PHASE 03Beginner2 weeks

Learn to Talk to Your Machine

Objective: Navigate and manipulate your system, edit files, and track changes using only the command line.

Lessons8 free
  1. 013.1 Terminal, Shell, Prompt15 min
  2. 023.2 The Filesystem Tree20 min
  3. 033.3 Moving Around and Managing Files25 min
  4. 043.4 Reading and Searching: cat, less, grep, find25 min
  5. 053.5 Redirection, Pipes, Permissions, and sudo30 min
  6. 063.6 Editing Files with nano or vim25 min
  7. 073.7 Git Basics: Track Your Work30 min
  8. 08Lab: Phase 3, Learn to Talk to Your Machine60 min
The Mission

The graphical interface is training wheels. Real IT work happens in the terminal. Your job is to navigate the filesystem, manage files, edit configurations, and track your work using only CLI.

Learn the Linux filesystem hierarchy: what /etc, /var, /home, /tmp, /usr, and /bin are for. Pick nano or vim and get to a point where you can open a config file, change a value, and save it without panicking.

Starting now, your course-notes/ folder is a Git repository.

Core commands to own
pwdWhere am I right now?
lsWhat's in this directory?
cdMove to a different directory
mkdirCreate a directory
touchCreate an empty file
cpCopy files or directories
mvMove or rename files or directories
rmDelete files. Linux has no recycle bin.
catDisplay file contents
manRead the manual page for any command
sudoRun a command as administrator
chmodChange file permissions
chownChange file ownership
grepSearch for text inside files
findSearch for files by name or type
dfCheck disk space
top / htopSee what's running
git init / add / commitTrack your work locally
The Challenge8 tasks
  1. 1

    Create the full ~/company/ structure (hr, engineering, sales, finance, and it, each with 3 .txt files) using only the terminal. No file manager.

  2. 2

    Add at least one line of text to each file using echo and output redirection (>).

  3. 3

    Copy the entire company directory to /tmp/company-backup.

  4. 4

    Find every .txt file in the company directory using the find command.

  5. 5

    Search for a specific word across all files using grep.

  6. 6

    Check disk space and memory usage. Write the output to system-report.txt.

  7. 7

    Open system-report.txt in nano or vim. Add a header line: "System Report - [today's date]". Save and exit.

  8. 8

    Initialize your course-notes/ directory as a Git repo. Add all existing files. Make your first commit: "initial commit - phases 1-3".

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Phase 2: Know Your Hardware
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Phase 4: Break It, Fix It