Do you actually learn Linux from YouTube, or just follow along?

I’m using Elive as my daily desktop and keep running into YouTube videos when searching for tips or fixes. Some videos are genuinely useful, especially for desktop tweaks and visual workflows, but many skip context or are made for completely different distros.

What I’ve noticed is that after following a video, things work—but I don’t always understand why. With docs or forum posts, it’s slower, but the concepts stick better.

For those of you who’ve been on Elive or Debian-based systems for a long time: do you still use YouTube at all, or did you move away from it once you got comfortable? Is there a practical way to use videos without turning Linux learning into copy-paste-with-a-play-button?

Interested in how others here approach this, especially people who actually maintain their own setups instead of reinstalling every few months.

Frankly, I personally NEVER, EVER look to youtube for solutions, if I can avoid it.
There's a lot of Elive specific solutions here on the forum (especially in the Howtos section) but admittedly sometimes hard to find, so consider yourself excused. :wink:

The next best thing is to simply ask. We're a friendly lot here and don't throw RTFMs at people that easily, in general. :w00t:

I hate reinstalling (and happily I don't need to on Elive) as it usually messes up my personalized and tweaked system so I indeed look for solutions to my "itches" allover the place.
I find that distro agnostic solutions are often to be garnered on sites that are commandline oriented but do require an analytic approach before simply copy/pasting a solution. The first thing to look at is the date of the offered solution .... consider anything older than 2-3 years to require tweaking, at the least.

In respect to GUI solutions: Elive/Enlightenment is so specific that there's not that much else out there other than here on the forum.

Yeah, I get that — I’ve found myself in the same spot. YouTube is great for seeing a workflow in action, but I often follow along without really understanding why things work, especially on Elive.

For me, combining forum posts, Howtos, and experimentation works best. Sometimes I even test behavior on alternative or modified tools (for example, I’ve looked at approaches shared on YTModz just to see how certain setups behave, not to actually run them on my main system) — it’s more about observing patterns than copying blindly.

Over time, I’ve realized the best learning comes from trying small changes, breaking things safely, and then seeing what sticks — that’s what makes Linux concepts actually click.

And when it comes to really 'dangerous' testing there's always the option to start Elive in 'impermutable mode' and experimenting totally risk free. :w00t:

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Note: Impermutable is going to be renamed to Immutable, for clarity reasons

Good, now I always have to look up in 'grub.cfg' what it's actually called. I don't want top put people on the wrong foot. :slight_smile: