Hello fellow Linux Lemmings!

I’ve been tasked with putting together a 20 hour class for “Introduction to Linux” and I’d like to solicit your opinions for topics that should be covered.

The class is targeted for at least minimally technical people - maybe developers, or future developers, but regardless of background they’ve never seen or worked with Linux before.

I plan to do a VERY short overview of installing Linux (to a VM - so they have a “real” environment to learn with) and the GUI but the primary focus will be CLI. Imagine tools and tasks you come across while working on a “real” server (or VM).

A high level overview of the topics I currently have allocated is :

  • Super brief history of Linux
  • Benefits and use cases of Linux
  • General overview of the file system and the purposes of the pre-defined directories (/dev, /proc, /etc, /home, /bin, etc)
  • “Everything is a file”
  • File extensions don’t matter (windows users : )
  • Note on responsibility - you can delete “in use” files. It will do exactly what you tell it with sometimes minimal guardrails.
  • Everything from here down is CLI only!
  • What is a terminal/CLI and how do we use it?
  • How do we navigate the file system using the CLI
  • How to list, create, copy, move, delete, and read files/directories
  • EDIT: Basic file editing with nano
  • How to search for files (find… maybe locate)
  • Archives and compression (tar, gzip, bzip2)
  • Overview of permissions (read/write/execute, owner, group, chmod, chown)
  • Brief overview of different shells (bash, zsh, etc)
  • How to get help on the CLI (man, info, --help)
  • Tab completion, history
  • Shortcuts / control codes (ctrl+c, ctrl+d, ctrl+a, ctrl+e, and coverage of ctrl+z later)
  • grep
  • Checking processes (top, ps, kill)
  • Signals (sigterm, sigkill, etc - related to kill above)
  • Backgrounding and multitasking (ctrl+z, fg, bg, jobs, nohup, &)
  • Linking (ln)
  • STDIN, STDERR, STDOUT and redirection
  • Redirection (>, >>, <)
  • Command pipes ( | )
  • How to access a remote machine via SSH with UN/PW
  • How to access a remote machine via SSH with key auth (think cloud VMs like EC2)
  • Administrative commands and tasks (su, sudo, how it works, when to use it)
  • Add users and groups
  • How to change your passwd (maybe how to change your default shell too)
  • Restart, shutdown, halt
  • How to install/remove software (package managers, packages, pre-compiled binaries, maybe compilation with make if time allows)
  • Configuring your profile for customizing your environment
  • ENV variables and aliases
  • Network information (ifconfig) and tools (curl, wget, netcat, etc)

Everything from here down is “extra” if time allows (AKA - ensuring I don’t run out of material :)

  • Encryption (gpg - symmetric and asymmetric)
  • Backups (rsync, maybe dd)
  • screen/tmux
  • How to setup key based logins/auth
  • EDIT: More advanced CLI text editing with vim
  • sysreq commands
  • srm/shred
  • Shell scripting basics
  • init vs systemd, how to start/stop/status services.
  • Maybe how to create a simple service
  • Run levels
  • sed, awk basics
  • File system types, file system checking, formatting… I hesitate to get into partitioning but it’s always an option if I need it.
  • Alternatives to well known win/mac utilities and how to find them. EG: GIMP to replace Photoshop.

What do you think?

Did I miss anything that you deem super important?

Anything that I should definitely keep in the “only if I run out of material” category?

O, and if you have any good ideas for practical exercises I’d love to hear those too. I want to keep them <15min but things like “create a new directory, cd into it, touch a file, list the contents of / and write the output into the file you just created” are perfect.

Thanks!

  • @eeleech@lemm.ee
    11•10 months ago

    I would consider that ifconfig is deprecated on many distros and would therefore teach about iproute2 (mostly the ip and ss commands) instead. Additionally I would consider editing files essential, even if it is with nano.

    Maybe mention more modern and simpler help tools like tldr, as they could be even more useful to beginners.

    To introduce the shell and utilities, I would try to find a somewhat realistic use case that combines multiple aspects, like analyzing some files or spellchecking instead of simply mentioning every feature one by one.

    • clifOP
      6•10 months ago

      Now I’m learning something. I’ve defaulted to using ifconfig for so many years I didn’t even realize that ip and ss were around. I’ll look into them, thanks for the pointers.

      And yeah, good idea on file editing. Maybe I should move nano up to the essential category for basic editing and keep vim in the “extras” since it takes a little more training to use effectively, while providing a lot more functionality if you know how to take advantage of it : D

      • @eeleech@lemm.ee
        7•10 months ago

        Keeping the details about vim in the extras is what I would do as well, but I would definitely tell the students that vim and vi exist, because they are the only editors available on many systems.