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Project Vital Source

Learn Linux in the terminal. Drill each core skill until it's automatic, then drill them together.

Get it on GitHub Source Code

The problem

The hard part of learning Linux isn’t any single command. It’s not knowing where to start, and not remembering what you learned last week. You won’t remember a command you don’t care about, and you won’t care about one until you know what it gets you out of.

Vital Source starts every lesson with a situation you’ve been in: the disk is full, a download won’t open, you know the file is here somewhere. The command comes second, as the way out.

How it works

1. One skill at a time

The ten things you actually do in a terminal, plus lesson zero: how to look anything up.

2. Reps, not reading

Every rep builds a fresh scenario with new files, names and folders. You memorize the skill, not the answer.

3. Graded on results

drill check looks at what you did, not what you typed. Any correct way passes.

4. Burned in

Five clean reps in a row, under the time target, with no hints. Right but slow means it isn't burned in yet.

5. Then combinations

Once each skill is automatic, you chain them together until the chains are automatic too.

The skills

  1. Help yourself: tldr, --help | grep, searching a man page instead of reading it, man -k
  2. Navigate: pwd, cd, ls -la, absolute and relative paths
  3. Move things around: mkdir, cp, mv, rm, wildcards
  4. Read files: cat, less, head, tail -f
  5. Find things: find, grep -r
  6. Inspect: du, df, stat, file, wc
  7. Permissions: ls -l, chmod, chown, sudo
  8. Pipes and redirection: |, >, sort, uniq, cut
  9. Install software: curl, sha256sum, tar, apt, from a real package repo of AnarchyGames titles
  10. Processes: ps, top, kill, jobs
  11. Edit a config file: nano, and enough vim to get out of it

A sandbox you can’t break

Everything runs in a disposable Debian container. rm -rf the whole thing if you want; learn-linux --reset hands you a fresh one in a second, and your progress stays put.

git clone https://github.com/AnarchySC/vital-source
cd vital-source
bin/learn-linux
drill start 0

You need Docker.

Status

Lessons 0 to 2 are playable now. Lessons 3 to 10, the combination missions and the AnarchyGames package repo are next.

Get it on GitHub