Introduction to Linux | Linux Essentials JumpStart

Introduction to Linux is a 3-day, hands-on course that provides you with a solid level foundation in essential skills for using any version of Linux.  This course focuses on core useful skills that ordinary you might use day to day when working with Linux. 

Learning Objectives

This skills-combines expert instructor-led discussions with hands-on labs designed to provide you practical experience working with Linux to complete tasks and functions users usually encounter on the job.  The lessons and exercises always emphasize current techniques, best practices and standards.  Working in a hands-on lab environment guided by our expert instructor, you’ll explore:

• The Design of Linux
• Basic Operations
• File System Basics
• Wildcards
• File and Directory Permissions
• Working with files
• Executing Programs
• Using find
• Filters and other useful commands
• The vi editor
• Customizing the user environment
• Networking/Communications
• Backups and archiving

The Design of Linux

• A brief history of Linux
• The Linux design philosophy
• Linux architecture

Basic Operations

• Logging in and out
• The general form of a Linux command
• Common commands
• Using man pages
• Essential commands

File System Basics

• The Linux directory structure
• Standard directories
• Relative and absolute pathnames
• Legal file names
• Navigating the filesystem

Wildcards

• Matching one character
• Matching many characters
• Shortcuts
• Wildcard gotchas
• Wildcards and ls

File and Directory Permissions

• Viewing permissions
• File permissions
• Directory permissions
• Setting defaults
• Changing permissions
• Keeping data secure

Working with files

• Viewing contents
• Identifying file contents
• Copying and moving
• Deleting
• Using symbolic links

Executing Programs

• Redirecting STDOUT
• Redirecting STDERR
• Redirecting STDIN
• Creating pipelines
• Processes attributes
• Listing processes
• Killing processes
• Foreground & background processes

Using find

• Syntax
• Finding by name, type, or size
• Combining tests
• Finding by size, owner, or timestamps
• Using xargs with find
• Other find options

Filters and other useful commands

• What is a filter?
• cat: a generic filter
• head and tail
• grep
• sort
• wc
• other interesting filters

The vi editor

• Why vi?
• Basic vi operations: navigating, adding, deleting
• Advanced operations: buffer management, search and replace, configuration options

Customizing the user environment

• About shells
• Shell startup files
• Shell variables
• Search path
• Aliases
• Simple shell scripts

Networking/Communications

• Reading and sending mail
• Remote login
• Remote file transfer
• Other network utilities (ping, finger, etc)

Backups and archiving

• Checking space used or available
• Creating tar archives
• Viewing and extracting files from archives
• Compression utilities
• Working with windows

Attendees should be comfortable working with computers and the command line, but no other specific skills are required to attend

Users who need to learn need basic skills to perform simple daily tasks in the Linux environment.