Because, contrary to what it might seem like, we ALL start out this way using Linux. Everyone makes the same mistakes, so its easy to retrace the logic once you understand what the commands you used to copy-paste are doing. OP you’re clearly just making the switch and want to dive head-first into self-hosting as well as Linux, which will be a ton of fun, just try not to get discouraged as there is a lot to learn. Take it one step at a time, and try to understand the commands as there’s really not that many, and you re-use these in many scenarios.
I see many people recommending Docker, which is great, but imho a little too early to dive in to if you haven’t experimented with Linux at all. Docker is just a container of Linux inside of Linux, so you’ll still need to use the command line, and it has its own set of tools. Just my two cents. Somebody else posted but this was the video that also made Linux ‘click’ for me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0&t=296
Don’t be afraid to break things and start over. Have fun :)
I find it unbelievably cool that the guys who came up with this got it so right the first time, that its still incredibly powerful today.