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!