What is Linux?
The introductory episode – Just talking about what Linux is and why someone would want to use it. We also cover the fact that you DO NOT need to ever use the terminal for basic everyday use; it has its time and place. My three-minute tutorials WILL be using the terminal as it is my preferred method of control over Linux.

Sudo users in Linux

In this episode, we go over what a sudo user is, how to make one, and what they are used for.

To create a sudo user, you must have root access. Root is the main “user” of the machine, it has access to everything throughout. In the setup you would have chosen a “root password” as well as a “user password”. Switch user to root and put in your password.

su root

Once in the root user run the command below to add your personal user to the sudoers group.

NOTE
If there are issues with the command “su root”, there are alternatives such as “sudo -i” or “sudo -“.

sudo usermod -aG sudo [username]

Within Linux commands there are flags. Flags allow for tweaking of how the command runs. In the command above we use the flag -aG.
-aG stands for “append groups”, meaning that the user will be added to the chosen group without being removed from any current they are a part of.
When tweaking groups and permissions, never use -a without -G; they are a package deal.

Directories in Linux
Episode 3 – this episode will cover what a directory is, how to see it, and how to further expand it. The first command of the episode stands for “list”. “list” shows all the current files within the directory you are sitting in.

ls

Once we have listed our home directory we can see all the folders within it. Usually this will show all the normal folders of a personal computer such as downloads, documents, photos, videos, and music.
Our next step is to create one of our own. Now that we have listed our directory and know where we are, we can make more directories wherever we want. The command below, mkdir, stands for “make directory”. It creates a folder with a given name within the current folder. Directories are composed of a series of folders.

mkdir [name]

To move our current path to the newly created, or previously established folder, we would use the command below. The command cd stands for change directory and it moves your current location to wherever you enter.

cd [filepath]

Installing Software in Linux
Linux’s applications and software are installed through something called a package manager. There are many different package managers such as aptitude (what we use in the tutorial), pacman, snap, pip, pipx, and many more. You ARE able to add more repositories to them but they will not have been overseen by the distribution creators whereas the proprietary package manager usually has a repository that is checked for the version it is claiming. The first thing you should do on a new install is update and upgrade your current packages as what has come installed with the distro may not be up to date. Double ampersand tells the computer to “only execute the second command if the first is completed”. It allows you to throw multiple commands into a command line. The command below checks the repositories for updates and then if there are any it upgrades your packages to that version.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

After your package manager has been updated and upgraded you are ready to install other programs!! The example used in the tutorial is the installation of VLC (VideoLan client).

NOTE
It is not shown in the video but adding the flag “-y” accepts the download before the popup.

sudo apt install vlc -y 

In this episode I go a little over time to show how to uninstall a package as well. My preferred method of uninstalling an application is the use of the “purge” tag. Purge gets rid of any files that are unnecessary for other applications to run, but needed for whatever you are purging. It also gets rid of configuration files which is ideal for if you mess something up.

sudo apt purge vlc -y

Installing Files from the Web on Linux
Aptitude and other package managers and/or repositories wont have everything you ever wanted. Another method of downloading things through the terminal on Linux that comes preinstalled is “wget”. There are other methods of installing web files such as curl or git, but I am just going off of what comes with Debian 12.8. Wget allows for background downloads, resuming downloads where they left off in your internet cuts off, and recursive downloads.

wget [DOWNLOAD LINK]

As seen in the tutorial this does not always give you the output you wish for. Wget downloads base their name off of the end of the URL used to download. This turns out messy in your downloads folder. What the flag “–content-disposition” does is it ignores that url and asks the web server “what is this file actually called?”. This gives you the output you were looking for and the filename you wanted. This matters for if you need like perhaps, a world folder for a Minecraft server that has a specific name. It just saves you time from having to go and rename it yourself.

wget [DOWNLOAD LINK] --content-disposition