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🌱 Beginner Tier

Levels 0–2 · Goal: fluency · ~6–10 weeks at 45–60 minutes a day

You start here if you have never used a terminal, or have used one only by copying commands from the internet. By the end you'll be fast and confident at the command line, and you'll write scripts that automate your work.

What you'll be able to do

  • Move around any Linux system and know where config, logs, programs, and personal files live.
  • Find the documentation for any command without a browser.
  • Create, move, find, archive, and edit files, including in vim over SSH.
  • Read and fix permissions, and understand why chmod 777 is never the answer.
  • Chain small tools into pipelines that answer real questions about gigabytes of data.
  • Write bash scripts with options, logging, error handling, and cleanup, and know when to switch to Python.

The levels

  • Level 0: First steps

    What Linux is, the terminal and shell, your first commands, getting help, the filesystem layout, and users and sudo.

    Start Level 0

  • Level 1: Command-line fluency

    Files, globbing, permissions, pipes, text processing, finding things, shell productivity, archives, vim, and tmux.

    Start Level 1

  • Level 2: Shell scripting

    Scripts, variables and quoting, control flow, error handling, argument parsing, and knowing when to use Python.

    Start Level 2

Tier checkpoint

You're ready for the Intermediate tier when you can do all of these without notes:

  • Explain the purpose of /etc, /var/log, /usr/bin, /home, and /tmp.
  • Write a pipeline that prints the 10 most frequent IP addresses in a web server log.
  • Explain why x permission on a directory is different from x on a file.
  • Write a script that uses set -euo pipefail, trap, and getopts, and passes shellcheck.
  • Recover from a dropped SSH connection without losing your running job (tmux).

See the full roadmap for every concept in this tier.