Linux 30 years ago was far more ‘hands on’ than it is now, many things ‘just work’ today, that would have needed you to compile your own binaries 30 years ago, and all configuration was done by editing text files to set things up.
These days most distros use GUI set up programs and things like device drivers are often ‘in kernel’ and your hardware will simply work without any intermediate steps.
Anyway, as for starting out, this has been asked before on the forum so;
