How can I learn to use Linux effectively as a developer? I’m a first-year CS student at university and based on what I’ve read here and on the web, I need to know the Linux system and it’s various distros. Any resources are greatly appreciated 😁

-Just choose distro that suits your work. Like Ubuntu really offers great tools for development, etc.
-Use terminal over GUI.
-Learn some basic commands

@linuxxx can help

For me the ultimate step was to get familiar with the terminal :). There's actually a terminal thingy on CodeCademy! If you have any questions, feel free to ask ;)

I have a stupid but somehow working for me way,

Just think up of whatever you want to do.

Believe that there is surely a command or way to achieve it in that specific language

Hack away.

I seriously can't learn stuff from courses to slow for my liking. Just get the basics and start building stuff.

Read on C and *inux system calls ...

At this point in time and depending on your OS you might want to try and virtualize a system first. Play around with the most popular ones, like Debian derivatives such as Ubuntu or Linux Mint. There is also Linux Lite, which has a long term support version like you would find on Linux Mint or Ubuntu. Look into the different desktop environments for these distros and find one that you prefer and dive in. I recommend 3, Linux Lite (Ubuntu based) Linux Mint (Ubuntu/Debian based) and Fedora (because in the event of you working for enterprise they do use Red Hat a lot, and Fedora is based on Red Hat, so is Centos) and get good with the command line. Try setting up your development environment using only the terminal and you will get used to it. If you use Mac you already have a unix derivative, if you use Windows you can try your hand at the bash shell that you can use with it.