m tired of all the issues and privacy concerns that came with Windows. I’m also looking to get into the Cyber-security field, which I know is based around Linux systems. I have some general questions:
Is there any programs/software you’d recommend?
Are there any projects I can work on to better my knowledge on navigating and learning Linux?
Other than the base setup, do you recommend changing any settings for a better experience or enhanced security?
For programs to recommend, that really is a pretty open ended question, Fedora has over 13000 packages in it’s repos so I think you see the problem. It may go easier if you were to ask what app/package should I install to do whatever it is you wish to do.
The Fedora documentation project is an awesome place to get some knowledge about linux topics specific to Fedora, most importantly how to use something.
For security, straight out of the box, Fedora is setup to be secure for the average user. You can enhance security quite a bit through various methods.
To start your journey of reading about linux, I would like to suggest this site What is Linux? | Opensource.com. It has some cheat sheets posted there for the basics of commands to use in linux. The cheat sheets will mostly be for command line type of commands (issued in a terminal) as opposed to a GUI based tool. There is also the Redhat Learning Subscription at Red Hat Learning Subscription
Your first step should be to develop confidence doing routine tasks by practice and studying the documentation. For Fedora, dnf, rpm, and journalctl are important tools, as you can see by reviewing topics on this forum.
POSIX command-line tools are central to using linux effectively. We all need reliable reference material, especially now that web searches often return AI-generated click-bait nonsense. Linux Command has been around for years and is widely used, so has benefited from scrutiny by many users.
There are professional associations that focus on all aspects of computing and maintain collections of high-quality peer-reviewed publications that are available to members. Cyber-security needs people with in-depth knowledge of many different topics, from the internals of CPU architectures, filesystems, network protocols, user behaviour, etc. There are some excellent case histories which make instructive reading. These help broaden your understanding and may lead you to an area that is particularly interesting to you.
this is how i learnt linux : install distro => explore distro => break distro => repeat.
i would also recommend exploring different linux distributions.
@qwerkydolphin Fedora has a Security spin/package you can download. It has a ton of stuff in reference to security, recovery, inspection and other goodies. My first venture into it was around F25, when I took an old HDD and some tools I found there that were helpful for “forensic” work/play.
As for learning, Linux. I went the let me break it then fix it route. It didn’t go too well for me because I only had 1 issue with Fedora since I started, which was Fedora 25 and the kernel it shipped with on the .iso, but outside of that it’s been tangent learning and focusing on my career in administration and data analytics.
Man pages are boring looking, but helpful. Sometime a bit hard to navigate but helpful. Ask all the questions you need.
I moved this to the Water Cooler, since you didn’t have an explicit issue, but this is more or less a conversation post. Once again, Welcome home
This is good advice. I would add systemctl (for systemd distros like fedora) and service management, in general. Some tools i use in the terminal include htop/ttop, ps_mem, and midnight commander (mc).
Welcome to Linux and Fedora (You are now 8 months into your recovery from your Windows addiction )
Probably the BEST way to really get good at Linux is to try EVERYTHING. In doing this, you will most assuredly break things so badly that you will either have to just rebuild from scratch until you learn how to recover your system from a backup. The main thing to remember as you learn is to keep a notebook handy, you will be recording a lot of “Notes to self: don’t press that particular button in combination with this …” OR “Here is how you fix what broke when you press that particular button in combination with …”.
As for initial software to load, start with “Work-A-Likes” … you are going to need a wordprocessor, a spreadsheet and so on and you are most likely still going to need to exchange information with M$ Office users so … LibreOffice should be one of your first software suites. You are going to need an email tool, I went with Thunderbird because it is simple and clean as an interface. Then … go kind of nuts … Wireshark+htop+iotop+all the other tools you will need to do basic debugging of various parts of the OS and environment.
Another GREAT way to learn Linux/Fedora is to participate and contribute in places like this https://discussion.fedoraproject.org because you will see things that get broken and fixed in ways you may never have thought possible
That’s me too. I’ve been at it for nearly a year. Got headaches sometimes. I started with VMs which make it very easy to get the feel and learn the basics of new distros and remove any consequences of breaking stuff. Then I moved on to real hardware.
The break distro → repeat cycle works well with my notes style I can go from wiped disks to Fedora with all my software and config in about an hour on mostly any computer. If I’m trying something new on an install and it works out, it makes for a fine addition to my collection
I like DokuWiki for being flat-file and took my set-up from 2015 across various Linux distros, Windows, and FreeBSD no problem with a basic nginx/PHP stack (and lately even freenginx). Deploy notes:
It also benefits two sides; the Workstation side of Linux/operating systems, while also maintaining a Server-side part for the webserver/notes. Any security stuff learned on the server-side could be useful for workstation.
Community!
(You are now 8 months into your recovery from your Windows addiction 
I can go from wiped disks to Fedora with all my software and config in about an hour on mostly any computer. If I’m trying something new on an install and it works out, it makes for a fine addition to my collection