First of all, Just in case, The "logs" folder is not necessarily in that address. Yeah it's the default but some launchers can change it.
Now the Linux Guide :First Note : There are a lot of Desktop Environments and File Managers for each Distribution of Linux, So there really isn't a one way of finding logs, But the most common way between all dists is to use Terminal so I first do it with terminal commands and then I'll try to show how you do it using XFCE4 desktop and Thunar File manager.
Linux Guide (using Terminal) :1. cd to your logs directory ($HOME/.minecraft by default). Note that you may change your minecraft directory path through your launcher (If your launcher supports this action)
cd ~/.minecraft/logs
2. Just like windows, Most recent logs are available in clear text format, So you can just view them on terminal using :
cat latest.log
3. If you happen to need to extract one of older logs, Use
gunzip --keep <filename>
to extract them. i.e.
gunzip --keep 2018-09-17-4.log.gz
Note that if you miss the --keep option, Your archive file (.gz) will be deleted.
Then you can display the contents like before, Except this time filename is the same as your archive without the ".gz" in the end, i.e.
cat 2018-09-17-4.log
Linux Guide (using XFCE4 Desktop + Thunar File Manager) :1. Open Thunar and navigate to your home :
2. Press Ctrl + H (or from menus : View => Show Hidden Files) and make sure your hidden files (those starting with dot) are shown :
3. Go to ".minecraft" folder, Then to "logs" folder :
4. Here you can open the latest.log file to view latest logs, Or extract any of those archives using Engrampa or any other archive manager you have on your os (.gz requires gunzip to be installed) then open the log file.