Learning Linux Course Description

Title: Learning Linux
Length: 15-week semester long course
Audience: High school students
Course Description Quality Score: 91/100 (Excellent)

Prerequisites

Students must have strong typing skills including the use of the copy/cut and paste commands.
Students should have access to a Linux terminal shell. Any of the following is acceptable:
- Mac Terminal
- Windows Windows System for Linux (WSL)
- Chromebook in developer mode
- Raspberry Pi (available in classrooms for under $100/student without a monitor) See here for details.

Why This Course

In late September 2025 The Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the Raspberry Pi 500+. Although this is just one announcement in a long line of Raspberry Pi products, the features and performance of the 500+ was stunning. But this was not just for the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) crowd. This was a device that could compete with some of the best desktop computers. And the nice thing about the 500+ was that it had all the hardware ports for connecting it to thousands of sensors and motors to control lab equipment in schools.

However, the 500+ lacked one big component: A really fun book to teach kids how to use the powerful Linux operating system that powered the 500+.

To put this in context, this was just around the time that Anthropic Claude Code Skills were taking off. And Claude Code was build around what core skill? If you guess Linux shell commands you were RIGHT!. In summary, I realized we could combine the need for Linux education with Claude Code to build a really fun world-class textbook targeting high-school students that would empower them with the knowledge they need to use these powerful tools.

Why this Course is Different

If you do a internet search, you can find hundreds of books on UNIX and Linux going back to the 1980s. But many of them are static printed books that are not designed for our TikTok obsessed youth that have the attention span of a gnat. They need fun, engaging and interactive systems that can keep their attention and intelligent textbook interaction points that allow instructors to monitor their progress.

Topics Covered

UNIX
UNIX and C
Portability
Linux
Shell
Startup
Dot files
.bashrc
.zshrc
Shortcuts
tab completion
Fonts and appearance
Terminal Size
Automating Startup
Shell Commands
Shell Programs
Command Options
grep
regular expressions
The Shell Pipe
Input
Output
wc
sort
JSON
jc
Markdown
network
ping
traceroute
wifi
curl
wget
version info
shutdown
text editing
nano
vi and vim
find
locate
awk
sed
compression
tar
zip
gzip
diff
cron
history
Design Philosophy
Small Modular Tools
Basic Commands
Navigation
Home Directory
Environment Variables
Ownership
Permissions
Directories
File Systems
Mounting Devices
USB Drives
USB Ports
PATH
PATH Order
Override
Alias
Whereis
Which
Processes
ps
kill
Debugging
Installing
Updates
apt
brew
SSH
remote login
Firewalls
sudo
Shell prompts
Customizing Terminal
Terminal Themes
Terminal in VSCode
Terminal in Thonny
Desktops
Linux Versions
Debian
Real Time
Ubuntu
UNIX System V
Berkley Distribution
BSD Releases
Virtual Memory
Tuning UNIX
Flash Drives
Swap Drives
top
measuring performance
CPU benchmarks
Disk benchmarks
GPU
GPU benchmarks
Adding a GPU to the Pi
GPU drivers
Webcams
Adding a camera to a Pi
Bluetooth
printers
displays
HDMI ports
Pi HDMI Micro Port
Multiple Displays
Display RAM
Sounds
Easter Eggs
NVIDIA drivers on Pi
Low Cost Linux
Raspberry Pi Zero
Linux in STEP
Linux in Maker Spaces
40-pin port on the Pi
Voltage Pins
External Power
Data Pins
Monitoring Current
LED Strip
Motors
Servos
IoT
Linux at Home
Monitoring Your Home
Docker
Spinning up Linux on the Cloud
Terraform
Python
PIP
Python VMs
Secrets
GitHub
git clone
C
The Future of Linux
C vs. RUST
Final Projects
Web server
Game Server
Media Server
Ad Blocker
Retro Gaming
VPN Setup
VSCode
Linux Careers
Network admin
Linux in Space
Linux in Cars

Topics Not Covered

Linux Internals
Compiling Linux
Device Drivers
Linux Research
Advanced RUST
Advanced C

Learning Objectives

The following learning objectives are classified according to Bloom's Revised Taxonomy (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001), organized from lower-order to higher-order cognitive skills.