I like the Linux upskill challenge for rounding out your education. https://linuxupskillchallenge.org/ it’s designed as a 1 month course of an hour or so a day that the author made free to access as his legacy. Don’t start out with this – mess around and learn on your own first, and when you’re comfortable with the system, then you can learn more in depth.

I recommend spending time in a Linux chat room related to learning Linux specifically your distro. When you’re messing around in Linux, you can ask questions, and humans are great teachers in helping you with things you don’t know you should be learning. Discord is the most accessible, but you can find a specific place for the Linux distribution you go with – for example Ubuntu has rooms set up on Matrix and IRC that are both active and welcoming to new folks.

Also just dive into guides on how to do things as you need to do them. How to change wallpaper, how to install programs, whatever. Try finding official documentation, but often guides may be more helpful. But sometimes less. Over time you will learn how to search for answers just like on Windows. If the guides or forum threads don’t seem right, you can ask in the chatroom (hey does this make sense?)

Compared to cmd.exe and Powershell, the Linux terminal is very user friendly, with a user experience they’ve been refining since the 1970s or earlier, and there is a reason power users tend to gravitate towards using the CLI for some tasks. Sometimes it may be the preferred or only way to accomplish something (Windows has this too, but it’s more rare.) Take your time, and read/understand the man pages and the output of nano --help (using nano as an example command: it is a text editor. But you can use the --help option with nearly any Linux command and it will most likely work, by convention.

Sorry if any of this is too obvious or too much information, but hopefully it helps someone.

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It really depends on your approach to learning things. If you’re looking for a systematic approach, I really like No Starch Press books for that sort of thing: How Linux Works or Your Linux Toolbox (for a more playful approach).

But in the end there’s really no substitute for installing Debian on bare metal and tinkering with it. I would really recommend Debian, because it’s the archetype of how Linux systems have been working for the last 30 years or so. Arguably, this is currently changing, but come to grips with Debian before you dabble in more modern approaches to system management.

I dabbled for a few years before I made the switch.

You learn after you switch. Not before. Because then it’s easier to search for a Linux solution than it is to reinstall windows and get it done in the way you’re familiar.

If you can dual boot and do your daily needs you are good enough to make the switch.

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If you ask me:-

I use a combination of my instincts, including distro-hopping, since I began using Linux in 2017, reading articles online about Linux tutorials, and even watching YouTube videos. I gave up on Linux and returned to Windows many times, but it ultimately made me return to Linux because it is meant to be my forever operating system. There are so many Linux tutorials available online, including on YouTube. Indian channels taught me how to install Ubuntu, and that was my most memorable beginning with Linux. I also recommend chatting with current viral technologies such as generative AIs; they’ll provide you with answers. So, keep exploring Linux. 😎👍

Sorry this does not answer your question but zorin os it a great out of the box distro that tries to look and feel like windows and has almost everything you need as part of the installation including wine and play on linux and an rdp client. it has the ubuntu software gui interface but if you use it I would prioritize learning to use apt at the command line as I feel the gui software thing as a bit pants. I used unix extensively in my tech career but did not use it as a daily driver (for a variety of “reasons”) till under a year ago where windows 11 just made it necessary to do. I have future plans to go to an immutable but man zorin is great for a quick and dirty up and running thing. Also if you have an old laptop throw it on that. You will be amazed at how it may outperform your newer machine with windows.

Start using it. Look up anything that bothers you.

Don’t make it your work or main computer yet. That might create too much frustration.

“Out of the box” security is decent at this point.

In my experience: By bashing your head against it and looking up things online you cant figure out on your own. If that means having to google how to navigate the folder structure, so be it.

For learning about the filesystem layout, you can type man hier into a Linux terminal.

Or read the same online: https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/hier.7.html

My personal journey:

Install random Linux distro as virtual machine or dual boot, use it until you run into something you can’t fix. Look for an alternative.

Do this a couple of times, my path was: Ubuntu, Manjaro, PopOS, Zorin, Debian, Mint. I ended up replacing windows completely with Mint. It’s nice, easy, customizable, and I can play my games on it when I need to 👍

Learning the terminal is easily done on linuxjourney.com!

Just start using it. Set up a dual boot if you really need access to Windows still, but try not to use it as much as possible. You learn by running into problems or holes in your knowledge, and solving those issues will fill in other gaps.

There are plenty of video series if you want to listen to advice before diving in, but there’s no teacher like experience.

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I don’t know if it still exists, but following along with the Gentoo Linux install guide where you build everything from the ground up. I definitely wouldn’t daily drive something like that now (I had a lotore free time (and no money) back then), but learning what the commands did was great for learning not just about commands but a number of Linux concepts.

I had a tiny bit of very basic previous experience, mostly with common command line tools like CD, ls, etc.

Before I swapped to linux full-time, I used virtualbox to create test environments from various distros to see which one I liked best.

After testing: EndeavorOS, Manjaro, PopOS, Nobara, Ubuntu, and openSuse
I settled on Endeavor as my main driver and have been running it for over a year now. openSuse came close second for me, and Nobara was a distant last, I really did not like it. The important thing for me was to try several of them in a safe way that would let me experiment on if this was really something I wanted at all.