Hi,

I’m a Windows user of all life

I was a Mac user for 35+ years (still am, partly). It took me a little while to get used to new names/commands in Linux but that’s to be expected. And it is not much an issue anymore ;)

I am those persons that has bad times remembering names, words… imagine commands… Even after using it so much I remember some basics but I’m struggling a lot and I have to go back to notes constantly to do some basic operations. Even worst after trying multiple distro from from different upstreams that commands are … Different

What kind of commands exactly? I mean, I don’t know that ‘commands’ are different from one distro to the other’ as they all use the same apps. So, beside the name of a few specific ones (like, maybe the app installer).

What would be your recommendations to help me. Are there tools to help this issue ?

My two sole advice:

• don’t try to remember too many commands. Instead, focus on the ones you use daily or very often. After you get those memorized you can always decide to memorize more… or not memorize them at all. I don’t bother remembering them, why would I when I can easily use Ctrl+F and instantly find them the moment I need them?

How do I do? I keep a text files in which I store all the stuff I seldom use but still want to be able to find in case I need it someday. To make finding them easier, I put descriptive titles and comments with each command. And that’s what I’m searching for, not the command name ;)

• If you’re talking about Terminal commands, learn to create your own aliases they will let you remember a short name instead of full commands. I have a few lengthy commands and some scripts (for example, to compress/convert images) that I I regularly use. I don’t remember them. I’ve saved them in a .sh file that I can either call through a Terminal or simply by a right-click in my File Explorer (it’s Nemo and they’re called ‘Actions’, on Linux Mint)

I’m also not a text first person. There are a lot of us about. I have found GUI applications to do most commands I need. Most IT users don’t know them, as they’ve never searched for them. I pin the apps as Favourites in the launcher, to help remember my processes. The apps typically keep the last used values, making them quite productive.

I have around 10 “linux extract tar archive” online searches last year alone.

The gorilla bash llm thing has been immensely helpful.

https://gorilla.cs.berkeley.edu/

Practice.

Practice.

Practice.

That’s really the best I can give you. The more you use the commands the easier they come to you.

Even novices can struggle with the command line. Don’t be afraid to search online for answers. I still need to look up arguments for things that I don’t use daily and I’ve been using Linux for almost 20 years now. Duck duck go and man are your friends.

One thing that I have found nice is using a shell that remembers what you have typed in the past because sometimes I will remember part of a command but not the whole thing, for example fish shell remembers commands and will start to auto fill commands that are typed as long as I have the beginning of the command correct and as long as I have typed the command in the past, which works wonders when you’re doing similar commands but with different file names or you are trying to remember the more advanced portions of git

A side note that I want to add regarding alternative shells be aware that every shell has its own strengths and weaknesses, for example fish shell is amazing for auto completion and plug in support, but it’s downside is it’s not compatible with standard bash Scripts and scripting as a whole on it is pretty mediocre

Fish

Find a cheat sheet. There are hundreds out there – you probably want one for basic terminal commands, and one for whatever package manager you’re currently using.

The history command is also great if it’s something you do fairly often, but not often enough to remember clearly.

Use fzf to complete commands, use cmd line helpers like ‘tldr’

I currently use Bytestash. Used to use Obsidian, but the fact that all I have to do is pull up a webpage to copy and paste a command I need made ByteStash a better fit for me.

I recommend to installed starship, fish and ZSH. I just tried them recently with config files from a friend and am pleasantly surprised:

https://github.com/A5t4t1ne/arch_config/tree/main

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Anything you have trouble remembering, or just find yourself doing often, create an alias (or bash script if it constitutes a multi line command). Name the alias something you can easily remember that also lets you know what that command does.

Then, and here’s he trick, don’t rely on the alias. Use it when you can’t remember, say “aww, damn it I had to use the alias again”, and then use which followed by the alias name to see what the command was again. Do this over and over and eventually some commands will stick.

Ones that you don’t care about or are just super long, just keep using the alias and don’t worry about remembering them. Use aliases as both commands and notes.

I think 90% of the comments here are “write your own notes“ - which is possibly over simplistic.

Everyone’s different but IMHO:

The brain is better for imagination than long term storage. So if you’re stuck trying to remember some obscure command(s), it’s just better to use something else to store that on.

But when the brain understands the core concepts well enough, the details come together as habits (where repetition comes in).

So, if you’re unable to recall something, take some time to think / remind yourself about the underlying concepts and why that’s the command - next time it’ll be easier, eventually it’ll be effortless.

I had to learn some strange concepts for work during a deep technical troubleshooting session on a client’s system and the commands were like just facemashing the keyboard… I’ve no idea what those commands are now (written down), but I can recall what / why I was doing them and that was the key… for me.

(Using computers since '80s)

I keep bash scripts on my desktop to do common things

Use Fish (very good autocomplete) and aliases